The Death of Ownership

Juan Dávila (Political Officer) is a second year reading Engineering Science at St. John’s College.

As conservatives, it is natural that we spend a lot of time thinking about and defending the private ownership of the means of production. Lately, however, I have come to wonder if something else is at play – that, slowly, the very concept of ownership is being eroded and that things that people used to have, they’ll instead have to rent. What’s worse – this is being pioneered by the very corporations that we fight to defend, simply because there is more money to be made in continually charging someone to use something than to sell it once off.

This began, of course, with software companies, and not through ill intentions. In the 1970s you would be able to buy a disk with a program and that would be that. Of course, the programs you bought may have had errors, so when the internet became wide-spread, companies took this opportunity to re-align incentives. It would be better for them if their revenue was spread over the lifetime use of the product, and better for the customer if they received continuous upgrades to capability and fixes. And so, the idea of not owning software became normalized. Still, software is a nebulous thing; you couldn’t see or touch it. How far could the death of ownership possibly go?

Well, maybe the best way is to look at the present. We have moved to subscription services for movies and music. But this raises the question, might this new system be good? You can still buy all your media, though most of us prefer to rent; we like not owning. Now we look at the future. I’m sure everyone has heard about the blockchain, and how this is not only used to become your own central bank, but in many ways can be used as a ledger to monitor, for example, the use of an object. Imagine if you could get a TV for free but had to scan a QR code and pay per minute watched. This could theoretically be better for anyone, paying for use and giving a continuous incentive to the TV company to not sell your data. 

This may sound like future tech, but there are several companies with strong proposals to start subscription services for traditionally bought items. Tesla has been shouting about the robo-taxi network since they started their focus on autonomy. This has had investors giddy, but what about the consumers? The argument is that you could spread the cost of car ownership over multiple people and that transport costs will be slashed. Either way, the key issue is the same: the second most valuable physical asset most people own will stop being so. This may still sound far-fetched, but there are companies working on subscription services that require no new tech. Apple continues to expand its roster of services, with music and TV, but there are whispers of a new umbrella subscription that would include all apple subscriptions as well as an iPhone. 

 So here we stand, and the question is – as conservatives should we support this change to allow companies to erode the concept of ownership? It could be great for people. For example, cars depreciate massively, so why should people tie up their cash in that, where if instead we move to a model where more things are rented, giving people more free cash to invest in appreciating assets. Ultimately it may be best to allow the largest possible number of people to be invested in owning capital.

 However, this may signal the beginning of a worrying trend, one where the concept of ownership is further diluted. Generally, people care less about things when they have to take no ownership over them. Hence it may be worrying as people care less about the object in their life. Whether they will take less care with them, this generic carelessness may be the foundation of a moral issue, but also and in very practical terms may lead to increased waste. 

 This is terrible both economically and environmentally. Economically, increased waste will lead to more excess production, which will in turn push up costs and prices, and this is the exact opposite to what is promised through this kind of arrangement. Environmentally this is even more terrible as there is excess energy needed to produce, as well as raw materials which have to be mined, and naturally more waste ending up in landfills of burnt which destroys habitats and produces more greenhouse gasses. 

 So far, I have painted this as a rather new phenomenon, propelled by technology and advances in payment structures. However, I think that this is not entirely true after all, breaking payment of a large ticket item into instalments has been common practice for a long time now. The clearest example would be housing, given how many people rent, but there are examples that fit what we are seeing even closer. For example, this phone subscription with Apple would be very similar to the current contracts that exist with the mobile carriers, where phones are included in the price. Further, far back when radios and TVs were first being introduced it was normal to buy this on credit (which the engineer in me wants to argue is like a subscription model if you let the time of loan repayment equal the lifetime of the object). Hence, I find it particularly hard to be too overly alarmed by these new developments, since… well… they aren’t exactly new.

Is ownership dying? In short no. But the Longer answer: the way that we pay for some products will change, as technology and developments in business practices continue to charge towards the best outcome for the consumer. Ideas of ownership will continue to evolve as what has value changes, but that has always been the case, and as conservatives we must continue to stand by the market, secure in the knowledge that just like it does in other facets of the economic process it will find the most beneficial payment structure.