The White House has proposed the third massive spending plan of its administration. The latest plan is called the “American Families Plan” and will cost $1.8 trillion. The plan will expand access to education with free universal preschool and two years of tuition free community college among other initiatives and would be paid for by raising taxes on investors and wealthy Americans. The package cannot be passed without Congress and will be a tough sell for many as-is. Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for what’s in the plan.
Next, there is an ongoing erosion of personal ownership. With the rise of digital purchases, subscription and streaming based services, do we even really own music or movies anymore? Beyond that, other products we may buy that have, for example, proprietary software that may need to be serviced by specific parent companies may also hinder what we do with our property. This new dynamic may also change the relationship and attachments we have to what we own. Dan Greene, contributor to Vox, joins us for how some rights of traditional ownership are changing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The White House has proposed
the third massive spending plan of its administration. The latest
plan is called the American Families Plan and will cost
one point eight trillion dollars. The plan will expand access
(00:22):
to education with free universal preschool in two years of
tuition free community college, among other initiatives, and would be
paid for by raising taxes on investors and wealthy. American
package cannot be passed without Congress. It will be a
tough sell for many, as is. Jeff Stein, white House
economics reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for what's
(00:42):
in the plan next. There's an ongoing erosion of personal
ownership with the rise of digital purchases, subscription and streaming
based services. Do we even really own music or movies anymore?
Beyond that, other products that we may buy that have,
for example, proprietary software that many to be surfaced by
a specific parent company may also hinder what we do
(01:03):
with our property. This new dynamic may also be changing
the relationship and attachments we have to what we own.
Dan Green, contributor to Vox, joins us for how some
rights of traditional ownership are changing. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. I knew the president would being left
of center, and I understand that the collections have, but
(01:28):
I never thought of being left. Joining us now was
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post.
Thanks for joining us, Jeff, Hey, thanks so much for
having The Biden administration has unveiled a one point eight
trillion dollars spending and tax plan. This is the the
third spending plan so far of his administration. We had
the recovery of planned, the American Recovery Plan. This is
(01:50):
going to be the American Families Plan. A lot of
this UH plan has a lot to do with education.
So Jeff, tell us a little bit about what we're
seeing in this plan. So um, as you said, correctly,
this is a third policy, you know, major economic proposal
from the White House and spy and took office. The
first at one point nine trillion dollar economic relief package
was passed in March, and since then the White House
(02:12):
has n't veiled two separate but related efforts that they
say collectively add up to his Build Back Better agenda.
Those four trillion dollars stretched over two plans, the first
of which is centered on infrastructure, manufacturing, in jobs, and
the second, release yesterday or I guess rather today, is
centered all in childcare, education, paid family, and medically even
(02:34):
other programs that the White House says are more directly
geared towards improving economic fortunes and middle class families. The
distinction between the two plans kind of blurs a little bit.
It's a little unclear how they'll pass or if they'll pass,
but those are the two main buckets were looking at.
My understanding is that they might not be able to
really get to this plan for some months though, to
be able to start hashing it out. It's definitely one
(02:55):
of those things where everyone in Washington is asking everyone
else what they think will happen with these two plans,
and I think the answer is that really nobody, including
the White House, including Pelosi, including Schumer's, and not a
question that there's noble answer to. Unfortunately, there's a ton
of stuff in both of these plans that a lot
of people have been clamoring for that really have widespread consensus,
(03:16):
have leased on the Democratic side and then pull quite
well provisions such as you know, as I mentioned paid
family and medically, America is one of the countries in
the world with the highest levels of child poverty. In
the White House temporarily approved an expansion of the child
tax credit in March, but that's gonna expire, um and
so child poverty would spike if that's not extended. So
(03:37):
there are all these things that a lot of people, um,
you know, these among the Democrats are very adamant. Needs
need to get done, but the sequencing and the timing
is really unclear, especially because the tax provisions both in
the Manufacturing Plan and in this Family's Plan are very contentious.
The taxes on the Manufacturing Plan would be primarily centered
on corporations and businesses. The taxes in the Family's plan
(03:59):
are centered on investors and rich Americans. But really those
are both very controversial. It's very easy to spend relatives,
you know, taking money away from some constituency, especially one
um as influential as rich people when it comes to Congress.
Let's talk a little bit about some of the details
of the plan. I mentioned. Education is a huge part
of that. They want to do a free pre K
(04:20):
for ages three and four. They also want to give
people two years free of community college. So right now
the nation's guarantee of a free education is at thirteen years.
