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HeliosPi Sep 28, 2024

"Is a Library-Centric Economy the Answer to Sustainable Living?"
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/is-a-library-centric-economy-the-answer-to-sustainable-living/

"Real world evidence backs up the intuitive environmental and social benefits of a library economy. The Tool Library in Buffalo, New York, recorded over 14,000 transactions in 2022 and saved the community $580,000 in new products that would have otherwise been purchased for short-term use.[2] The non-profit also partnered with the City of Buffalo Department of Recycling to create pop-up “Repair Cafes” that diverted 4,229 pounds of waste from landfill by teaching residents how to repair their items, demonstrating the potential of complementary programming in library economies .[3] Borrowers at the UK Library of Things have saved more than 110 tons of e-waste from going to landfills, prevented 220 tons of carbon emissions, and saved a total of £600,000 by borrowing rather than buying since the library’s inception in 2014."

Is a Library-Centric Economy the Answer to Sustainable Living?

We need a consumer economy centered around "libraries of things" so we can do more with less.

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mike805 Sep 28, 2024

@HeliosPi This would make sense for, say, lawn care equipment and car repair tools. Every house has their own lawn mower and string trimmer, mostly loud gas powered ones. If there was one high-end electric mower for the whole street, everyone would be better off. This can be done cooperatively by private initiative.

Declaring that "everyone has a right to live indoors" however does not cause an apartment block to get built. Housing has been difficult in both socialist and capitalist economies.

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HeliosPi

@mike805 I appreciate this critique and imagining the applicability of this economic model with lawncare.

Our ongoing housing crisis is because of neoliberal policies and wealthy people and institutions control of land. Its a problem of affordability, since where I'm at there's plenty of vacant housing, but its overly priced condos. Also there were a ton of affordable single family homes demolished so developers could construct more expensive condos. Then the price of existing housing continues to rise at ridiculous rates with no material basis. Like the landlords didn't improve or add anything to the units, but through capitalist forces and coordinated price gouging continue to raise rent.

Community land trusts and squatting are viable transitory alternatives.

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mike805 Sep 29, 2024

@HeliosPi Housing should not be a financial asset. The Japanese had the same thing in the 1980s and they have never fully recovered.

Vacant houses should have a punitive property tax, which should double every year it's empty.

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HeliosPi Sep 29, 2024

@mike805 Right, there's way too many vacant homes. Hence the viability of squatters movements, from post-WW2 veterans with their families squatting abandoned military bases, to the 80s wave, most prominently being the Autonomen movement in Germany squatting entire neighborhoods and establishing underground abortion clinics and other institutions providing aid, and so on.

Also the predatory loans behind the '08 Great Recession. the mass evictions, and the corporate bailouts really did a number on our society.

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mike805 Sep 29, 2024

@HeliosPi There are some neat current projects challenging other forms of "right of abuse" that you cite.

For example, the machine for home-making pharmaceuticals, and the shadow libraries. All of those are trying to separate the "right to use" from the "right to exclude."

Artificial scarcity of things that could be abundant is a moral outrage. It will someday be seen as one of those "why was this ever tolerated?" sort of things.