What the fuck is this rent-a-center propaganda?
How stupid are we?
this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Everything as subscription.
Yeah it is seem to be cheap now, until you become dependent on it.
On the flip side, when you lost your job, cancel your home subscription and become homeless.
Ubik was right
What could go wrong with depending on such a service? The things up for rental here are only things that have to be frequently changed or used just once or twice. I don't expect to subscribe to more permanent things as part of the expansion of tool rentals. Yes, some like Adobe have already adopted subscription for permanenty things, but that's different from this topic.
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Oh, I assumed this article was going to be about public libraries. Often public libraries will have things for checkout, like gardening or cooking equipment. Yeah, this is somewhat distopian. These companies will probably make bank off of this. It should be public. We need a larger library system for much more things.
Not sure I agree that it's dystopian. Imagine how much less waste there would be. People with less crowded storage/garages/houses with less junk they use rarely. Like, I have this scroll saw I've used for like one project. Why the fuck do I own this thing?
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
I guess so, but I just see this going in the direction of not wining anything and needing a subscription service. They end up costing a lot more and nearly killing off alternatives.
I remember when corner stores rented DVDs, this could be another business for them. But...since they haven't adopted it I guess it really isn't that profitable. Power tool prices have come down in price and size.
We need a larger library system for much more things.
Private Equity goes REEEEEE!
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When I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, we had a toy-library across from our house. You could rent all kinds of toys for a week, extend if needed, and return it when the kids got bored with it. Good times.
They also had LEGO, and every piece had to be accounted for on return.
They went out of business when people started buying their own GameBoys and PlayStations.
My public library had toys for rent when I was a kid. You could check out Teddy Ruskpin and Power Wheels and full sets of sports equipment to use in the park next door. Then the neighborhood got hit by the late 80s financial crisis and the program was cut. And then they spent an enormous amount of money on a computer lab. And then an Adult Learning Center. And then they decided too many poor people were near the library, making it unsafe, so people stopped bringing their kids there. And then it got defunded. And now its abandoned.
Libraries used to have all sorts of cool high end shit in them. Now they're so heavily deferred on maintenance that people don't feel safe working inside.
Real shit.
The USA has been going backwards for some time now. I'm not even some Chinese simp or very political (I made an account on .ml before I even knew what I was doing) but it's impressive how far they have advanced over the last 20-30 years and how the USA has just stagnated or regressed.
I’m not even some Chinese simp or very political (I made an account on .ml before I even knew what I was doing) but it’s impressive how far they have advanced over the last 20-30 years and how the USA has just stagnated or regressed.
The Chinese had a ton of catching up to do after WW2. So the first major industrializations in nearly a century are going to hit different than what Americans were trying to do at the bleeding economic edge.
But the mismanagement of the American economy has been glaring. Trillions into a series of disastrous wars. A desperate clutching to legacy ICE, long past its expiration date. De-investment in education, in health care, and in mass transit infrastructure. Financialization run amuck, to the point that fictitious speculative assets are outpacing the value of real capital and estates. Stagnant wages. Declining living standards. Police violence from coast to coast that seems to worsen with each new administration.
Now that the US and China are roughly on par technologically, there's no strong reason for China to continue to outpace the US. Certainly, they've come down quite a bit from the heyday of double-digit annual growth figures. And we've got ample opportunity for domestic investment in a country that's needed an infrastructure overhaul since the turn of the 21st century.
But nationalism is like rooting for your local baseball team. It doesn't matter how bad the Yankees are doing this season. You wave that fucking pennant or you get your ass back to Boston.
We had a rental thing for toys in our old neighbourhood, but you paid for it with currency made from helping at the nearby petting zoo.
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The one in Chicago is great. They also had a huge collection of free seeds this spring.
Once I started using the tool lending libraries in the San Francisco East Bay, it was a game changer for simple maintenance.
- https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/locations/tool-lending-library
- https://oaklandlibrary.org/otll/
Some bike shops also have public work benches with tools. https://www.boxdogbikes.com/about-1
ok this is an amazing idea
It’s nice however let’s assume that it is the main consumer model. Then everything becomes possibly 20 times more expensive as companies need to keep same profit (shareholders) and now 20 people pool money to share the thing. It’s not a solution to capitalism, however it would work wonders for environment.
Yet it is us doing all the work for the environment while companies don’t lift a finger and get all the profit. Not a viable long term solution to a fundamental problem of wealth.
It's not a solution by itself, but a library economy can form part of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The companies who have 20x the mark up necessary to survive will quickly see new businesses occupy the space to undercut them.
Yeah, this is the one piece a lot of people miss: in any decently competitive market, individual firms have effectively zero power to set prices; they must instead accept the prices determined by the market.
Knowing that, the solution to that sort of corporate BS, then, is to ensure markets are competitive by busting monopolies, lowering barriers to entry, and getting money out of politics to reduce the effect of lobbying.
Hmmm I wouldn't be so sure... It depends on their position in the market and how well they lobby the government
Not really, not every business is in bed with the politicians. This was a worse case scenario where rentals became the main method of purchasing, so everyone would be on level ground. Those making 20 times profit margins are not everyday businesses, they ae luxury brands who would still thrive on their branding alone.
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