The End of Ownership

For most of modern history, the concept of ownership was pretty simple. You paid for something, either all at once or over time, and boom: you owned it. However, as Ben, Matt and Noel discover in today's episode, powerful forces are conspiring to push consumers away from owning stuff, and into a world of constant, unending subscriptions. "You will own nothing," says the World Economic Forum, "and you will be happy." So what does this mean for the future? How long do we have before we live in a world without ownership?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noal.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
They called me that. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagot. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Proud to not be
Paywald for the better part of a decade plus. Now, guys,

(00:50):
let's start in life rights.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
As this video is currently Paywald.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Right, Let's start it this way because thanks for tuning
in if you're on Netflix to that point, thanks for
listening to this episode on your podcast platform of choice.
Question for the gallery here, how many subscriptions do you have? Matt?
Dylan Nol and I were talking about that a little

(01:16):
bit briefly off air, and Tennessee is the only guy
in that conversation who could name all of his subscriptions. Tennessee,
are you comfortable hitting this with it?

Speaker 4 (01:27):
I believe I currently have a nine.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
I like to keep a list so that I'm not
paying extra for anything smart. Wow, that's why they pay
you the big bucks man. Oh geez, I have no
flippant idea.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
In a similar boade. I. In fact, you guys, I
almost consider, well, now I have a better handle on
it thanks to the research here, but I almost considered
not too too many evenings ago, participating in another subscription
service that would monitor my subscriptions and tell me if

(02:03):
there were any I wasn't using and give me better
awareness of any that I may have forgot about.

Speaker 5 (02:10):
I have like aspirational subscriptions to like to the Criterion Channel.
I want so badly to be a Criterion Channel guy,
and I do you know Rocket every now and again.
But I think what I'm gonna do is cancel all
my other like streaming subscriptions to force myself just to
watch old movies.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, there's some great ones on there.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
So lifestyle changed. But you know, we'll see if I
follow through.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
What about you, Matt Well?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
In our subscriptions, like I was just trying to write
some of them out, I've definitely got my four video
streaming services, one of them Netflix, which sent me and
I think everyone an email at three twenty five am
this morning to let us all know our subscriptions are
increasing by two dollars.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, so as we record on Friday, April twenty fourth,
twenty six.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yep, it was this morning, three twenty five am. So,
first of all, like another two dollars Netflix. I mean, look,
I know I'm on you right now, but come.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
On Netflix or Amazon?

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Netflix.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Netflix is the one that emailed.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Amazon went up as well as and Amazon as what
We'll spend some time on Amazon.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
But second of all, the price increase coincided with the
release of This is a Gardening Show with Zach Galifanakis.
So we understand like that dude's expensive shoke makes ye.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
And we we'd love to hear from you, folks. How
many subscriptions do you have? Do you know how many?
And what would qualify to you as a description, like
how many regular bills do you pay? Most people pay
utilities if they are an adult renting or owning a house.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well, as I was gonna like list those off, I
was looking at Comcast and Verizon and Gwinett Gas and
Gwenette Electric and Hyundai and and just like all the
things that I'm paying a monthly fee to have act
to things whether it is, you know, simply electricity or
to have a car to drive around. But essentially they're
all subscription services. I know that some of them are.

(04:10):
They are set up differently right where the money is
going and how it's being used, but ultimately all of
it is.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
And when like the car thing I have, you know
I have one as well, you're technically working towards ownership.
But even like cell phone subscriptions, you know, which you
are paying for the service, sometimes you're also paying for
the phone, you know, as a part of that description,
like a baked in cost, and then you know, then
you pay up just to a point where they then say, oh,

(04:37):
you're now eligible for an upgrade, and then they're really
happy to have you just give them that phone back
that you've paid off.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Which they will resale.

Speaker 5 (04:46):
Yeah, this last time around, I just decided to keep
it because I'd paid it off and they were only
going to give me like one hundred bucks or something,
and I was like, isn't it more of my best
interest to own the thing that I own in case
I need a backup?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Exactly, I'm with you, even if you don't subscribe to
a streaming service to that point. Now, most people these
days will at least have a recurring phone bill. And
it's weird when we think that. Up until pretty recently
in the United States, when you bought something, you owned it,
right You might have to our earlier conversation, a mortgage,

(05:19):
you might have a car note, but that is a
scheduled window of time. So after you make all the
payments and reach a certain threshold, boom, that thing is yours.
Same thing with books or physical copies of a film
you make. You make a purchase, you pay it off
either right then at the transaction point or eventually, and

(05:41):
then it belongs to you. Actually, you actually got what
you paid for until you decide to give it away,
sell it, or destroy it.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Unless you're leasing a car, which is massively popular popular nowadays.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
That is more subscribing to a car, right it is,
It is.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Subscribing to a car. So I'm just thinking, how many
people out there are getting much er cars than they
can afford, but they've got a really good lease that
is much cheaper, you know, And that is so dang common,
especially around here where I'm living. You just you know,
you see people with these cars. You wonder, how in
the heck can you ever afford that car, but they've
only got it for you know, a very small window

(06:17):
of time, and that price that they're paying is not
for that car in the same way that they would
be if it was a scheduled out you know, essentially
pay for that vehicle in full.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Please do check out car stuff for leasing versus buy.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
And just real quick to add, I know we're going
to get into this later, but you know, when you
quote unquote buy a video game and it is through
a cloud service, or buy a movie through Amazon, you're
kind of at the mercy of the you know, folks
in charge of the cloud service and whether or not
they're going to continue to offer support, you know, for
that video game. Are they gonna is here to buy

(06:53):
a license? Yeah, buying the license that can even apply
to the physical console that you have. All kinds of
of like little behind the scenes caveats that if you
do a thing wrong or don't follow their terms of service,
all of a sudden, they can brick your device.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
So do you even own your.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Switch to shout out you zero right, shout out the
warranties that will brick your device, especially in electronic device,
if you do something they don't care.

Speaker 5 (07:19):
For And if you buy a movie on Amazon quote
unquote for nine dollars or however much it is, there
is certainly a possibility down the line that that movie
will no longer be available and you don't really have
a recourse.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Nineteen eighty four Kendle.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
And yes, there are some games that you can physically
buy and have, like a let's say a DVD copy
of your game that's sitting in your house and it
works on your console. But if the company decides we're
not going to run those servers anymore, you own the
game still, but there's no way to play it exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
And so going back to our idea of ownership, someonet
is selling something. Someone buys it, they pay for it,
they own it for better or worse. Right, this is
increasingly no longer the case and a lot of the
developed world, and this means that a growing number of
analysts are convinced that we may be as a society

(08:11):
approaching something called the end of ownership. So what does
this look like? What does this mean for the future.
We'll be right back here are the facts. Guys've got
to talk about it, because at first, the concept of

(08:31):
ownership feels pretty self explanatory. Maybe we're getting ulled, but
I think a lot of us I'm not unique in this.
I think many of us in the crowd tonight. Assume
that you know, you would buy something, maybe you would
inherit it or receive it as a gift, and then
it is yours to do with as you will, so
long as you don't break any laws. That's pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
There are these sort of amorphous qualities to ownership as
well well, historically speaking, like the idea of owning land,
you know, and how that's evolved over time, and how
much of that began with sort of stealing land that
would then be able to be quote unquote owned based
on this framework that's sort of established a little bit

(09:17):
independently of the foot flag on there in.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
The first place, exactly put a flag on.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
It, ay man, I've got a piece of paper from
the county and it says I own this point two
acres or whatever.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, and then so often in the past they would say, unfortunately,
we don't like you because you're Welsh, or the government changed,
or you're another person. We would discriminate again, so your
paper is not worth anything.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
And also we need to build an interstate and or
a mall and or you know whatever.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Shout out eminent domain, eminent domain.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yet this all leads us to the more complex idea
regarding ownership. In this case, we're really talking about consumer
ownership rights. A long struggle throughout various civilizations to figure
out what sort of legal rights consumers can have over
the goods and services the things they purchase, and how

(10:17):
to protect their ability to use, control, and benefit from
those purchases. So most developed countries at this point have
standing laws about this. The US is by far not
the best at it, but the intent is noble. It
is well intentioned to protect consumers from unfair business practices,

(10:39):
unsafe products, you know, like, hey, can I have a
few Can I have fewer pieces of rat poop in
my cereal? Could I just buy some beans without a
finger in them?

Speaker 4 (10:49):
Two scoops?

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah? Right? And to protect you from misleading information. It's
weird because I was looking back through much older civilizations,
and a lot of them do have specific laws and
rules attempting to keep merchants honest, but fraud was so widespread.
Money back guarantees not a thing, and warranties forget about it,

(11:15):
forget about it, and then we got capitalism entering the
fold fast forward through centuries and centuries of history. Society overall,
even the ruling classes, ultimately determine it's better for everyone
if businesses and merchants face consequences for dishonesty, for bad

(11:36):
or crooked deals. This is the concept of consumer rights
spreads throughout society. The concept of consumer rights itself continues
to evolve today, and if you're in the US, one
of the big watershed moments for your rights as a
consumer includes stuff like the Consumer Bill of Rights, introduced

(11:58):
into law in nineteen sixty two by a guy called
President John F. Kennedy because he was president at the time.
That wasn't his first.

