Subscription economy (what we’re getting) vs library economy (what we want)
I was just reading about car companies requiring subscription fees to “unlock” functions of the car you own. From that straight to this. My brain is in a whirl right now…
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Socialism
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I was just reading about car companies requiring subscription fees to “unlock” functions of the car you own.
You mean the mercedes' "pay $1200/year to unlock better acceleration" thing? That's fucked up.
You can buy a cargo ebike for about $2500 (RadWagon 4).
Used kid trailers are pretty cheap, too. ($100 or so). They convert easily to cargo trailers. Bicycles really do create “unfettered liberty.”
I literally just bought one yesterday for $100 😄
We need to actually do it! Anyone could start one. Someone in the no-buy community, or an actual librarian, would be the best choice.
I think hobbyist communities are also a good starting point. For example a bicycle community sharing bikes/tools/accessories. All it would take is a handful of people with an interest in common to get a private X library going.
As a librarian who has done some of the exploratory research into starting a local asset-sharing collective, LendEngine is useful, intuitive, and pretty cheap. I have not found anything FOSS that does the equivalent, but any programmers that want to help the movement, have at it.
That sounds like a great project to work on, I’ll look into it.
I would love to see an ActivityPub implementation of a decentralised library of things. You could post things you have and like to lend, add location and availability. Others could comment, like, boost and inquire.
Edit: of course trust is a huge part of it. But social media (friends of friends etc.) is the perfect fit imho.
To add something else:
Maybe also in addition to a library economy (which is used to maintain things for the public), we could have a salvage economy (for recycling older things) that feeds into that. I remember one time hearing a presentation about this building called the Kendeda Building, and during its construction, instead of throwing the materials away, the salvaged usable building materials and used those to build the new building, preventing some yseful things from going to the landfill. I think a salvage economy could be useful to the library economy because older unused things can still repurposed for use.
So I figured I'd try to think about some immediate obstacles to setting up an anything library, or a usufruct (thats me trying to coin a more elegant name).
One thing that comes to mind: how to stop randos from taking stuff and selling it. Sure this might not be a problem in a post-scarcity society where resources are distributed well and people know their neighbors, but right now we aint living in that.
A solution might be to make private usufructs first, exclusively for members of an affinity group or neighborhood, and have some security to stop outsiders taking things. Its not pretty, but might be necessary for getting the library economy off the ground.
Another problem is where to store things. Where to put a usufruct? Buildings aint cheap, whether rent or mortgage. Especially in cities. My thoughts were maybe not having a physical usufruct in the beginning at all. Have a site in which stocks can be listed, and people simply stop by each others houses to pick stuff up. No capital needed.
@[email protected] had a similar idea, although I'm skeptical of having it completely open (at first) and attaching any kind of points/rep based system onto it, i.e. likes. Reputation is obviously important to any social system, but I think humans do a far better job than an algorithm or formula. However, maybe they had a different purpose in mind for likes on such a system.
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