Why in the Future We Will Own Less

Ownership.  It's over-rated.

I grabbed some mountaineering gear from my cupboard and packed my bags to head to the Alps for the weekend for some ski touring.

I wondered, how many ice axes are there in the world sitting in cupboards and how many are actually being used right now? Maybe 99% are in storage, the rest are in use. Same goes for cake mixing machines, suitcases and tennis racquets. To a lesser extent, cars and computers.

As human population explodes across the planet, as natural resources dwindle, as consumption and desire for goods and services increase because of increased wealth; we will need to adapt. I am an optimist. I see humanity as a self organising complex adaptive system. We make mistakes, we figure it out. Before we destroy our planet? I believe so, yes.

So what will the next 50 years bring?

I think it's pretty obvious and it's already starting to happen; we will increasingly (but not completely) discard "ownership" of property and instead share and exchange more than we've ever done before. Where the costs of ownership are too much to bear for a single individual, that's exactly what we do. For example, we'll buy an airline ticket, not an entire airplane. Unless you are super duper rich, but even there you can use Netjets and share a private jet.

The cost of ownership of everything will go up. We've already optimised the cost of production So there's a limit to how cheap things will become. Primark, Lidl, Walmart - these guys run it pretty lean already. So, it's inevitable. Owning things just won't make sense.

I'm not saying that we will not own stuff. Of course we will. You wouldn't want to wear my shoes and you wouldn't want to wear mine. We'll still own shoes. Maybe not as many pairs.

What we will start to do is to figure out how to share more. There's already a few examples out there doing very nicely. Why own CDs when you can stream music from Spotify on a subscription? Why own your own car when you can use a pay as you go one with Streetcar? Why own a holiday home when you can rent an apartment from HouseTrip?

There are 5 distinct types of consumption that I can identify

1. The producer-owner-purchase-model.
Here, someone produces a product (say a car) which someone purchases for cash. Very common across the world and a great way to see the benefits of division of labour and trade as a foundation for the creation of wealth. Sustainability: very difficult because a lot if products are not used, discarded or left in cupboards.

2. The distributor-rental model
Many people can use the product on a subscription or one time rental basis. Much more efficient.

3. The secondary-reseller-market model
You don't need it anymore? Sell it on to someone else. At least this way the product is used by more than one person.

4. The charity model
Give it away when you don't need it anymore. Take it to the charity shop, then they will give it to someone who needs it or, they'll sell it to someone to make money.

Then there's recycling of course. And maybe communism. There is however fifth way, and I'm convinced that due to evolutionary necessity we'll see more of it very soon.

5. The fifth way
We will create marketplaces to trade goods and services that don't use cash as currency. Instead of going shopping, you will connect with your community and offer and receive favours. You will lend out the things you own but rarely use and you will borrow the things you rarely use but don't own. The taxman will hate this if course.

This is not communism with joint ownership. This is peer to peer trading at a hyper local level. You will accumulate points of some type as you lend and you will burn points as use consume.

These marketplaces are already possible with the advent of PCs and mobile phones. As connectivity becomes better, we'll start to see goods themselves connected to the net with their own unique IP address and history. Objects will connect in the same way that people connect and people will connect with objects and objects will connect with people.

We will see highly targeted and relevant sharing, bartering and exchange websites and services.

Over the next 50 years we will transition through necessity and through efficiency to only own what we need to own. The rest we will rent or borrow.

It's the only way.