Speaker 5 (12:07):
Name, jfkm Sell really quickly. I just wanted to say
something about warranties. I mean, it's so interesting how easy
it is to avoid a warranty with you know, not
even realizing that you've done a bad thing. So even
those things are not like guaranteed, you're still kind of
beholden to the you know, the person issuing it or
the company that created the product that you're trying to

(12:30):
have quote unquote covered, And they really I don't know.
It seems like most of the time they may want
you to avoid that warranty.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah, the dungeons and dragons alignment of warranty writers is
legal evil or lawful evil. There are lots of loopholes.
But maybe we could talk a little bit, you guys
about some of the most important consumer rights. The right
to repair is still a huge issue. That's hopefully one

(13:00):
that will be more advantageous for consumers in the future,
But now we.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
Have that very much pertains to the whole avoiding of
the warranty. Exactly, if you do a thing or try
to repair something yourself, then your warranty it becomes null
and voice.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah. What I think is interesting here about these basic
rights we're an outline is that we take a lot
of them for granted now, and we have to realize
that for much of human history these things did not exist.
The first, of course, the right to safety. Let me
know that what I'm buying is safe to consume or

(13:36):
to use or to engage with. So if I buy
a can of beans, please please please, let me have
a reasonable expectation that there won't be human fingers in it.
Shout out to up Sainclaire shout out to the jungle.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah. Well, it's also a major concern, especially for parents
who are buying stuff for kids. Is this thing safe
for my kid to use? We'll just put We'll say
one word ready.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Arts, Sure, let's add another one. Slip and slide.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, fun things to do and really really
injure yourself trembolines.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah. This episode brought to you by baby Guns, So
there's a lot of uh, there's a lot of fine
print on the back package of your baby guns. Another wow,
Big Friday energy folks. Another one is the right to
be informed. This is something that society still is not

(14:34):
perfected because the advantage is on the financially and politically powerful. Here,
it's truth and advertising, transparent labels. Right, cigarettes aren't bad
for you. Someone finally said, we got to put that
on the package. Communication about potential risks. So we know

(14:54):
this gets so murky. We talk about it pretty often
in episodes on Shrink f or conversations about the misleading
relationship between food manufacturers and the FDA. Companies right now
push or even conspire, we could say, to tilt the
law in their favor, and they deploy some phenomenal psychology

(15:18):
to imply all sorts of things in advertisements while never
quite promising things.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Guys, I think we need something akin to this product
contains nicotine and is super addictive and also may cause cancer.
But we need that for all social media apps, video
games that are on everything. See just a little message
that comes on it is required to stay there for
like ten seconds, that just says something. This app was

(15:47):
designed to keep your attention. We need you to pay
attention to this app where we don't make money.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
May Yeah, I'd like it to last. I love this idea, Matt.
I'd like it to last third seconds to break the
attention span and for it to be a warning about
the detrimental effect on concentration and attention span.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Dude, absolutely specifically specifically how addictive the product is, right,
and speak about it like, this product is addictive and
it is designed.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
To be so.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
I wonder if you did it for thirty seconds so
people would just like open Instagram and then close, like
put their phone down.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
It would have to be a legal move, right, Yeah,
I ought to be a legal mandate and it gets
very black mirror. I'm sure we're going to mention several
Black Mirror episodes in the course of tonight's exploration. Another
self evident thing, or it should be self evident, the
right to choice. Competitive market. You're supposed to be free
from monopolies right when the market works. This is not

(16:49):
always the case in practice. Shout out to my longtime nemesis,
Comcast aka Infinity, I still know who you are.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Well, man, if you ever get upset with Comcast, you
can just call them and say, hey, the bill is
two dang high, and they'll say, oh, we can reduce
that for you. Well, please don't go.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, take just answer the phone, be polite because remember
those are going to be humans on the other end,
and just say take me to the retention department.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, that's right, I'm serious. You can. You can do
that with a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
You'd be surprised, Yeah, especially like our insurance is another
one that people routinely overpay for.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Oh we'll get into it, but just remember you are
one subscriber out of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions for
some of these companies. But you're also a part of
the metric. And if you, along with other people, start
leaving a subscription service or whatever it is, it looks
really bad and it's not good for quarter two profits.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
So there are more of you than them. Collective action
can work, it's just tough to get organized. So the
other like the last two we should mention, are the
right to be heard, so you could buy something if
you don't like it, you can say so you can
warn other customers away.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Hey, yeah, you've got we've got a comment box, bend
you can.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
And I really appreciate it when when people leave. We've
got some phenomenal feedback on the on the Soushi needs
as well as on various other platforms.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, yes we do, but I just mean for a
lot of the products we're talking about. Right the right
to be heard. Yes, it's going to show up in
some small little comment box somewhere on a website, or
you might just find it on one of these things
like trust Pilot, you know, a reviews area of the internet.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
And one of the the The interesting thing about that
one is that this is a little tangential, but hopefully
it'll be helpful to some of us in the crowd.
I have found that there is an interesting relationship between
the amount of time you take to address a company
and the amount of response will return with by which

(19:02):
I mean I have sent U snail mail. We call
it now and specifically I have had to escalate. I've
sent certified mail and always got a response because they
feel like you're no longer playing. At that point, you're
not momentarily mad on an app or on the internet.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Wait, you sent Comcasts certified mail not Comcast.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Okay, but uh no, not Comcast. I just call them
and speak to Jeremy and the retention department.

Speaker 5 (19:32):
You went straight to the shinehart Wig company there, straight.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
To the top. So, uh yeah, which is weird because
I've never owned a wig. No, I do it for cars?

Speaker 4 (19:43):
You will you wear wigs? Though?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
No?

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Do you have visa?

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Do you have vis one? Last big dog barking Here
is the right to redress. That means you get a refund,
you get repairs, you get recalls, you get compensation of
pro is defective, if it's misleading, if it's broken any
of your other pre existing rights. This is where things
like the Better Business Bureau come into play. And guys,

(20:10):
don't these sound pretty basic? Like? These don't sound like
hot takes? These sound understandable, right?

Speaker 4 (20:17):
I think?

Speaker 2 (20:17):
So?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I mean, after all, we are consumers. What good are
we if we're not consuming and consuming?

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Well it's I mean, but yes, on the same that's
a very corporate perspective, right. Yeah. Check out our earlier
Ridiculous History episode from years ago, which was quite precient,
wherein we asked how, when and why the political class
of the United States stopped saying citizens and started saying consumers.

(20:49):
It's a really interesting episode, Noel, I think it holds up.

Speaker 5 (20:51):
I think so too, and it remains very relevant to
this day.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, we're not really customers anymore, are we?

Speaker 4 (21:01):
For the products?

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah? Right, Joel, you're the thing that eats itself. And yeah, sadly,
even though we can see from the side of the
majority of people on Earth, we can see these rights
for consumers as pretty understandable. On the flip side of
the coin, we can also understand why so many companies historically,

(21:26):
for so long have fought tooth, tentacle and claw against
this stuff because it runs the risk of impacting the
eternal drive for year over year profits. Right, Like, oh,
we can't have any fingers in can soup, like not
even like a little knuckle. This is going to be

(21:47):
terrible for Q three.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Yeah, what are the allowable limits of finger.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yes, yes, well what we need to do is get
in with the FDA and maybe one of our guys
can go work for them, and then when they're done,
they can come work for us and we.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Could just revolt the door.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
But also, I just this is sort of not necessarily
on topic, but sort of. Did you see how Joe
Rogan was given an audience in the Oval office and
and about this psychedelica called iyebo Gain?

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Oh right?

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah? Yeah, Trum literally.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
Said I texted Trump about it, and he said, yep,
let's get.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
That FDA approved.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
That's not happened.

Speaker 5 (22:24):
I know, but that's not something the president's supposed to
be able to do. Doesn't that kind of go against
the whole pect balance?

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, that's yeah, yeah, it's happening.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Well, there was a schedule change with Weed.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Too, right like that just recently. Yeah, somebody texted I mean, also,
you know, anything but the Epstein files.

Speaker 5 (22:42):
And one could argue that those moves are political maneuvers
to pull attention away into maybe appeal to some more
lefty moderate types.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
To shore up the libertarian voting base.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
There you go, that's a better way of putting it.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, no, not that's I mean, I think you're on
the money there, that's right. And the reason I love this,
this tangent here is because it has something in common
with what we're talking about tonight, which is the system
seems to be broken. Right. Just as in the current
political decision making process is busted. It doesn't matter who

(23:20):
you vote for, it's inarguable at this point, the current
consumer corporate relationship is also increasingly busted. We know that
corporate interest once they started getting these rules about having
to be fair to their customers, they started rethinking their strategies,
and it makes sense from their perspective. If we're I

(23:42):
didn't expect to say this tonight, but if we're exercising
empathy for their viewpoint, or at least sympathy we can say,
we can note that they know well during a recession
or an economic downturn, purchases of luxury goods might plummet,
and those ups and downs can be hard to predict.
So companies spend a great amount of time and energy

(24:05):
with very very intelligent humans forecasting the future and hatching
new ways to always get more money, more often at
a more predictable cadence. That's what they want. They want reliability, predictability.
That leads us to the concept of subscriptions.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Let's talk about it, because the subscription model is so
much more reliable. To that last point that you were
saying there, Ben the subscription model, you will always have
somebody there once you get them as a subscriber. And
we know that people once they subscribe feel that sunk
cost fallacy, especially if it's particular types of subscriptions that

(24:48):
people can get where you will use a thing more
simply because you're subscribed, even though it's going to cost
more to use, like to buy through that subscription than
it would to just go down to a Walmart somewhere
near you and pick up the same thing. But and
it's it's all psychology based. But in the end, for

(25:08):
the for these giant corporations, uh and even for the
smaller ones, the ones that started advertising on our show,
there's so many of these subscription models that that first
started out with podcast ads that aren't you know, got
sold for billions of dollars to other giant corporations. And
it's because their subscription models worked so dang well. Looking

(25:29):
at you, Shavers and mostly mostly man stuff that's out there.
Hm hmm.

