Was also in the camp of people who thought it was stupid - and I’m someone who really loves philosophy so this wasn’t a case of it being too meaning-infused. I just thought it was written for a 7 year old trying to see the world the first time. For anyone older it felt pretty lame.

There’s absolutely nothing different with that versus what I posted above. That’s nearly every rent to own model. That doesn’t incentivize obsolescence - it would have to be direct incentive.

I’m still missing how longevity is rewarded though outside of a typical rent to own system

Yeah - this site. https://www.aarons.com and before you say “but those products aren’t the long lasting type I imagined”, I think it’s because this model isn’t inherently going to solve this issue. You’re appealing to buyers that want to get in cheaper, not buyers that care about obsolescence

Ok that’s rent to own, and yes in rent to own the user is still in control. The consumer being able to terminate rights of use is the benefit of rent to own.

At what point do users have the right to resell? When do users own the product? If the answer is “never” then I don’t think you’re doing to have a lot of love here. People are getting tired and frustrated with subscription models.

Well then I’m confused and the model seems very broken. If you are selling a product under its “value” with the idea that users will keep paying additional (on goodwill) after some period of time, you’ll find that users will just resell these products at high prices and buy another product at the “under valued” price. This will cause supply and demand issues, and the undervalued price will just shoot up to the original price anyways.

If you’re saying they will never actually own the product and the subscription will go on for perpetuity, then this is just a simple rental model with requirement of an upfront payment. It’s viable but I’m not sure it does much to solve the obsolescence issue as phones have been following this model for many years and it seemed to do nothing to stop people from upgrading. In fact, before most carriers shifted more to “rent to own” models, people anxiously waited to upgrade after 2 years, meaning your model might actually be making the obsolescence problem worse.

A more efficient way to solve the problem of obsolesce is to make trash and disposal very expensive such that people are cautious about what they purchase. This would also reduce trash intake and profitability from trash to a point where we could implement a very high expectation of recycling with all trash. Consumers will buy things that last longer across the board, and manufacturers will design for longevity.

Idea one is basically just a “rent to own” type model. The net cost would need to be much more expensive than the cost without using the paying given the amount of additional cost added by the model (more people replacing, more staff, more complicated distribution model).

So if you think someone would pay $300 for a backpack that fits the rent to own model versus $200 without, then perhaps it’s not a horrible idea.

Note that this isn’t much different from a standard warranty service that you can add to most purchases.

All of these “but they own them” people - each of these studios are separate businesses, regardless of ownership. Ownership doesn’t necessarily imply direct oversight from the parent company. It’s simply the corporate vessel.

To clarify for people not thinking through this comment - disney bought 20th century fox (the movie studio), not Fox News