OWNERSHIP
Every year, we own less and less. We are living in a subscription based economy and companies that have adopted these models likely not shift back to the old way of doing business while more and more companies join them in charging their customers each month, rather than allow them to buy a product and own it outright.
This sort of practice is not new, but the way that it has spread across so many industries is a sign that it has become less about convenience for the consumer and more about increasing profits. There are many subscriptions that have been around for a long time that people have had no problem with as they make sense to pay for each month. This is things like cable TV and more recently Netflix, along with home and cell phone plans, home internet and online multiplayer gaming subscriptions. These things have been around since the turn of the century. Recently however, we have been seeing more and more ridiculous offerings from companies that have no business charging their customers a monthly price for their products. This is things like automobile manufacturers placing features behind monthly subscriptions when ordinarily you would just factor those things into the total cost when buying the vehicle.
In the past when you would buy something, you would pay off the cost eventually, but with subscription after subscription it becomes an endless stream of debt that won’t stop unless the customer surrenders the product, even if the price has been paid in multiples. Often people will forget that they even had subscribed to a service and continue to get hit with a monthly charge until they subscribe to another service that helps clear up unused subscriptions. It is rare to see a product enter the market that ends its transaction with the customer after the initial sale. Companies will try and hook consumers into signing up for a monthly subscription no matter what it is they sell. It would not be surprising to see young entrepreneurs running a lemonade stand offering a subscription service to their neighbours in the form of refills or something of the sort. It seems like a paradigm shift taking place for all the wrong reasons.
Buying a DVD allowed you to own the film and watch it whenever you wanted. You owned that movie and for the rest of your life and even after you died, that disc would remain your property. With a subscription to a streaming service such as Netflix, there is no ownership over the content that is available, it isn’t even distributed equally which forces users to deploy VPN’s to access the full library they are paying for. On top of all of that, at any time your favourite movie or TV show can be pulled from the service or censored in some way. You as the end user have no control over the content you pay for, which some may not have an issue with but for many people who grew up owning the things they paid for, seems weird.
Ownership in the digital landscape is a grey area altogether, there is no physical media binding the product to the consumer in a tangible way so that if it is ever altered or removed there isn’t much that can be done about it. Sometimes video games launch unsuccessfully and are pulled from their digital storefronts, leaving the people who bought them with nothing to show for it and no one to answer for what is tantamount to theft.
As the world becomes more and more dull and lifeless, we lose things like brick and mortar storefronts because people stopped going out to comparison shop as much, the simple experience of being in a store became a novelty reserved for the holiday season. People moved to e-commerce and Amazon shopping, which allowed shoppers to set up auto delivery for perishable items, so you don’t even have to shop online as much. It’s not so crazy to think that the entire human experience can be commodified and packaged into a few subscription services and allow people to never leave their homes again. I hate traffic as much as the next guy but what is a world when there are no people out there interacting with it.
Far beyond shopping, we lose ownership over our lives. We don’t just waste our time online, we become part of the fabric of the internet, leaving the real world behind.
Touch some grass. Breathe some air.