Speaker 5 (25:35):
Well, I mean I even subscribed to an air freshener
service that sends me refills, you know, I mean me Undies,
We got those for free back in the day, and.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
The early delivery service food delivery service. Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (25:48):
But like, I still have a me Undie subscription because
I quite enjoy the product. But it's one of those
things too, where it's real easy. It's easier to just
let it ride than it is.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
To cancel the thing sometimes too, some cost fallacy and
also once you've passed, so much of the research is
about getting people past that initial speed bump of agreeing
to send their financial information. Once somebody pays and they
you know, puny up their cover feed to get inside
the sandbox, then they are doing what companies have wanted

(26:21):
for a long long time. Your favorite companies right now,
they are way less interested in a one off purchase
from you. They want an ongoing relationship with you. And
the thing is, again it makes sense from their perspective.
Subscriptions as a concept are super not new, and to
be fair, they are not inherently bad. They make sense

(26:43):
for some things like the heyday of newspapers, right that's
a thing you would buy new or a subscription for
produce makes sense. Nobody expects to buy a tomato or
a caesadea and say, okay, I paid for one. Now
I have all the case ideas for free forever, because
I guess I'm talking really about perishable goods there.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
But isn't it crazy that there was such success in
something as simple as Razors. We're we're gonna send you
Razors every month, and you're gonna pay us a subscription
to that.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Well, that's a what's the word, not not.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Perishable, but it's a consumable. Consumable is the word?

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Isn't it weird that that is the kind of thing
that ends up rocketing from a teeny tiny business to
getting sold for a billion dollars?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Of course?

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yeah, I just don't understand. Well I do, I get
now after the research, But I it's it's mind blowing
to know that that's even a possibility that you could
get someone to sign up for that service.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Especially if it, in the case of Razors, somewhat anomalist.
And I'm glad we're bringing that up because you know,
Razors have often had a sort of monopolistic price fixing
thing occur, you know, like chilette. And when I was
when I was outside of the country, when I used
to live in Central America, that was what Razors were.

(28:14):
One of the things that were even more expensive in
Central America than they are in the United States, or
were at the time.

Speaker 5 (28:22):
And Harry's, for example, Harry's Razors not a sponsor. They
capitalized on that rhetoric in their initial ads. They pointed
out whole razor monopoly thing. We make our own things.
We've got our own factory, we own the means of production.
No longer are you beholden to these razor conglomerates, these fast.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Cats, these fat cats. What you broken, Harry?

Speaker 5 (28:44):
But guess what now you see Harry's razors. Yeah, yeah,
they're right next to the fat cats.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
They become the fat cat.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Oh, I can't wait to talk about inertification later.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Here Wilkinson's Sword bought Harry's Razors for one point four
billion dollars. But the other one that was massive dollar
Shave Club. They're the ones who are sold for a
billion a Unilever. And it's just I think, I know,
when's the last time you guys walked through a Walmart.

Speaker 4 (29:09):
I go relatively frequently. I have one near my house.
I do go to it.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
I enjoy the Walmart walk, get my steps in.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
I've been to a Walmart more often now over this
past year than I ever have.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
And to see.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
The prices, like the cheaply priced things that exist there
that can only exist there because of how Walmart structures
its things. And there's stuff we could talk about. We're
not going to get into it right now, but something
like razors, you like disposable razors, right, they're only meant
to last for a certain amount of time. Are so

(29:46):
freaking cheap. It is just crazy to me that that
is a thing. And I'm sorry to harp on that
so long. Let's move on.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Well, let's go back to this idea of subscription, because
we know that, Okay, everybody is familiar with what a
subscrip model means, but for a lot of us, our
fellow conspiracy realists in the audience tonight, you might be
surprised to learn that the concept of a subscription is very,
very old. It goes back to the early sixteen hundreds.

(30:14):
It started with books. So you'd have these publishers in
Europe who would essentially do like a kickstarter, like a
proto kickstarter. They would take advance payments from readers so
they could fund their production cost and then they would say, oh,
you get a book at the end, thanks for playing.
Shortly after that, sixteen thirties, insurance starts, specifically in London.

(30:37):
Life insurance is another one of the early subscription models,
and not quite as much as a ripoff as it
can be in the US today. So you might be
happy to find that people loved coffee cheers then as now.
In the sixteen sixties, also in London, some government boffins

(30:58):
subscribed to coffee deliveries. You guys, they had to have
their cup of joe. They didn't have time to get
away from government stuff, right, So they were like, just
give us the coffee, just bring it to us, make
this for me. They stumbled on a win win. That
subscription model worked because their supplier was able to have

(31:21):
a secure, constant stream of revenue. Then we got milkmen.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
I'm really surprised it was not tea. It was coffee
and not tea, because I know there's tea services that
offered the same kind of thing. I didn't know all
the way back then.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
It was coffee.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
That's surprising, isn't that wild? And if we fast forward
to the eighteen hundreds, we see the rise of the milkmen,
no by the dead milkmen.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Milkman's service was so big it even kicked off in
the US. That was such a big deal here.

Speaker 5 (31:50):
Going around and pregnating housewives, you know, well, the milkman.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
I mean, never mind, it kind of makes sense when
you think about that, you know, the process. If you've
got smaller farms, you don't have giant conglomerates making all
the milk. You've got like small farms that are actually
going to give you milk or you know, farmers that
are gonna have eggs for you.

Speaker 5 (32:07):
But that's like the cool version of it, like the
local version of it, where you know, you can still
find that today, where you might have a subscription to
a local produce companies here earlier farms, yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Oh yeah, but back then, I guess it was just
a little different as the subscription version is kicking off.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, because you know, I love that point that because
the we also have to remember, infrastructure and transit networks
weren't where they are now. Refrigeration was not really a thing.
So these milk delivery folks, who were overwhelmingly dudes, these milkmen,
become the first s A as provider service as a subscription.

(32:53):
It seemed pretty fair to everybody. Right, I live in
the area. I know there's a guy who has a farm,
but I don't have time. I might not even have
a car or a wagon. I don't have time to
get over there to get some milk. So I'll just
pay a regular, reasonable fee and I get the milk,
and it's easy peasy. People loved it, and a lot
of folks underestimate how revolutionary that was.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Every time I hear SA and then an S afterwards,
no matter how much in between, special AMMI soldiers exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, same. That's why I stumbled over the acronym. I
don't know if we're going to keep it in. But
this concept, right, is so successful. It spreads to other industries,
and it still exists in balance with the concept of ownership.
So you would have the subscription to the newspaper, right,
the subscription to the milk service. But the idea of

(33:43):
having a subscription for your shoes or your sandals would
sound patent leatherly ridiculous. He'd be like, what I paid
for the shoes. I don't have to keep paying for
the shoes. They're the same shoes.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
It does feel like a subscription for shoes in that
time might make sense because they're such a vital thing, right,
and then your your souls are going to get worn
down really quickly. You might get completely messed up. And
if you don't have a pair of shoes, Wait, no,
you would just go buy another pair of shoes.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
What that, Well, you would fix the shoes, because we
have to remember a lot of people back in this
time were much more likely to do their own home repair,
like sewing their own you know, elbow patches, darning their socks. Yeah,
I love it.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
No, but it also makes me think of to your point, Matt,
about the consumability of something like shoes, that's exactly what
we have with iPhones or with your device built into
your phone service. But it's not necessarily that it's degrading.
It just becomes outdated. And while you should be able

(34:48):
to have that one phone and use it, you know,
for the duration of its lifetime as a you know,
working functioning device, eventually updates and various changes and things
start to slow Brick the thing, even if it's still
fully functioning.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
But they're made in ways that their cameras, if you
drop it in a certain way, gets shattered, and now
it is a disposable device.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, and that goes to planned ops lessons. Check out
our episode on that as well, a conspiracy to wear
things down. And I love Bill that you're bringing up
the advent of electronics in a widespread way, because this
is where we see the balance of subscription and ownership
begin to shift. This is when I'm saying things degraded.

(35:34):
So the early two thousands are a huge moment in
this ownership subscription access revolution, and it's because of software
that moved from physical copies on disc to intangible stuff
in the cloud. This was the advent of not service
as subscription, but as software as service. It's a practice

(35:56):
that's almost impossible to escape today without breaking the law.

