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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2320 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 13, 2024

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Philosophy ain't my strong suit, so I'll just say I don't wanna deal with a a kitchen-implement subscription service every time I feel like frying an egg.

In the Cyberpunk anime they show how shitty and exploitative the future is by a teenager trying to dry his clothes, but the dryer subscription service runs out so the dryer in his mom's apartment refuses to work. I'd better never have an always-online dryer or fridge looking for reasons to lock up because I haven't paid a service fee or installed updates.

I agree, but you do need to make a recurring payment to the grocery store for the egg itself, and another recurring payment for the electricity, which I'm not sure is philosophically different in kind.

Eggs aren't vendor-locked; I can cook them in any brand pan I want; on an electric stove, a propane stove, or over a campfire made of logs I chopped myself using my choice of axe vendor. And you could even own a chicken, if you don't rent.

A house I own outright is much less likely to demand that I use cloud-connected appliances than one I rent. Connecting “my” (landlord's) water heater to the internet and installing a damn app that requires an online account with an extensive privacy policy is the only way to extract diagnostic codes to figure out why it keeps beeping (near my bed and loud enough to cause hearing damage over long term exposure, though I don't have the audio equipment to prove this) and shutting off the hot water.

Connecting “my” (landlord's) water heater to the internet and installing a damn app that requires an online account with an extensive privacy policy is the only way to extract diagnostic codes to figure out why it keeps beeping (near my bed and loud enough to cause hearing damage

Tangent, but this can be solved by saying "That's not working, the App is not connecting, it's still beeping, send a plumber" over and over again, until the problem goes away. Renting is the reason I'm absolutely not looking at diagnotistic codes, ever.

I mean, what if the subscription service was simply you pay $20/month (or whatever) and have access to whatever implements you desire, and can add to or return implements as needed or if they get broken, AND if you ever move out, you can just leave it all there instead of packing, as your subscription will carry over to your new place.

I don't imagine that there will be some central communal store of knives and whisks and bowls that gets delivered on demand in this scenario, just that you aren't so attached to your implements that you feel like they're 'yours', rather than you just possessing them for a period of time. No need to cart them around.

on top of the actual “mathematical” cost of the equipment per se, I'll have to bear:

  • the extra repair & replacement costs from wear-and-tear by the 90% of the population who treats their kitchenware worse than I do
  • the increase on the prior item due to the Principal-Agent problem as the other renters treat their non-owned kitchenware even worse than they would treat their own kitchenware
  • the decrease in Quality due to good-faith mitigations of the previous costs (e.g. spatulas with rounded non-scraping points, pans that can be safely maintained by someone stupid and unconscientious — not cast iron)
  • the decrease in Quality due to pure amoral Principal-Agent problem (e.g. spatulas made as cheaply as possible while fulfilling the terms of the contract, bowls that optimize for cost rather than usability)
  • the middleman's operating expenses
  • the middleman's profits

that's a hell of a lot on one side of the scale that needs to be balanced out before this actually becomes a good proposition for the consumer.

The increase on the prior item due to the Principal-Agent problem

Principal-Agent problems seems like the most basic argument against "everything is rented" as an economic model. You can't be sure that someone else will treat 'your' stuff as responsibly as you will.

That said, Uber, Airbnb, Doordash, etc. have what seem to be workable solutions to this issue, even if there are those who try to circumvent it. Those systems work well enough in most cases.

the decrease in Quality due to good-faith mitigations of the previous costs

Being honest, do we think that the average person is a good judge of quality? Do they care? or Are they buying the cheapest chinese knockoff they can find from Amazon in most cases?

I'm not convinced anyone who isn't a serious chef is going to pay attention to this, as long as anything that breaks gets replaced immediately.

the middleman's operating expenses the middleman's profits

Surely this also applies to buying your own kitchen implements at retail?

that's a hell of a lot on one side of the scale that needs to be balanced out before this actually becomes a good proposition for the consumer.

Hmmm. Let us assume that twice a year you put together a large feast for a big group of people (maybe its for the holidays, I dunno). You need more pots and pans, an air fryer, an instant pot, and a few other specialized tools that you WILL NOT use the rest of the year. They'll just take up counter or cabinet space waiting for the next big event.

How does the cost of buying specialized implements that you only use 1-2 times a year match up to paying to have those same implement delivered when you need them, then once you're done sending it back so another person can use it? A large air fryer, for example, costs $150-200 new. If, for example, it cost $30 to rent for the day, or was part of the deal of some larger subscription service you paid for, then it'd take 3ish years before your purchase paid itself off. And meanwhile its just sitting there taking up space for the 363 other days you're not using it.

Much of this really does seem to come down to how much you intend to use the more specialized, expensive implements.

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