They want to bump that up to seventeen years of
free education. How how how is that going to work?
The White House identifies certain levels of funding that they
want to include to achieve those goals. I think it's
(04:41):
about two hundred fifty billion or so for universal pre
K for all three and four year olds in the country,
and about a hundred hundred fifty billion over ten years
for free community college two years of pre community college.
But the mechanisms for that are very unclear, and it
actually became apparent in the release of the plan last
night to reporters and then to the but this morning
that they're really counting on a lot of state aid
(05:04):
and state money being used to reach that goal. So
the White House is saying that the money that they're
providing amount to that goal. But we've already seen these
kinds of approaches from Democrats not really work out in
the past. You may recall, some listeners may recall that
under Obama, there was a lot of hope that the
Medicaid expansions that they have proved as part of the
Affordable Care Act would induce states to um, you know,
(05:26):
expand Medicaid and cover the poorest people um in those
states with health insurance, but that the states would kick
in some amount. That can happen, and a lot of people,
a lot of poor people in states controlled by Republicans
never saw that expansion. And so there's a lot of
concerning among some of the advocates for these policies that
while the White House is trumpeting these pleasures as fulfilling
(05:47):
these probably health social goals, that they're not actually willing
to do the requisite spending to achieve them. You know,
it's already getting kind of panned on both sides, really
on the Democratic side on some areas for not going
too far obviously on the Republican side for raising taxes
too much, and the increase in the role that government
would play in American society. One of those things that
(06:08):
I guess being criticized for maybe not going too far.
Those child text credits that were kind of implemented so far.
I think they want to try to extend it to
with this new plan, but you know, they're trying to
keep the cost down of the overall bill. So they
said let's keep not extended indefinitely, you know. So there's
like a lot of wiggle room and jockeying with all
(06:29):
of this. It's such a strange dynamic you put your
finger on because while as you correctly say, the White
House plan only expends the tax credit through the White
House and Biden themselves keep saying that they want to
make it permanent, and it's basically an admission that they're
trying to play games with the number that they envisioned
(06:49):
this policy being permanently enacted. But they do not want
to be tied to the implication that because this program
will be expensive in the back half of the decade,
it gets actually much more expensive to extend after because
that is the year at which the Republican increase in
the child tax credit from twenty seven team from the
(07:10):
seventeen Taxhall if that will end. So to extend it
beyond five would require them not only to pay for
the extension from the stimulus plan passed in March, but
also the expansion from the twenty seventeen Republican tax with
some jobs back. So they're trying to avoid being sound
the sticker shock, but at the same time acknowledging that
their intention is to spend the same amount of money
(07:32):
as it's an awkward dance they're trying to pull off.
So we have the Infrastructure Plan, we have the American
Families Plan. Now they're both going to be really tough
to get through. What would a win look like for
the Biden administration with these two bills, because, as I mentioned,
you know, they put a lot in it. They know
they're gonna have to negotiate a lot of things and
then they won't be the same at the end. But
what would a win look like for them? From the
(07:54):
people I talked to in the White House? There's some
debate about whether they're acting on this appropriately, but I
think is a broad recognition that under the Obama years,
Democrats didn't really do enough to prove to everyday Americans
that the federal government was capable of delivering concrete, material
benefits that would improve their economic well being and standing.
(08:14):
And I think, you know, there's a lot of different provisions,
but the White House is hoping that these two packages
combined and enough of them gets through that the economy
is changed. I know it sounds maybe amorphous, but it's
changed in a way that that people noticed in their
daily lives. They have these plants to you know, build
electric vehicle charging stations throughout the country, to weather rize
(08:37):
millions and millions of homes, to traumatically reduce the amount
of families face and their childcare bills, um what they
pay to have their parents and grandparents watched through the
elder care system that's so broken in this country. And
I don't know what the precise metrics for success for
them looks like, but I think they're really aiming to
have an impact so that people really notice sort of
(09:00):
the economy gets better and not you know, they're they're
they're very careful about this and sort of understated, but
the way they frame it is build back better. That's
by and slogan, and it's it's a call to say,
you know, let's not just go back to where we
were before COVID, make sort of these structural adjustments to
the American economy that go beyond you know, immediate emergency release.