Speaker 5 (36:00):
Well, and it makes a lot of sense, right, I mean,
it's some surprise it took this long. You know, we
grew up with the concept of ownership of software. But
software is ultimately just data that you know, it can
be streamed or it can be sort of handshook with
the cloud to make the license work.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Or not work.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
It just makes sense that that's exactly where that went
in terms of the Adobe of it all.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Right, Yeah, the Adobe is a great example there, Noel,
because now you don't just buy a program and own it.
You pay for it on an annual or monthly basis
or maybe a per use basis, but they prefer to
lock you in.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Let's talk about it for a saying, because we experienced it.
We experienced that in real time as it occurred when
we were at we were at house Stuff Works. It
was twenty eleven, and all of the times before this,
our company had paid for you know, for MacBook computers
so that we could edit with final cut, to edit

(36:58):
all the podcasts, edit all the videos. That is what
we did. And we owned copies, you know, we owned
our computers.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Came in a body week, remember.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yes, yes, And we owned copies that had serial numbers
of final cut, and we did all that stuff. And
then twenty eleven comes along and Adobe says, hey, now
you can pay six hundred dollars and you can have
access to all of our Adobe products, to.

Speaker 5 (37:23):
The full suite that would have maybe back in the day,
cost you thousands of dollars to purchase all of the individual,
you know, pieces of software that are contained within that suite.
And I would argue too that the Adobe model isn't
bad inherently because it means you're always getting the latest version.
Remember paying for upgrades that was the thing, and oh yes,

(37:44):
it's it's good in many ways.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yes, So going back to this idea, one of the
one of the big gripes that people have, and we
were those people as well, is that you could lose
access to not just the ability to mess with the
thing you were paid a subscription fee for, you could
also therefore lose access to all the stuff you had

(38:09):
on that platform. It didn't matter how long you had
been paying what you had been paying out the wazoo
for years, even if you spent fifteen years paying for
the same program. Right, let's say it didn't necessarily improve
profiting that company to the tune of hundreds or thousands
of dollars. It did not matter you were sol which

(38:30):
is pretty unfair to the consumer, right, you know.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
It's funny.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
There was a recent story about this independent software creator
who made a tool that allowed you to basically repair
the file system of like your PS five, and he
had a thing where contained within his terms of service,
where all of these caveats that if you say, didn't

(38:55):
use the software enough or used it in a certain way,
he would revoke your license. And there was a whole scandal.
I can't remember the guy's name. It also turned out
that he was like a real dirt bag, but it
was an interesting example of like a smaller company or
a smaller organization doing some of these kind of tricksy things.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
That's similar to the terms of use stuff that we
see in online gaming and in social media and a
lot of places where if you use their software wrong,
you no longer get it right.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Or even physical products like automobiles which are a huge
part of the conversation and oh I'm thinking of oh yeah,
our Trustee cell phones. That'll have something in there saying
to the effect if you use a third party repair shop, right,
or if you use a third party component as a

(39:47):
replacement instead of our proprietary stuff, then you are again sool.
And another example would be the wide world of printers.
Shout out to Hewlett Packard and their ink cartridges. Do
you guys have printers at home?

Speaker 5 (40:01):
I do, and it is an Ebsen and it uses
ink tanks which are a lot more refillable and versatile,
and I really like it a lot.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Shout out to brother Printers as well. Underrated. So we
know companies adore this stuff and marketing departments go into overdrive.
We definitely heard it. To MAT's earlier example about how
stuff works in the earlier days. Marketing departments for all
these companies pitch it as a shift toward greater flexibility

(40:30):
and convenience. Right, they're saying, hey, now you just have
to pay what you want and then the route you
don't have to pay anything else will just stop fluxing
with you. But I think it's fair to say that
pretty much everybody saw this for what it was, a
money making machine in overdrive, because every company began looking

(40:51):
into ways to turn at least some part of their
output or a subscription model, like even John Deere has
been doing this well.

Speaker 5 (40:59):
And as far as the streaming aspect of it with entertainment. Initially,
all these subscriptions seemed like an alternative to cable packages, right,
and then it became death by a thousand cuts, where
when you add up all the you know, monthly costs
of your individual subscriptions to CNN whatever. Every network now

(41:20):
has to have their own streaming service, Peacock whatever. If
you really did the math, I guarantee you're paying more
than we ever were for those cable packages HYPERA and
probably not utilizing them in a way that is commensurate
with how much we're paying for them each month.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah, that's an excellent point. I still can't legally get
an HK soon.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
I don't know what that is. Is that a hockey thing?

Speaker 2 (41:44):
It's like Japan's BBC or PPS.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Well, I in this moment right now, I realized, oh,
I'm still paying for a paramount subscription because South Park
was publishing a couple of episodes a little while ago,
and I realized that, oh wait, I've at least paid
for one month that I have not even touched that service.

Speaker 5 (42:03):
Don't even get starting the free trial. Don't even do
the free trial, because you basically the free trial is
you signing up with a time a clock and then
think how much people forgetting or how you know you
forget it.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
I wonder if South Park is in on it, because
they released a really short season and I did my
free trial during that part. Yes, and then they waited
for a second no, they didn't even really wait, they
just flipped to a new season all of a sudden,
made that one really short.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
And specials around HBO South Park is just sort of
an anomaly or an outlier because they sometimes just don't
meet their.

Speaker 5 (42:37):
Own deathlines and the way they do things is a
little bit wonky. But yeah, no, no, it's uh, we're
entering an era which I like to call the subscription fatigue,
and and I think there's a backlash coming.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
If not, if we're.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Not already in it. Yeah, we got to get to
like all this conversation leads us to the present day.
Welcome to the subscription economy. You know, smash smash that
like button. It's skyrocketed in recent decades. It's growing exponentially.
It's a real ja cerve for now, and critics are
fearing that in the not so distant future this may

(43:14):
spell doom for the concept of ownership in general. So
what happens if that occurs, if we reach that inflection point?
What happens when we hit the end of ownership? You'll
own nothing and you'll be happy. It's a quote from
the World Economic Forum.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
Sounds vaguely communist, doesn't it That vaguely threatening, Right.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Dude, we're going to be so happy.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Here's where it gets crazy. If this happens, If ownership
is a concept ends, it'll be a fundamental shift in
society back to the days of neo feudalism. And you
can get pretty gnarly. Not to be too much of
of a gearhead, but do you guys remember when BMW
got their wrist slapped just a few years back for

(44:04):
trying to charge people eighteen bucks a month to make
their heated seats work.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Insane?

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah, I do remember the seats.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
That was a thing that we were worried would continue on.
And we do see services in a lot of newer vehicles,
even the base model of vehicles, where you can subscribe
to have Wi Fi in your car. You can subscribe
to have some kind of basic what was the big
one at the beginning navigation system. Well, you can subscribe

(44:36):
to radio.

Speaker 5 (44:38):
Or even more old school kind of up cells. Right,
So when you buy a new car and you're negotiating
your rate or whatever, they try to slap all these
things on there, like you know, for tire service, you know,
subscription or whatever. Some of them are maybe worth your while,
Like if you can afford it and you don't want
to have to worry about having a flat. Maybe that's

(45:00):
worth it to you, you know, things like triple A
or there are things that are built more into the
specific auto manufacturers that may be worth your while depending
on your situation. But then there's weird ones they bury
in there, you know, that are not necessarily in your
best interest or worthwhile at all, that if you don't
pay attention, you might not even notice they slid it
in there.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, especially with the transaction of that complexity, right, and
all the psychological tactics that are going to be deployed
against you in your average dealership. The thing with BMW,
the reason they got in trouble for a second, was
that the heating hardware was already present in the car,
So really what they were doing is threatening the consumer.

(45:39):
They would say, Okay, you already paid a one time
fee to get these heated seats. If you don't give
us are eighteen bucks a month, we are going to
remotely lock that functionality behind a paywall. Everybody pointed out
this was hogwash, so BMW did reverse course or reverse
track on it, but it proved to be a hardinger

(46:00):
for things to come. And by the way, in recent
statements earlier this year, BMW was still fully committed. That's
a quote from them to subscription services and Tesla even
paywallt some stuff that used to just come with the cart.

Speaker 5 (46:13):
Well, Tesla makes so much sense because of how very
cloud connected all of those features are, you know, the navigation,
various potential upgrades to navigation or whatever, that can all
be remotely bricked. I think the issue with the BMW
thing is that they did it after the fact. If
it had been like sold to you that way, maybe

(46:34):
it would be a bit of a hard sell and
people would bulk at that. But doing it after the fact,
that's just bad business.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
That's what Tesla did, Okay, yeah, yeah, And we see
this with other industries. We mentioned video games. Shout out
also to freemium models of games. They'll give you the
basic structure of a game for free. This happens all
the time on mobile, but you need to make aditional purchases,
sometimes continual purchases for the game to actually work or

(47:05):
be fun.

Speaker 5 (47:06):
In app purchases, like a lot of the games, like
if you actually want to be good at it or
be competitive, you have to get all these upgrades and
all these special items and whatever, buy.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Different coins and yeah, shout out to DLC. I can't
remember which fighting game it was. I'm a fan of those,
but there was maybe with Street Fighter. It was one
of the Street Fighter iterations or Mortal Kombat. You would
buy the physical disc, but you had to paid extra
fee to unlock the other characters on the disc for sure.

