Owning stuff is coming to an end?

Irish Guitarist

Years ago my brother in law was convinced he had a record worth a fortune. He had seen one of those Beatles compilations (known as the red and blue albums) on television. They said it was worth something like £100. However the one they were talking about was a rarity. I'm not sure what made it rare but there was something unique about it.

He told me about this when I was at his house one day and excitedly showed me his copy. I told him the one he had seen on television must have been a collectors item that differed somehow from the standard issue and apart from that it had to be in perfect condition. He replied "it is in perfect condition" ignoring the fact the cover was held together with sellotape. A couple of months later he was pissed off because he had tried to sell it and had been told it was worth something like a tenner. I could have told him that. It was a record that had been at number 2 or 3 in the charts and had been bought by millions of people.

This was before the rise of the internet but if this happened today he'd be putting it on eBay for €100 or more. People like him are the reason for inflated prices on eBay. Anyone can think they own something worth a fortune and try to sell it for ten times its value. Then there are people who think anything old is worth a fortune. I once saw someone selling a 'vintage' cassette cleaner for something like £15. You would have bought one of these in a pound shop years ago and thrown it away after using it about ten times.

You can still get plenty of old things like CDs and books from people who know what they're selling isn't that rare. I've bought more CDs in the last three years than I had in the last five or six before that.

Graces7

Dohnjoe wrote: »

What?

Electronics.. I can buy a smartphone for 100 quid that blows away phones from just a few years ago
Cars.. the same priced car is getting safer, more equipped, more efficient than previous models

In general. increased efficiency, competition and mass production has meant better prices, more choices, more options, better tech and higher quality than prior generations

I have 2 cellphones; tesco. One was 9.99 the other 14.99 Family in Canada cannot believe the prices here. I have no need of a smartphone and tesco call prices are excellent .. I am on pay as you go ....agree totally with your last para

and the charity shops sell books...

Wibbs

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

This was before the rise of the internet but if this happened today he'd be putting it on eBay for €100 or more. People like him are the reason for inflated prices on eBay. Anyone can think they own something worth a fortune and try to sell it for ten times its value. Then there are people who think anything old is worth a fortune.

+1. The internet has been a double edged sword as far as "collectables" are concerned. It massively opened up the market, brought more buyers and more sellers and provides information about such things we could only dream of twenty years ago. The downside has been because of more demand, the supply of relatively rare items has started to dry up. They're a finite resource and many collectors are hanging onto what they have. The stuff left over keeps going up in price.

I've seen that in vintage watch collecting. The prices started to climb in the mid noughties, since around 2010 the prices went daft. A second effect was when the big name stuff started to dry up on the supply side, lesser names were then pimped by dealers which egged on collectors which in turn drove those prices up.

What I have noticed in that particular market is that while interest appears to be still high, sales are sluggish. Another effect was on eBay where previously most were auctions, now they're buy it now sales(at high prices) and stay on sale for months, sometimes years. It's becoming a stagnant market. I saw similar years back with original film posters. Same trajectory. Started off cheap enough, went through the wider public discovery phase, more stuff came to market, prices went insane, market then stagnated and then devalued. The worst hit of course being the lesser quality items, but even the top stuff devalued. EG. I have an original Star Wars pre oscars UK quad poster I got as a kid back in the late 70's. At the peak of the curve 2000 quid, now, 800 maybe.

The other angle are items that are designed out of the box as "limited edition" collectables. This area really grew over the last twenty years. Vanishingly few of which are actually limited in number. A run of 2000 is not limited. But people buy into that feeling they're getting something unique and the market goes along with them. For a time, but almost always devalues in the long term. Truly limited and unique items are well, limited and unique and hold values over the longer term.

dxhound2005

drillyeye wrote: »

Well that's something I've realised fairly recently, that having money is good, but only to a certain extent.

You'll rarely hear of a millionaire that just lets it sit in a bank. They invest to multiply their capital.

Think of it like you having a euro, and a millionaire having a euro. Your euro will accrue like 1% a year in bank (if you don't pay charges). Whereas their euro is invested, and perhaps gaining 20%.

There are supposed to be tens of thousands of millionaires. I can safely say I don't even know who 99.9% of them are, never mind what they do with their money.

I would like to get more details of that investment returning 20%. I think it should be made available to everyone, not just millionaires.

silverharp

hullaballoo wrote: »

Under the Brehon law system, there was no concept of personal ownership. Resources were shared amongst the community so that everyone reaped the benefits of whatever the given resource was. Of course, there was no money in the equation to complicate matters. Bartering was really a minimal act to try and agree aggregate values of goods but it wasn't commodititised.

Basically, everything belonged to everyone and there was very little strife about it. The only exception to that was bees.

Vast texts were devoted to bees. And this is at a time where vast texts were numerable. There was the Ten Commandments and then there was the Brehon Law code on bees.

I think, in modern day parlance, the phrase would be "don't fcuk with another mothafcuker's bees"

Honey, innit.

It works when there is nothing worth owning

Malayalam

drillyeye wrote: »

"things are running out"......definitely a factor.