(09:22):
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
It's extent to which we own those things is limited
by the extent to which they can do a lot
(09:43):
of these fancy and cool things. There's all these limits
that come from essentially licensing access to software that's now
just inescapable in our lives. Joining us now is Dan Green,
contributor to Vox. Thanks for joining us, Dan, thank you
for having me on. You wrote an interesting piece for
Vox that I wanted to talk about the erosion of
personal ownership and the tagline everything from your Fritish to
(10:06):
your tractor can change without your permission. So that caught me.
I wanted to talk about it, and you do mention
a lot of the stuff that really I feel attached
to streaming services, movies, music, you know, and kind of
how a lot of ways you don't own that stuff anymore,
unless you have a really killer record collection or a
CD collection. I guess if you want to throw it
out that way. You don't have ownership of those things
(10:29):
that much anymore. You subscribe to a service and you
can get all the songs you want the same thing
with movies and TV stuff, but you don't necessarily own
those things, and you go into a bunch of other
things as well. So Dan, tell us a little bit
about this, the erosion of personal ownership. You know, it
was DVDs that were kind of my entry point to
thinking about this. Most prepared to move apartment and my
(10:51):
girlfriend wanted me to get rid of my DVD collection
to save space, and you know, I kind of balked
at the idea that I wouldn't be able to watch
some of these moves or TV shows anytime. I wanted
to write that's the whole allure of these subscriptions to
things like Netflix and Hulu and whatever, all these streaming
services that you can watch them any time and on demand.
But you can't really because you don't know that you're
(11:13):
going to have access to those things forever. That you know,
the libraries can change, the selection available to you can change,
and you have to keep paying forever to continue to
have that access. So it's a very different model of consumption.
And that just got me thinking about all sorts of
other things that are kind of tied to this digitization
of our possessions, for lack of a better term, whether
(11:35):
it's MP three, is even that you download and own,
or digital movies that you download and own through Amazon
or whatever it may be, those can be revoked. You're
really licensing access to that specific file, and you can't
do whatever you want with it. You can't lend it
out to a friend the same way you could with
a physical copy of the of that same piece of media.
The reasons that you can't do that stem from these
(11:57):
legal decisions and licensing issue is that now because so
much of our life and so many of the objects
in our life, like refrigerators, like tractors, cars, phones obviously
become embedded with software, and that software is, you know,
susceptible to or governed by the same licensing regulations and
(12:18):
the same limitations on what you can do with those things.
So all these things that we think that we have,
whether it's music and movies and things you stream, or
the phone in your hand that you do everything on,
or the refrigerator that has some cool software inn that
lets you do some cool, fancy stuff, it's extent to
which we own those things is limited by the extent
(12:39):
to which they can do a lot of these fancy
and cool things. There's all these limits that come from
essentially licensing access to software that's now just inescapable in
our lives. So now that we kind of realize how
little control over some of the things we think we
own we have. Tell me about the personal attachments that
we form with the things that we own. You mention
(13:00):
and in the article it could be a book that
has the you know you write in the margins. You know,
that's something very personal, your own personal notes that you
put it, but it's a physical copy of the book.
Going back to music, if you own that record collection,
it's curated music. Things that you own, we form attachments
to that, identities to that. Tell me a little bit
about that. There's this idea that I talked about in
(13:21):
the piece called the Extended Self, and it comes from
this professor Russell Belk be coined in the eighties and
how possessions kind of come to be part of our identity,
of of who we are. And one of the ways
that they do that is through our use of them
and the control that we exercise over them. But also
over time we imprint ourselves on them. As you mentioned
(13:44):
notes in the margins of books. You know, those are
ways that we make make it so that that copy
of that book, it's not just a copy of that
book that could be interchanged with anyone' that's that's our
copy and we know that it's ours and you know
that comes from the dense and dings, uncertain possessions, or
you know, just a you know, a little spill on
something that reminds you of, oh yeah, when I spilled
some coffee on the corner of that book, or whatever
(14:06):
it may be. There are all these ways that we
then kind of mark ourselves onto our possessions. And you know,
there have been experiments that have been done, studies that
have been done that show the way that people hold
these objects to be more valuable than their replacements. What's
known as the endowment effect. Where if you have a
copy of a book that you've had for five ten years,
and especially if it's a book you really love and
(14:28):
means something you or it could be a chair, it
could be all sorts of things, someone offers you what's
essentially an identical copy of that. Here's a different copy
of that book, or here's a different chair, or here's
a different table, or whatever it may be. Often people
won't make that swap. You know, it's one thing maybe
if it's if it's damaged beyond repair the version that
you have and and the other one's kind of better
(14:49):
in that way, But often we want our version of
that thing. So we established a relationship with these objects
that way, and they develop what's known in some circles
as a cultural biography. These items in our lives come
to have their own personal histories attached to them, and
that adds a value to them that can't be replaced
(15:10):
by just essentially an identical copy of that same object.