(47:37):
And the thing about that is there's a philosophical debate,
like in the gaming community around DLC, where it's like,
what does the game as purchase consist of? And you
know there's going to potentially be DLC, but then the
question becomes a value proposition where it's like, is the
game they're presenting me with in and of itself worth
the amount of money that I'm paying for that game,

(47:59):
or are they then nickel and diming means upselling me
on these extra things to make the game complete. There
was a big controversy around a recent Pokemon game where
the quote unquote end game is DLC.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Yeah that's messed up.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, that's not right. That is messed up. That's robbing you.
That's like sitting in a movie theater. When more people
went to theaters and you get about five minutes away
from the digital ends and then the pauses and the
usher comes in and ask everybody for five bucks. Right,
that's exactly what it is. The question is whether the
DLC is substantive really.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Well, yeah, well, and that's it is a weird thing
because that is becoming part of the video game model. Yes,
really is a backlash.

Speaker 5 (48:40):
There's also a backlash against it where you hear it
is like like a Expedition thirty three where they very
intentionally upfront said not going to be any DLC. The
DLC that they did provide was free, and it was
just a couple of extra levels.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
And it was free.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Well yeah, yeah, which is nice. That's just not what
we're seeing. We're normalized. Like I remember when I got
I think it was I don't remember which Diablo, one
of the Diablos, and then immediately upon releases like oh yeah,
by the way, there's this other thing and it's kind
of important to playing the game and stuff. We know
you just paid full price, we just need you get

(49:15):
some more stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, that's what happens, man. It happens to me a
lot with books too, with ebooks. It's getting me to
tell you the last check D we're yeah, you're buying,
you're buying a license or there had been experiments to
serialize a book right that. That has happened as well.
But if you read the terms and conditions of these

(49:36):
things that exist in the cloud, you'll see that the
license can be revoked at any time, no matter what
the consumer has or the reader here has or has
not done. That's why you know, I mentioned the irony
of George Warwell's nineteen eighty four being secretly and unceremoniously
pulled from Kendall. That was in two thousand and nine,

(50:00):
and more things like that have happened as well.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Wasn't that a glitch though? Wasn't that kind of like
an accident?

Speaker 2 (50:07):
I believe that time it was, or at least that's
how Amazon spun it when they got in trouble. But
the issue is, again, what we're saying is you don't
really own the things you buy if they exist on
the cloud.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Because we didn't I think we talked about low we
didn't really talk about Amazon Prime as one of the
major movers and shakers and changers of this subscription model.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
I can't wait to end on them too. Yeah, but yeah,
Amazon Prime is huge, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
Well, just the realization that a subscription to Amazon Prime
was to get next day delivery or same day delivery,
It's changed a little bit.

Speaker 5 (50:45):
That was the value add That was one that you
had to sign up for in order to have access
to that tiered service.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
And discounting your shipping cost. If the stuff you ordered
was above a certain.

Speaker 5 (50:59):
Cost, you're actically dropping it to zero, right, I mean
most of the time.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
But then to see how that same subscription morphed into oh,
now you get specialty video programming that you can only
gain access to if you have that same subscription.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
Well, and not to mention the subscriptions within the subscription.
I think it's worth mentioning that you can subscribe to
products within your Amazon account where you get regular deliveries
of certain items and you get a discount on those
items by signing up for the subscription.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Not to mention that one new commode every month.

Speaker 5 (51:35):
Totally or whatever, like perishable items groceries.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
A lot of people do that.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
I have a recurring subscription for caflee caller for my cat,
you know, stuff like that, and you set the time
window and it's actually super convenient.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
But then the big problem that.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
I have with my mind, let's call it subscription creep,
is within Amazon, you can sub subscribe to premium video services,
add ons, they call it paramounts, brit all of these
different ones, and it's hard to remember where you subscribe
to the thing, whether it's through Amazon or directly through

(52:11):
the thing. I'm certain that at one point or another.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
I've subscribed to Shutter two ways.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
You know what I mean, I've been there, I've double
double Shutter double, especially because this is coupled with other
platforms outside of Amazon that offer similar deals right for
while Disney was also shill and Hulu, right and so
you could have two Hulu descriptions, or your telecom provider

(52:36):
would say, hey, here's a subscription as well, because you've
already subscribed to our phone service. So a lot of
people did end up doubling up.

Speaker 5 (52:44):
Is that acquisitions like Hulu is now owned by Disney,
so you get Hulu when you subscribe to Disney. But
I'm certain that there was a period where I was
still paying for both, you know, like I didn't even
realize that it had been combined. And I'm certain they're
not gonna give me that money back.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
No, why would it, You'd have to go to the BBB.
You'd lose more money in the court case, honestly pushing
for a settlement or a refund.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Can we also say you're mentioning the BBB ben which
is fun to say, but of course that's the Better
Business Bureau. I am very skeptical as to how actionable
a lot of the negative reports to the BBB are,
because I've certainly looked at a thing after the fact
and realized that it was absolutely being.

Speaker 4 (53:30):
Shut upon on BBB.

Speaker 5 (53:32):
Reviews, but the thing still operating and functioning and existing
as an entity or whatever it might be. This was
the one I'm specifically talking about was a house cleaning
service that really jerked me around big time, and I
finally got out of it, but they were holding me
hostage with my subscription to that and like wouldn't cancel it.
And then I went to the BBB and reported it,

(53:53):
but also saw just pages of negative reports about this company,
and clearly it did nothing in terms of causing them
to change their behavior or shut them down.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Well, we also know the Better Business Bureau back in
twenty eleven went through this whole thing that was a
pay for play, like a payola scan like the Yelp grift.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Uh, And we talked about that on this show before.
And there is some weird stuff with anything like that
that is like a five oh one C three nonprofit
And then how are they actually staying up floating?

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Yeah? Where's the money coming from? And where's the money
going to? It a subscription economy? What say we take
one more ad break and we're going to go back
to that shilling line from the World Economic Forum, And
we have returned. We are in twenty sixteen when the

(54:49):
World Economic Forum from earlier, from some previous episodes of
Stuff They'll Want You to Know, famously predicted that by
twenty thirty, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
This was written by Ada Awkin, a member of Denmark's
parliament at the time and I believe still today. Her
article was titled get this headline, gents, welcome to twenty thirty.

(55:12):
I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never
been better and you're gonna like it.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Yeah that sounds sarcastic as hell.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
It's weird though, Okay, so she is. She is writing
like I thought it was gonna be you know a
damning satirical pieces like something out of McSweeney's as well.
But Awkin turns out to be a fan of the
subscription economy, and near the beginning of our article, she states,
it might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect
sense for us. In this city. Everything you have considered

(55:45):
a product has now become a service. We have access
to transportation, accommodation, food, and all the things we need
in our daily lives. One by one, these things became free,
So it ended up not making sense for us to
own my mind much what well see, it's way different
than what capitalist and critics of the w EF for saying.

(56:07):
She said, there's this world where the capitalist ecosystem is
way off to the side. She's making a much more
socialist argument. Communication is free and digitized for everyone. Public
transport and what off rides are autonomous vehicles much more affordable,
if not even if not entirely free. She actually starts

(56:29):
to call it a sharing economy, not a subscription economy.

Speaker 5 (56:33):
I remember when that term was more common. Yeah, because
that that's sort of the positive spin version, right.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
I mean, it's super cool as long as the folks
that are in charge of all of those systems are
benevolent and want the best for everyone.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry, but I'm serious. It's
just it's just not the nature of of of capitalism.
There's no there's no drive or there's no incentive to
be benevolent.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
There are a couple of things in here that are
still going to make a lot of us uncomfortable in
the audience tonight. If you go down. The article is
easy to read online. It's short, it's worth your time,
not behind the paywall, not behind a paywall as of yet.
One of the quotes that really stood out to me
and just gave me the jibby's gave me the ick
a little bit was this quote. In our city, we

(57:21):
don't pay any rent because someone else is using our
free space whenever we do not need it. My living
room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
End quote. Freaking come on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You have to have a really big house. Yeah, that's
just not that's a non that's no for me. That's

(57:44):
like what we have what workifi or switchyards or all
those other work places. Industrious, industrious, that's one. Why would
you turn your home into that.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
My partner was so funny, was talking about the making
an argument for something kind of like this not the
same thing. We're literally having this conversation yesterday and she
showed me an app where you can trade your house
with another house for a small amount of time. So
like you go on there and you literally just swap
houses for a little while. And I was thinking about

(58:19):
how uncomfortable that would make me and how like I
would never wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Is it just like an experience fans like wife swap. No,
I think it's for like difer it's airbnbs, right, it's
Airbnb similar, Yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
It is so weird to match up with someone who
needs to be in Atlanta while I need to be
in DC. And then so then we just swap houses
for a week.

Speaker 5 (58:42):
Well there's another app that, uh you know, I could
see maybe this being a slight middle ground between the whole.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Well no, it's swimming pool. Uh yeah, rental or use.

