bombs in bottles
Remember when Uber and Airbnb dropped and the press got breathless over the "sharing economy" - a brave new world where we'd all be making money off things we owned, like our car or house?
Asking for a friend. No reason.
I'm listening to this video in the background this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XiUcwqOx44
At one point, the video's creator contrasts the physical books in the shot with Kindle books, pointing out that physical books are something we own. We can sell them or loan them out.
"Loan them out" stuck in my head, because...remember the sharing economy?
Back then, op-ed columnists were envisioning a world where we made money by loaning anything and everything to our neighbors. Houses. Cars. Snowblowers. Stand mixers. Shovels. They saw the world as a sort of vast Library of Things, but with fees attached. A vast Rental Service of Things.
No one mentioned then, or now, that the "sharing economy" is directly at odds with the "no own, only rent" model of digital subscription services, streaming, and Anything As A Service. We cannot "share" (or rent out) things we do not own.
Heck, these days we can't even "share" Kindle books with ourselves, as Amazon has eliminated the option to download "our" Kindle book purchases to our own devices!
From a broligarch perspective, this makes total sense. A "sharing economy" requires assets in the hands of the ordinary folks in order to exist, after all. I have to own a car or a house before I can offer to let you use it. Owning property means I own something of value. Something I control. And the right to go on owning and controlling it is something I'm likely willing to defend.
It is much more convenient to the ruling class if they own everything. Then they can use it to control us.
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