And that's something that's very true in the physical world.
In the digital world, you don't necessarily have that relationship.
You know, you're reading the books, there's nothing like that
where oh, it's a different copy of the book that
that's not personally yours. You know, I don't I don't
really know how that would necessarily even be determined. You know.
There's one of the professors I talked to in the
(15:32):
story talked about how she found in her studies and
related to this, that people will have a copy of
a book, especially younger people, and she gave the example
of Harry Potter fans that they will have a copy
of the book, a physical copy of the book, and
they'll also have a digital version of the book in
the book because that's what they read. They read it
on their kindle or whatever device, and because that's just
(15:53):
the way that they consume things, but they want to
have the physical copy as well, because that's the one
that they have, that's the that gets to sit on
the shelf. That's part of their lives and it comes
with them when they moved to a new home. It's
just part of their actual physical world. So there's another
relationship that they have their beyond just consuming this text.
So what's the next step to this conversation? Because also
(16:14):
when some of the experts you spoke to, they talk
about these four rights of traditional ownership that are lost
in this shift that we get on license based subscription
based systems. The right to ban, right to run, right
to hack, and right to sell. And you know, these
are all things you know, as simple as uh as
you mentioned those kind of John Deer tractors and all
that stuff modify things that would ruin the license for them.
(16:36):
But you know, we own that tractor, so we should
be able to do what we want. The right to
sell passing on of digital goods, I know, in the
video game industry that's tough. You buy a digital form
of video game, you basically own it for life. You
can't really sell that to another person. It's very difficult.
So we lose these types of things when we go
to that. So what's kind of the next step, How
(16:56):
do we regain it or will we ever regain it
now that everything's kind of moved past that. To completely
regain it might be difficult, just because so many of
these things are going to continue to be intangible and
they're not going to be physical things that you can
just go around at hand to somebody else or pass
on to other people who take the possessions out of
your house after you pass away or whatever maybe, or
(17:18):
if you lend to a friend or give to a
friend or sell at at a yard sale. So that's
going to be hard in a lot of ways to
completely regain. But one of the entry points to getting
some of these rights back centers on the right to
hack or the right to repair, and the right to
repair is growing as a movement that incorporates a lot
of different people from different sectors of life, whether that
(17:40):
is the owners of tractors, the farmers who have these
John Deer tractors with software in them that then they
can't repair the way they want to because John Deer
owns the intellectual property of the software, so they get
to control anything connected to that software gets repaired, and
so you have people fighting battles on that front with
psical items like that they want to repair according to
(18:03):
their own wishes and their own financial interests, you know,
just as a consumer that you want to find the
best deal to get it fixed. And then you have
people who want to run certain software on their phones
and other devices that they feel like, these are my devices,
A should run the software I want to own or
I want to run on them. So a lot of
this gets kind of lump together under the right to repair,
(18:25):
are also the right to hack, the right to kind
of do what you want with these goods, and that's
gaining steam sometimes on the state level, also on the
international level in Europe, is something that states and governments
are carving out as a protection that they are willing
to kind of legally granted consumers beyond the normal kind
(18:46):
of legally established precedents in these cases. So there are
bills that are aimed at trying to establish your right
to repair that once you have a device, you can
repair it in the way that you want, you can
run it the way that you want. I think that
of of four rights, that's going to be the one
or it has so far been the one where there's
been the most ground gained, and that that might open
(19:06):
up a lot of doors for us to be able
to treat these kind of digital and software based properties
the same way we often treat physical ones, where they
are ours to do what we want with once we
own them. Dan Green, contributor to Vox, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.
(19:30):
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
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a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio,
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The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your Daily
(19:52):
Dive
It's Thursday April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The White House has proposed
the third massive spending plan of its administration. The latest
plan is called the American Families Plan and will cost
one point eight trillion dollars. The plan will expand access
(00:22):
to education with free universal preschool in two years of
tuition free community college, among other initiatives, and would be
paid for by raising taxes on investors and wealthy. American
package cannot be passed without Congress. It will be a
tough sell for many, as is. Jeff Stein, white House
economics reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for what's
(00:42):
in the plan next. There's an ongoing erosion of personal
ownership with the rise of digital purchases, subscription and streaming
based services. Do we even really own music or movies anymore?