Speaker 5 (58:52):
Where you can like airbnb out just your swimming pool
while you're not using it. But again, that's sort of
like a you know what that window of time is,
you know, you're not home.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
I'm cool oversight over that right, Yeah, I'm cool.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Wait, we haven't even talked about rent versus own housing
because isn't renting a subscription service of course?

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Randy subscription service. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Well, and we did an episode a while back about
housing and talking about some of the biggest companies that
are owning single family homes, in particular multi family homes
you know, apartments, condos, things like that, but also single
family homes and the massive ownership of those, and then
they're renting out to everybody who will never actually get

(59:37):
to own a home.

Speaker 5 (59:39):
You don't hear about rent to own opportunities very much.
It is incredibly rare in my experience, and the goal
I think of these companies is to buy up as
much of this land, these properties as possible so that
regular people can never own, because it's in their best
interest to just keep getting that big keep getting that
subscription fee.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
And extract value as much value as possible from the
labor or the working class. Also check out our related
episode from a few years back that I think we
should republish as a classic rent to own. Yes, that
that is kind of what we're talking about. We've definitely
talked extensively in the past about the insidious actions of

(01:00:21):
these institutions that are removing the ability of especially younger
families to purchase ome.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Oh yeah, but no, would you had saying what you
were saying about pools, Maybe think about the HOA and
like the pool that exists in a lot of neighborhoods
as like a subscription service for a pool. And I
never thought about it that way as that in that
particular way, for a clubhouse and a pool, you pay
a subscription fee.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
And in HOA is a mandated subscription service.

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
And they've got a lot of control over what you
can and can't do to your own quote unquote property
that you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Yeah and hashtag hashtag not all h oays, We know
that not everybody in there is a power hungry monster
with too much timeline.

Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
Or in larger cities where you have like apartment co
ops where yes, you quote unquote own it, or like
a condo, but you're beholden to these boards, you know
in terms of you can you can be politely asked
to leave.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
And those were the groups that could keep certain people
out of the neighborhood. Also say, and we know that
they were utilized in that way in a very racist manner.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yeah, and what what if we take this idea of
what ownership means a step further. Going back to Awkin,
she's also imagining a world wherein you don't own kitchen stuff.
She says, I'll still choose to cook for myself every
so often because quote, the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered
at my door within minutes.

Speaker 4 (01:01:51):
Is unhead.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Yeah, and then you just presumably returned the items or
have them returned to some central storage facility once the
cooking is done, thanks to that free automated translat guys.
But this is just it's a beautiful world that I
don't think is going to happen, even for high foaluting
northern European countries, which absolutely whacks the United States on

(01:02:14):
almost every conceivable quality of life metrics, so many things
to change.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
They also are better at austere living, and they're much
more functional architecture and even like home decor and like
you know, cabinetry, I mean windows, all of it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Like it's no no question about it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Like we see what I'm saying, right, Because even though
so this this thing, this article, this manifesto by Aukin
got weaponized, right, and they got misconstrued and purposely got muddled.
But the kernel of the plan, away from the optimism
and the socialism, the kernel of the plan, a subscription

(01:02:52):
economy is very much in play. The companies and the
political puppets involved in eroding your ownership, folks, they're all
in on a subscription economy because the potential money on
the horizon is just too promising to be bothered with
ethical concerns. They want the widespread subscriptions without the added

(01:03:15):
conditions of socialism. What to have the cake and eat
it too.

Speaker 5 (01:03:20):
That's a good point because, like I was saying earlier,
a lot of this stuff, the post ownership society or whatever,
is vaguely, if not fully socialist, But it's socialism without
the benefits.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Of socialism, right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:33):
It's like paying for everything but owning nothing, as opposed
to being part of a community where your needs are
taken care of and you're treated as a part of
the greater whole. That's not the case at all. We're
all still bubbled up in these highly individualistic little cages,
and we are still part of the system that doesn't

(01:03:54):
benefit us, that we are paying into and getting really
nothing extra in return or any kind of safety.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
The US welfare system is phenomenal. If you are a corporation,
it's one of the best in the world if you're
a corporate entity, but you know a lot of us
are not. You got to ask what the future of
this looks like really regular people? Not quite Yeah, yeah,
disordinary people.

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
So Amazon plus neighborhoods across the country, that's what it's
going to mean.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Oh you know what, this is going to tie in
to the end in your matt So fast forward to
the future for a flat fee starting at just nineteen
ninety nine a month. So based on these current troubling trends,
what could the future look like? So the future of
the subscription economy, it's quite controversial because we have what
we had slightly mentioned earlier, consumer fatigue, we have the

(01:04:45):
perception of declining value. But we still see businesses really
aggressively pushing in for this, and we see other people saying, hey,
this is going to slow down. People are going to
cut the subscriptions. But we know paradigm shift is occurring
in step with other things smart technology, the surveillance state. Right,

(01:05:06):
it's also occurring in step with what the legendary quarry
DOCTORO calls intification.

Speaker 5 (01:05:12):
It's that slippery slope right where you think you're getting
a thing, or they start off giving you something that
seems like it's got a value, and then once they've
got you, they slowly ratchet down the quality and up
the costs.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Just so. Amazon Prime is a to my mind, of
phenomenal example of this, because the subscription rate was increasing
quite recently or over time, as Prime Video began rolling
out ads. Prime Video was the thing where they would
say you, as an Amazon Prime member, you can watch

(01:05:47):
some movies, you can watch a few TV shows. Heck,
we might produce some of our own in the future.
And it was ad free. But now they were starting
to ask people to increasingly rent or buy content, and
they created new tiers of subscription pricing. This is a
setup to make things quote unquote ad free, completely ignoring

(01:06:09):
the fact that the content was originally both cheaper and
free from ads in the beginning. So you're paying more,
you're getting less. The subscription economy inevitably seems to lead
to identification, at least here in the United States. And
thank you for the beep stilling.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Well, it's this concept that the stuff we used to
have in our living rooms, the DVDs, the video games,
the books, the records, all the physical like actionable things
have become infinite, right, so they are no longer on
our shelves. They are infinite accessible libraries that are out there.

(01:06:48):
And that's the big sell for something like Amazon that
once made its money as a search tool for books.
That's what it was, that's all it was. And now
it's literally every book you can ever imagine that it
is in existence. Every movie. Now when movies come out,
they're immediately available there. Then you can buy them for

(01:07:09):
a small fee of like sixteen dollars, you know, which.

Speaker 5 (01:07:13):
Is also pretty variable, you know what I mean, like
how much that what the actual value of it is.
It'll go up and down or they'll be sales or
you can use your points or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:07:21):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Well, yeah, but it's on top of that subscription fee
then is talking about here, right, So there's and then
when you have your Amazon Prime membership that does the
other thing. It also all your purchases on Amazon Prime
are on top of those things. So you realize what
companies have figured out that if you are, if you

(01:07:44):
feel beholden to that company, like you're already getting something
out of that company. You're already you know that cost
thing we talked about people, especially with Amazon, because they
offer everything, they will just make all of their purchases
through there as many as they possibly can, especially because
it just shows up. It's not like you got to
do anything. It just shows up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Don't build a single product, don't build a box that
goes to a house. Build the door that all the
boxes go through. That's what Amazon has done at all.
In the trucks, well, yeah, the warehouses, and make sure
never to pay people a fair weight.

Speaker 5 (01:08:19):
I think a really excellent dystopian future escalation of this
is depicted in the season seven premiere episode of Black
Mirror called Common People with Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd,
where a medical procedure is a subscription thing, and it
also really beautifully describesification because it starts off as this

(01:08:40):
woman who has a brain aneurysm and in homa, has
this experimental procedure done that allows her to have all
of her memories downloaded and then basically reinstalled back into
a brain through this implant.

Speaker 4 (01:08:53):
But then gradually they.

Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
Started saying, well, actually, we've got this new tier of
service and if you don't want ads beamed into your brain.
You got to pay extra, and before you know it,
they're having to do really awful things in order to
make the money that they need to keep up with
those subscriptions just so that she can live a normal life.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yeah, I rewatched that one in the weeks leading up
to this episode. It's just a banger. I can't say
enough good stuff about Black Mirror, but I can say
bad things about companies like Juicero. Juicero is a great
example of our problem with subscription economies. They raised like
one hundred and twenty million US dollars to make a

(01:09:34):
juicer that was supposed to be a super fancy piece
of smart tech. It cost to get this guy's like
six hundred and ninety nine bucks, and it also required
a subscription for proprietary juice packets. So you pay seven
hundred bucks and you can't just go to your farmer's
market and get some strawberries and bananas, peanut butter or whatever.

(01:09:57):
You have to get these juice packets. The company he
totally fails because consumers got a hold of the juice
packets and said, oh wait, I can just squeeze the
packets by hand into a glass. I don't need a
seven hundred dollars juicer.

