If You Own Nothing, the Real Owners Don't Have to Care Whether You're Happy

ecade ago, the phrase "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" entered the public conversation via a World Economic Forum essay by Ida Auken ("Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better").

Auken lauded "shared services" as an increasingly normal way of life. Why "own" a car, a refrigerator, or even your own clothes, when you could just pay a monthly subscription fee and let others worry about tire wear, blown compressors, jeans going out of fashion, etc.?

We're already well into the era of "subscription" versus "ownership," starting with digital media. Movie, TV shows, and books have largely moved off of VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, and paper and into the cloud. Even if you "buy" them, even if you download them, they tend to be bound to particular devices and/or particular subscriptions, and to terms of service with fine print that lets them be taken away at will.

With physical hardware, the "subscription" era seems to have started with industrial and farm equipment (no "right of repair" -- you pay John Deere for that, or your tractor sits there and does nothing), then moved on to cars. We've all heard the howls from e.g. Tesla "owners" over pretty much everything their cars can do depending on them continuing to pay Elon Musk a little something every month for life.

I've had my quibbles with all of the above for some time, but the unhappiness of owning nothing really got to me this morning as I watched a video from Fortnine (.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4Ebv2HWyw) about the latest, greatest electric motorcycle.

I love two-wheeled vehicles. I love electric vehicles. I used to ride electric bicycles, but switched to internal combustion motorcycles for reasons of range and speed. I've kept my eye on electric motorcycles, waiting for falling prices and rising performance to meet at a point my budget allows. By the time it gets there, will I really want it anymore?

The battery-powered Stark Varg boasts 80 horsepower and a 50-113 mile range (50 for wide open road, 113 under urban low-speed, stop-and-start conditions). Nice bike for its class.

BUT! If you want the bike to do everything the bike CAN do, you'll pay Varg $15 a month, every month, for as long as you "own" it (unless they change their monthly rate) -- and you'll pay $12,500 (at the moment) to "own" it.

In my opinion, if I pay to own something, I've paid to own all the things it can do ... assuming I can figure out how to make it do those things.

The manufacturers of "'owned,' but with subscription-only features" goods, though, frown on homebrew tinkerers jail-breaking those products instead of forking over cash in perpetuity. And they've got "intellectual property" law on their side. They don't have to care about your happiness.

Until we dump the pernicious fiction of "intellectual property," we'll just have to hope the market undercuts these perpetual subscription rackets with "you bought it -- it's yours -- enjoy!" alternatives.

And I suspect the market will do exactly that.