I don't know about 'stuff'..I hate stuff, makes me irritated looking at it, gathering dust, taking up space, wardrobes heaving, sills and shelves sagging, garages bursting, things being..well, irritating; I divest rather than invest. But about your more general suspicion, the semblance of scarcity and so on, I think it is a manipulation of facts. Could be wrong, of course.
We are always being told everything is running out, fresh water, clean air, food, fossil fuels, and our economies are based on this mantra. The proles fret and recycle and pay special taxes on 'scarce' things, the powerful squander with abandon. What makes me think scarcity is a manipulation is observing the basic cycle of life. The sun - the central source of all life - gives ceaselessly without asking payment, the seed sprouts and produces a plant which bears many more seeds, all of which have the potential to infintely produce, on this abundance the various species thrive, including us. Nature shows us cycles of regular surplus, excess, abundance, with, yes, intermittent extinctions, (but what ya gonna do about that?) Sure, some things are going to run out, fossil fuels and so on, but other energy sources will emerge (are being under-invested at the moment). I don't subscribe to over-population theories - it will level out. There is enough to feed us all with the help of good technology, modification of the desire for excess meat in diet, excellent agricultural and husbandry techniques and so on.
It all goes abit pear-shaped when some people like to collect too much. Yachts and mansions and super cars and 'precious' metals and ores, and corporately-enslaved populations and their work/produce... and all the means of production (hehe )

wakka12

Hmm I doubt it really Id bet my life in 200 hundred years people will still own a lot of things

Wanderer78

Great thread, yes I agree, we re creating a highly complex modern 'rentier class'.

Irish Guitarist

Here's an example of the inflated prices people think they can charge on eBay for anything 'vintage'. This is a secondhand cassette cleaner most likely used far too much already (they were only meant to be used about ten times and thrown away). It's being sold for almost €10. https://www.ebay.ie/itm/PHILIPS-881-CCT-Vintage-Cassette-Head-Cleaner/302638561677

I have no idea who would buy something like this. It's unusable so presumably the seller expects a 'collector' to buy it. I've never in my life met anyone that collects old tape cleaners.

Sabre0001

hullaballoo wrote: »

Under the Brehon law system, there was no concept of personal ownership. Resources were shared amongst the community so that everyone reaped the benefits of whatever the given resource was.

A bit like Netflix accounts today then


I do find that I've bought less in recent years. Netflix for movies/TV, Cineworld card for new movies, Spotify for music. Videogames are one of my purchases, but even at that there's the push (and draw) to trade-in. But as sugarman said that's not the worst thing in the world, provided you make use of your subscription (hello gym membership...).

topper75

hullaballoo wrote: »

Under the Brehon law system, there was no concept of personal ownership...

The much-vaunted Brehon laws are often presented as some sort of erstwhile Marxist fantasy, but to do so requires you to pretend that there was no enshrinement of slavery (not metaphorical slavery like people today whinge about, rather actual slaves). The medium of exchange that we take for granted as money was yet to be brought by the norsemen so the laws had to carefully outline rights to limited resources. Those rights were in turn derived from designated social status.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Years ago my brother in law was convinced he had a record worth a fortune. He had seen one of those Beatles compilations (known as the red and blue albums) on television. They said it was worth something like £100...

They can say this and your brother can say that. It's all just dust in the wind though if there is no buyer out there willing hand over such readies for it.

That is the true value of something - the highest amount some potential buyer out there is genuinely willing to pay.

eeguy

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Here's an example of the inflated prices people think they can charge on eBay for anything 'vintage'. This is a secondhand cassette cleaner most likely used far too much already (they were only meant to be used about ten times and thrown away). It's being sold for almost €10. https://www.ebay.ie/itm/PHILIPS-881-CCT-Vintage-Cassette-Head-Cleaner/302638561677

I have no idea who would buy something like this. It's unusable so presumably the seller expects a 'collector' to buy it. I've never in my life met anyone that collects old tape cleaners.

Here's a great video of a company that still makes tape cassettes.
Business is booming with hipsters who think vinyl is too mainstream and people buying the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Ubbquittious

drillyeye wrote: »

Why does your post begin with a "no", but then agree with pretty much everything I'm saying?

Because people have more stuff now than they ever had before. Go back into the 1950s and look at the inside of your average thatched Irish cottage. Feck all inside. Now your average home is filled to the brim with cheap consumer goods and garments from SE Asia. For all the tech companies try to charge a monthly fee for there is usually a free / open source alternative.

Most of the "end of ownership" articles you see are created by someone in the tech industry dreaming of a future when everyone is keeping him employed by paying him lots of monthly fees for running some automated system he created years ago and hasn't touched since.

Wanderer78

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Because people have more stuff now than they ever had before. Go back into the 1950s and look at the inside of your average thatched Irish cottage. Feck all inside. Now your average home is filled to the brim with cheap consumer goods and garments from SE Asia. For all the tech companies try to charge a monthly fee for there is usually a free / open source alternative.

Most of the "end of ownership" articles you see are created by someone in the tech industry dreaming of a future when everyone is keeping him employed by paying him lots of monthly fees for running some automated system he created years ago and hasn't touched since.

yes, society has indeed 'access' to far more goods and services than previous generations, but the term 'access' is critical in this understanding. we are not gaining 'equal access' to the wealth created from these processes and systems that are yielding these goods and services, in fact, this growing inequality is a big problem for us all

AlphabetCards

emo72 wrote: »

then theres the people who try to have no belongings. can you imagine owning or desiring nothing? just the clothes on your back, and a roof over your head. freedom. this is what scares wealthy people and governments the most. a world with no consumers. they are out there.

You need to watch Survive The Jive on youtube.