Speaker 5 (01:10:12):
But the alternative of that, and maybe one of the
first to market or something like that, is like something
like Kerregg, where you definitely do need to have the
proprietary product to squeeze the juice out of the little
k cups, which are also inherently incredibly wasteful. And then
there's another version of that that I've seen in offices
where they are these little packets that look like mini
Caprice Sons that you slide into the machine. They've got

(01:10:34):
like a little nipple at the top. Again, there's no
other way to deploy those things than you know, the
machine that you've paid a bunch of money for. And
then you know they want you to sign up for
the subscription to the different varieties and coffee flavors, you know,
through them, potentially.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
I keep thinking of Jack and the Giant Beanstalk. You know,
these people are selling you magic beans, and they're not
letting you bring your own beans to the part they're magic.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
It's just so weird because you can go spend one
hundred dollars. That's a lot of money, but one hundred
dollars at any of these big box stores and get
a blender. Yeah, and that blender can do most of
the things we're talking about here, right, not the proprietary
about it. It's a blender and or But I do
know that I've spent I bought a juicer one time,
and I tried to go. You know, often when I

(01:11:24):
make a purchase of something like that that is a tool,
I try to go kind of middle of the road
because I don't want the super cheap thing that's going
to be. But I don't want to spend the crazy
prices that people out are trying to I don't want
to see so dice in blender.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
You would need a maserati of blenders. Dude. One time,
I pay I don't want to say exactly how much,
but less than five hundred, but more than three hundred
for something that call builds itself as a masticator. And
I think it's just because I'll.

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
Shoot your food for you and then spit it into
your mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
It could do juicing but also somehow mastication. They did
explain it too well. But also, just as author, I'm
very vulnerable to cool specific words like just as a
writing nerd. So so what I saw masticator. I can't
remember where at life I'd save money on something else,
and I was trying to impress a girl I was dating.

(01:12:14):
It worked for a time, but we also didn't use.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
It fancy blenders. Well, yeah, so the kitchen gadget. So
the juicer that I got and I ended up going
middle of the road to get ended up being a
machine that was utilized for just a little bit of
time until it was realized how much work it takes
and how much fruit and you know, vegetables it takes
to make said juice and to actually get something out

(01:12:40):
of this product that I had already sunk, you know,
two hundred dollars into. And I'm just keep thinking about this.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
What was it called?

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
What's the name of the juicer?

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Ben juice? Arro is the name of juice? Seven dollars juicer?
I mentioned juice Saro.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
I mean, it's brilliant. I just don't understand how how
we get tricked into some of these things sometimes, like
I don't it's hot. I'm looking at some of the
psychology that's been written about a whole bunch in here,
and people focus on a lot of things, a lot
of sunk costs things. But this the psychology behind gaining

(01:13:16):
access to something that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
Is special, getting in the box.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
It doesn't matter if you actually utilize the services, because ultimately,
what you're chasing is the feeling that you are special
in a way that you get access to something.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Peloton No, Yes, a great example.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
But it's it's deep in here, and I just wonder
what it is that happened to all of us that
made us so needy and chasing that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
You know, part of it is that, honestly, people tend
to Psychology shows us that people tend to not actually
want everything to be equal. Quite often, people are not
as happy when everybody has everything they need. People are
not as happy as they would be if they specifically

(01:14:09):
had a little bit more, no matter what. And just
think about it.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
Think about how much time you waste, you know, just
dicking around scrolling over various tiles on your streaming services
of choice, and how long it takes even land on something.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
And like, I'm at.

Speaker 5 (01:14:25):
This place now where I'm almost sick of it because
i just have a hard time finding something that I'm
even interested in, Which is why I'm going to double
down again say that I plan to cancel all my
subscription services except for Criterion, and then maximize my use
of that even Netflix, man.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
And Netflix has this as a gardening show.

Speaker 4 (01:14:43):
No, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 5 (01:14:46):
That's also true. We do love Netflix. I'm not going
to sorry, what did I say? No, of course I'm
not going to catch But these companies too, they must
be aware of that fatigue and that pushback, which is
why they're so strategic and putting out that one thing
that everyone's got to see. And then you're back in
the system with that free trial, and then before you
know it, you're back on.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
The back on the use cha chasing that monthly dragon. Yeah,
I'm gonna skip over Hewllett Packard. I feel like everybody
knows the great kerfuffle where firmware updates will disable your
printer if you cancel your Ink subscription. Let's cut past
the boffins at Harvard, although they did. Oh, we'll give

(01:15:27):
you some stats that you need to know. As far
back as twenty twenty two, the average US consumer spent
two hundred and seventy three dollars per month on an
average of twelve paid subscriptions, and nearly seventy five percent
of companies that sell directly to customers have already by
that point years ago they have made some kind of

(01:15:48):
subscription model because the money was too good.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
From that same piece I was looking at in connection
with what is the outlet grand View Research, looking at
the global subscription economy and just realizing some pretty dark things,
at least in my insidious things in my mind, in
the way this is thought about in boardrooms, and you know,
in the c suites of the world, there's this thing

(01:16:16):
they call the share of wallet, and it's a term
that's been around for a long time. But if you
think about it as in the share of an individual
person's amount of money that they have access.

Speaker 5 (01:16:29):
To, it's more granular than say market share. Now we're
really drilling down into the individual yes.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
Okay, because how much money does that have that person
have to dole out for subscription services and how much
of that pie do you get? And if we're talking
about you know, twelve subscriptions two hundred and seventy three
dollars a month back in twenty twenty two, and just
how much that has changed and increased, and how much

(01:16:55):
money a person is paying and how much of a percentage,
that is, of their wallet in realizing that the global
subscription economy market size was estimated at four hundred and
ninety two point three four billion dollars in twenty twenty four,
and at least from this outlet, they're saying that's estimated
to reach one point five trillion dollars by twenty thirty three.

(01:17:18):
But again that's only one take. There are multiple takes
on how big this thing is gonna get, just because
of how much it's expanding in real time.

Speaker 5 (01:17:26):
And maybe I'm missing this conversation, but I haven't really
seen much talk about the subscription model being a bubble.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
It just seems like it's.

Speaker 5 (01:17:35):
Just rife for further you know, abuse and growth, and
you know, not to mention that like someplace, you know,
some companies they're no longer even publishing what they call
in the UK viewing figures, you know, like ratings are
no longer a thing. It's about this permanent expansion of

(01:17:56):
subscriptions and to get to a point where you kind
of run out of people, so then you start to
have to like you know, consolidate and add services and combine,
and you know, to me, it seems like Amazon's kind
of got the best game in town as far as
it's concerned, because that's sort of three subscriptions in one
and part of it is physical, not just digital, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
And this is another thing. This is excellent, Noil, I'm
glad you're bringing this up because one of the things
that always stands out to economists way smarter than us,
and definitely sticks out to me, is that the subscription
model has no financial end point. So over time, your
sow share of wallet is getting increasingly windowed and you

(01:18:38):
are paying far more than the actual value of that
printer or other product. Hopefully, before we get to dystopian stuff,
we can bring up two factors. I know a lot
of us in the audience are thinking about this. Things
that could stop the subscription economy's growth, which does not
appear to be a bubble just yet, is the pre
existing economy. Unemployment is spike, inflation's hitting everybody in their wallet.

(01:19:03):
Analysts are pretty certain that automation is going to make
the job market even tougher for young kids starting out
in their careers. More subscription models proliferate, more companies want
more money. On a regular basis, you have less and
less to spend, and that's when you get to what
we mentioned earlier, subscription fatigue. Noel, I can't wait to
hear back on how your experience is when you can't

(01:19:27):
like when you cancel down some of those subscriptions, it
can go straight to criterion. We know that as of
January of this year twenty twenty six, forty one percent
of consumers, a little bit less than half of the
nation have consumer fatigue. People dropped from like four point
one services in twenty twenty four to two point eight

(01:19:49):
in twenty twenty five. So people are bail it out, man.
People are getting tired of this.

Speaker 3 (01:19:55):
Well there. We're now even seeing subscription services to manage
your subscription services and cancel your subscription services like Rocket
Money that we have read ads for before on this show.
Like how insane is that we are willing to pay
a subscription to make sure our subscriptions are manageable.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
Yeah, that's something I think. I'm glad we're bookending on
that because it's it's a marvelous exercise in the meta
nature of where we're at as a society. If we
go full sci fi dystopian, right, imagine a world where
it is actually unusual and remarkable to own stuff. Your
clothing arrives every week, you wear it, you send it

(01:20:39):
back when it's dirty. Your car's performance, if you have
a car, depends on the level of your subscription plan.
Nobody really buys houses unless they're super wealthy or a
large financial institution. For better or for worse, everything in
your life has become a utility bill. The kicker is
this can be normalized so quickly. So what if a

(01:21:00):
company like Amazon goes full sandbox and appears to simplify
this bag of badger subscriptions. You can sign up for
Amazon Life you get your basic needs met for a
monthly subscription, or you sign up for Amazon Life Plus
you get extra perks like transportation a bigger apartment. Or
you could sign up for Amazon Life Platinum, which means

(01:21:23):
you get to live in an actual house. How far
are we away, guys? Amazon is getting super into the
medical industry.

