Historically, ordinary folk have never owned much until
recent decades. I grew up on a council estate where few families owned anything
but their clothes and some furniture. No house, car, fridge, freezer, central heating, TV or
phone. Now we are overwhelmed with goodies but it is easy to forget how recent
the change has been. The present situation is unprecedented as the manipulators say.
Yet there are changes in the air too. Ownership by ordinary
folk seems to be under attack. People are more likely to rent their home, a
major and obvious trend, but there are other attacks on our notions of
ownership. The trend is particularly noticeable with consumer durables which
aren’t durable and electronic gizmos which are out of date within months of
purchase. Ownership is becoming ephemeral - migrating to the cloud.
Privately owned cars are gradually being squeezed out of
cities and self-driving cars may not be privately owned at all. That’s the
progressive vision – if you want a car you hire one from an approved pool. Or
better still a rented bike. From bike-eu we have a story about a new lock for
rented bikes because rented bikes are so cool, especially in winter.
By 2020 bike sharing systems in the world’s biggest cities
are expected to offer over 2.3 million bicycles. Currently that figure stands
at about one million bikes. And it doesn’t include all the rental bikes on
offer at tourist spots all around the world. For this emerging market, bike
security supplier Axa developed a smart e-lock.
It all feels like a trend, an ownership isn’t cool trend. All part of designing the global pleb I suppose.
9 comments:
Your point about obsolescence and the contingency of ownership is extremely interesting.
My first response is that we have never really owned anything, in anything other than a very weak sense of temporary control. Our savings were always worth what the banks and governments said they were, and even those lumps of venerable wood or metal or bricks-and-mortar that were passed down the generations were vulnerable to being traded in when the going got rough. And if the government wanted it, they took it (albeit not as readily as the French government would...). I think we grew up in a world where we were kept happy with the idea of ownership as some kind of British absolute. Then came the age of "You can own this, but it's just cheap plastic shit that won't work very well". Now we are entering the age of digital ownership you refer to. "If you pay us every month, you can have a look at this shit on-line. But it's exclusively your shit!".
Extremely thought-provoking. Thank you.
You can keep this comment, by the way. It's yours. You own it now.
Like "global pleb." By degrees, we're skittering back towards the eighteenth century.
It is interesting how home ownership has dipped in this country to 63% from a peak of 71%.
I can remember atime when the UK had I beleive the hughest home ownership in Europe, and when I visited Germany in the late fifties early sixties everyone I met rented, that has now reversed, and they now are bigger home owners than us.
The strange thing is that we always blame the ever increasing cost of private housing for this trend and indeed there is a cause effect in that, but it is not the only reason, in the big cities across Europe the costs of buying a home have also rocketed, Italy for example has had four years of declining prices yet pre that it has been on an upcurve for years despite the nations woes, it is a complicated area, and in this country the "want everything yesterday" mind set also has a part to play in that those people refuse to save for what they want.
As for material goods I could not agree more with the planned and built in obsolescense in so much today, no more evident in cheap clothes and electrical items, what is amazing is the acceptance of this, you only have to read the feedback on items on Amazon to see people who having purchased an item to tell how it failed in three weeks and they binned it but did not return the item and purchased another, quite extraordinary.
He who travels lightest travels fastest.
When I received the deeds on our house, they went back years to previous owners, and included copies of old wills etc, which were almost indecipherable. The terminology was so difficult to understand, I had to keep looking up terms and words, but eventually came to the conclusion that one particular chap on this site, a local worthy, spent ages to get out of a copyhold arrangement, and eventually own his house.
Looking around the local churchyard, many of the names mentioned in the documents are asleep there, and were clearly very wealthy, judging by the ornate gravestones.
Their wealth clearly came from land ownership. I know of at least one man here who seems to own half of Surrey too! Still!
Strangely today there have been various press articles and tv programs which include people talking about the lack of house building prices etc and how the government should see more are built.
Two problems I see, in light of two estates going up near here, as usual these estates go up with council blessing as they get the council tax from the extra homes, yet with all that I have seen over the years very little infrastructure goes with them, in many cases promised infrastructure somehow "vanishes" when the project starts or protest groups miraculously appear complaining that the extra infrastructure is an eye sore or or not enough and then it all mysteriously goes away, more brown envelopes I presume.
Yet of course in these discussions the population explosion circa 300k a year si never the reason for the need for extra housing, god forbid that anyone should mention that or the strain it puts on the infrastructure that is never built to accommodate all these endless streams of people being welcomed in by SJWs and government spokespeople, homebuilding at the moment is another ponzi scheme.
Sam - of course Google really owns your excellent comment and will never, ever delete it.
Sackers - yes we are and we should probably make more comparisons with the eighteenth century.
Wiggia - I may as well admit that we binned a cheap alarm clock bought from Amazon because it didn't work - dead on arrival. At £6 including delivery we didn't think it was worth our time sending it back.
Demetrius - there is much to be said for it too, especially in the digital age.
Scrobs - it always seems to come down to land. Can't produce more of it.
Wiggia - yes, we can't build a new Nottingham every year.
"All part of designing the global pleb"
Indeed.
People who own nothing and therefore must have a constant cash stream just to survive, are much more easily manipulated and influenced. After all, if the ptb can make everything you need disappear in a moment, you're going to behave yourself on their terms, aren't you?
Scary.
WY - much like the eighteenth century where the peasants worked to stay alive, not to accumulate. It is scary. Even the private home is being infiltrated by official standards and requirements. It won't end there.
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