Reply To: Are we the grognards?

[onlyonepinman 18111xp 1]

@blinky465 I don’t hesitate to take out loans, but I am fully aware of the problems with a credit driven society and I try to limit the amount of credit I take out.  The fact that we ended up going that way doesn’t mean it was the optimal decision for society.  This idea of everything as a subscription is very similar although I also think it’s much more insidious.  If I take a loan out to buy a car (not PCP or HP, a bank loan), I own that car and it can’t be repossessed by the bank.  With HP I own the car at the end of the repayments.  So while it does tie you into a credit scheme and you do end up paying the interest, you still own the car and thus once the term of the loan is up, your payments stop which frees up income.  While the loans and interest are perhaps not great for the consumer, you still have the option to wait, save and buy with cash if you wish.

However when you are faced with a subscription, that doesn’t happen.  You must pay the money for as long as you wish to receive the service and if you stop paying, you lose the service.  If everything goes down this route, it means that any negative changes in your financial circumstances (loss of income through redundancy or retirement for example) mean will then have to lose many of the things that you are used to having because you no longer own them, you only ever “rent” them.  This is an incredibly negative move for society and while I agree that there is a generational aspect to this, I think it’s something that the younger generation need to wake up to and which if we allow to just happen without trying to oppose it, we are selling the younger generation out.  There is a huge value in private ownership, as unfashionable as that statement seems to be these days.  The idea that you can work hard, obtain something nice, useful or essential and that nobody can then take it away from you also allows you to work towards a goal of being able to retire, stop working and just enjoy the fruits of your labour.  Subscription models very much work against that goal.  I would rather have nothing than a subscription.