Speaker 5 (01:21:30):
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly the end goal. I mean,
that's just what it's all heading towards. The question is
will it be able to on a long enough timeline.
I think it will sort of a bubble bursting or
sort of pushback from consumers in such a way where
it's not tenable anymore, you know, But the consumers just
I don't know, man, Like there's maybe there's power in numbers,
and you know, we've certainly seen people trying to boycott

(01:21:52):
purchasing days on Amazon connected to various causes and things
like that. But it's just you never really see it
make a make a dent. And I don't mean to
be nihilistic or too dystopian about it, but it just
does feel like it's hard to claw that back. It's
hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. We're
a little too far along in this journey, this hellis journey.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
I really do think we're going to hit a tipping
point where people decide this isn't what we want. We
don't want this. There's this place online you can go too,
called FT Strategies f T Strategies. You can check out
some of the writing that they're doing over there. They're
trying to sell you a service, by the way, but

(01:22:37):
they're writing articles that you can read, you know, as
a way to like convince you to use their company.
This one in particular talks about the model of access
over ownership, and they're talking about developing an emotional connection
and relationship with a customer versus the transactional relationship of

(01:22:59):
just interasing something from them, Right, You're developing this emotional
relationship over time in relationship, Yeah, yes, And it discusses
how people are quote happy to quote pay recurrently for
a service even if it's not utilized, because these organizations
offer member membership like access, because human beings agree to

(01:23:23):
be a part of these organizations. It's not just like
you are now a part of Amazon when you are
using it in this way. You're a part of Netflix
and all of this. And it says that it offers belonging.
It offers engaging with a mission that they agree with
that a human being, a consumer agrees with. I wonder

(01:23:44):
what happens when we all decide, oh, we don't agree
with whatever it is that that company's mission is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Yeah. Luckily we're not at that dystopian thought experiment level yet,
because yeah, there's great appetite from businesses. We kind of
are army because can I as yet.

Speaker 3 (01:24:03):
But well, but what I mean is by engaging in this,
you are agreeing with the mission of that company, right, right,
So if you use Amazon or any other subscription. You
are buying in and agreeing with whatever the mission in
that company is. You agree with in some sense.

Speaker 5 (01:24:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
That's why people boycotted Chick fil A for so long
because they didn't agree with stuff the company was doing.
It's why people boycotted places like Walmart because they didn't
agree with the business practices. I'm just wondering if that
is the same kind of thing. It's just we're so
inextricably linked to some of these services now we can't
even choose to not use them anymore. We feel that

(01:24:42):
we can't.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Yeah, I hear you. I'm saying the dystopian thought experiment
I was pitching earlier. We're not at that exact blatant point. Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
Oh, okay, when you were talking about earlier, action.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Is always going to be less expensive than action, right,
So it's easy to say, yeah, I agree with people boycotting, well,
you know, I still need to get my cokes.

Speaker 5 (01:25:03):
Ever, well, and I would argue short of a unilateral
boycott or this like grand scale cord cutting, the match
describing off grid or whatever, this tipping point where like
enough people at the same time have quote unquote had
enough that they take action that directly affects these companies
in such a way where something has to change. I

(01:25:24):
just don't see that happening. But that is your thought experiment, Ben.
I think is the ultimate end game of a company
like Amazon.

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):
There's no question about it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:34):
And last thing for me, I just wanted to say,
you know, even Internet content is on demand content, you
know what I mean, Like we are paying a subscription
to the Internet service provider whichever one you use to
get access, not ownership. But I just found this out
the other day. If you want, you can go to
a site called keywix kiwix and download the entirety of Wikipedia. Yes,

(01:25:58):
and haven't in your hot brilliance.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:26:02):
Yeah, it's only about one hundred gigs including images. It
could fit on a flash drive. So if you go
to qwics get this app. You can literally and legally
download in the entirety of certain database C type websites.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
And if you hate trees, you can publish it or
print it. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a good survival tool.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Well, it just it feels like a super smart move,
like everybody should have something like that and have access
to it, like with you know, wheen of those like
cheap kindles or something, or just something that you could
easily get access to. It's something that can charge with
solar Think of.

Speaker 5 (01:26:38):
How reliant we are on the internet for literally just knowledge.
Nobody has libraries anymore. I mean not nobody, but you know,
we just assume we'll always have access to the wealth,
the entirety of the wealth of human knowledge. What if
all of a sudden we didn't so think about that.
Maybe it's something that you might consider doing. I certainly
am there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Is I'm going to have to find it and send
it to you guys later. But there is a device
like the one we're describing. I haven't purchased it yet,
but it's like a cloud capable but not cloud necessitated,
very simple, solar powered or I think maybe there's a
crank powered one thing that will contain Wikipedia and stuff
like the Army Survival Manual. It's real, there's lost on

(01:27:18):
a desert island. Stuff. It's worth looking into. I don't
know if it needs to be in everybody's go bag
for their car, but it's just a neat thing to have, right,
and some subscriptions are a neat thing to have. Fellow
conspiracy realist, we're not saying in any way that all
subscriptions are inherently bad. We have some we personally love,
like to give a shout out to you Netflix once again,

(01:27:41):
and there are places where subscription models, you know, definitely
make sense. But we're concerned because corporations are working around
the clock with some of the world's smartest people to
figure out new ways to get you away from a
one off purchase into a land of never ending subscriptions
that pile up. Then how much can you pile on

(01:28:02):
the average household before that household and the economics depending
on it begin to collapse. That's the stuff they don't
want you to know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
Well, let's talk about what it means or how this
stuff is talked about when it's a company that is
thinking about moving to a subscription model, the way it's
talked about, the way it's thought about, because I think
this is some of the insidious stuff going back to
ft strategies they're talking about. Let's say your company that
is choosing to move towards subscription is say this is

(01:28:33):
what you need and this is how you're going to
be successful in sure you have a product or service
with loyal users who are required to engage frequently, develop
an ongoing relationship with those customers through various touch points
again that need to be engaged with frequently. Make sure

(01:28:54):
you use something like a trial that lets you demonstrate
the value of your subscription. Make sure your onboarding process
is as seamless as possible. They don't put this in here,
but also make sure it's really hard to unsubscribe or
it's like annoying at least.

Speaker 5 (01:29:10):
But there were some changes in that kind of stuff past,
relatively recently that do make it. They I think it's
required for it to be as easy to cancel as
it is to sign up.

Speaker 4 (01:29:18):
But then again, your results may vary. What does that mean?

Speaker 5 (01:29:21):
It seems a little vague, but please continue.

Speaker 3 (01:29:23):
And then make sure that there are opportunities immediately upon
subscribing for the customer to customize their personal experience with
your app or service so they quote develop a sense
of control. And then, last, but not least, the most

(01:29:43):
important thing about subscription services that we didn't even get
into today. Track your customers every action that occurs on
your app, that occurs on your site, every transaction, every click.
Track that data so you can understand what an individual

(01:30:03):
customer likes or dislikes, and you can customize the experience
for everybody else to make it more attractive and addictive.

Speaker 5 (01:30:11):
Because the more customized it is, the more that sunk
cost fallacy starts to come into play. I mean, a
lot of people have had real beef with Spotify because
of some political things and various investments and you know,
things not paying artists, et cetera. But a lot of
people are real hesitant to cancel their Spotify because of
my playlists, you know, like all these things that are

(01:30:32):
built in that you've had for years now, and it
makes it more and more difficult to walk back, sort
of like switching banks.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
You know, it's a sandbox, but the stuff into sandbox
is quicksand it's tough to get out.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
And the whole point about that, for me, the stuff
they don't want you to know about this is that
there are attempts to lure you in and trap you
and track the absolute living shit out of you when
you're subscribing like this. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:58):
Yeah, for me. The question is the question we should
all be asking is again, how many costs can pile
up on an individual, on an average household before the
households begin to collapse because when they collapse, the economics
depending on those individuals and households will collapse as well.

(01:31:18):
It's the stuff these companies don't want you to know,
or if you like, the stuff, they don't want us
to think about. So thank you for tuning in. You know,
we'd love to hear your most outrageous subscription stories. What's
the weirdest thing you subscribe to, what's the weirdest time
you ran into a sneaky subscription fee? What do you
think about the future? Here are you, like us, experiencing

(01:31:42):
subscription fatigue? We'd love to read your story, So reach out,
find us on the lines, call us on the phone,
you can always send us an email for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:31:51):
And I just last thing.

Speaker 5 (01:31:52):
It's also neat a positive version of this. There's positive
spin on this that it allows creators to sustain themselves
with like Patreon, where you're subscribing to a person, someone
who you really appreciate, someone who still admire and you're
subsidizing their existence.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
And I think that's a great point.

Speaker 5 (01:32:09):
I think that's a really good side of all of this,
not to you know, have it be entirely dystopian, but
let us know what patreons do you subscribe to. You
can find us online at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or
Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media platform.

Speaker 4 (01:32:25):
A choice.

Speaker 3 (01:32:25):
Hey, if you want to call us, our number is
one eight three three s t d wy TK. It's
a voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself a
cool nickname and let us know if we can use
your name and message on one of our listener mail
episodes that show up in the audio feeds. Got to
check those out. You might hear yourself on there if
you call in. That is, you can also send us

(01:32:45):
an email.

Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
We are the these that read each piece of correspondence
we received, well aware yet unafraid with Sometimes the void
rights back. And if you send us an email, you
may also hear yourself on our weekly listener segment. So
please do tell us your weirdest takes on the subscription economy.
Will see you out here in the dark conspiracy at

(01:33:07):
iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:33:27):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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