Beyond that, other products that we may buy that have,
for example, proprietary software that many to be surfaced by
a specific parent company may also hinder what we do
(01:03):
with our property. This new dynamic may also be changing
the relationship and attachments we have to what we own.
Dan Green, contributor to Vox, joins us for how some
rights of traditional ownership are changing. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. I knew the president would being left
of center, and I understand that the collections have, but
(01:28):
I never thought of being left. Joining us now was
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post.
Thanks for joining us, Jeff, Hey, thanks so much for
having The Biden administration has unveiled a one point eight
trillion dollars spending and tax plan. This is the the
third spending plan so far of his administration. We had
the recovery of planned, the American Recovery Plan. This is
(01:50):
going to be the American Families Plan. A lot of
this UH plan has a lot to do with education.
So Jeff, tell us a little bit about what we're
seeing in this plan. So um, as you said, correctly,
this is a third policy, you know, major economic proposal
from the White House and spy and took office. The
first at one point nine trillion dollar economic relief package
was passed in March, and since then the White House
(02:12):
has n't veiled two separate but related efforts that they
say collectively add up to his Build Back Better agenda.
Those four trillion dollars stretched over two plans, the first
of which is centered on infrastructure, manufacturing, in jobs, and
the second, release yesterday or I guess rather today, is
centered all in childcare, education, paid family, and medically even
(02:34):
other programs that the White House says are more directly
geared towards improving economic fortunes and middle class families. The
distinction between the two plans kind of blurs a little bit.
It's a little unclear how they'll pass or if they'll pass,
but those are the two main buckets were looking at.
My understanding is that they might not be able to
really get to this plan for some months though, to
be able to start hashing it out. It's definitely one
(02:55):
of those things where everyone in Washington is asking everyone
else what they think will happen with these two plans,
and I think the answer is that really nobody, including
the White House, including Pelosi, including Schumer's, and not a
question that there's noble answer to. Unfortunately, there's a ton
of stuff in both of these plans that a lot
of people have been clamoring for that really have widespread consensus,
(03:16):
have leased on the Democratic side and then pull quite
well provisions such as you know, as I mentioned paid
family and medically, America is one of the countries in
the world with the highest levels of child poverty. In
the White House temporarily approved an expansion of the child
tax credit in March, but that's gonna expire, um and
so child poverty would spike if that's not extended. So
(03:37):
there are all these things that a lot of people, um,
you know, these among the Democrats are very adamant. Needs
need to get done, but the sequencing and the timing
is really unclear, especially because the tax provisions both in
the Manufacturing Plan and in this Family's Plan are very contentious.
The taxes on the Manufacturing Plan would be primarily centered
on corporations and businesses. The taxes in the Family's plan
(03:59):
are centered on investors and rich Americans. But really those
are both very controversial. It's very easy to spend relatives,
you know, taking money away from some constituency, especially one
um as influential as rich people when it comes to Congress.
Let's talk a little bit about some of the details
of the plan. I mentioned. Education is a huge part
of that. They want to do a free pre K
(04:20):
for ages three and four. They also want to give
people two years free of community college. So right now
the nation's guarantee of a free education is at thirteen years.
They want to bump that up to seventeen years of
free education. How how how is that going to work?
The White House identifies certain levels of funding that they
want to include to achieve those goals. I think it's
(04:41):
about two hundred fifty billion or so for universal pre
K for all three and four year olds in the country,
and about a hundred hundred fifty billion over ten years
for free community college two years of pre community college.
But the mechanisms for that are very unclear, and it
actually became apparent in the release of the plan last
night to reporters and then to the but this morning
that they're really counting on a lot of state aid
(05:04):
and state money being used to reach that goal. So
the White House is saying that the money that they're
providing amount to that goal. But we've already seen these
kinds of approaches from Democrats not really work out in
the past. You may recall, some listeners may recall that
under Obama, there was a lot of hope that the
Medicaid expansions that they have proved as part of the
Affordable Care Act would induce states to um, you know,
(05:26):
expand Medicaid and cover the poorest people um in those
states with health insurance, but that the states would kick
in some amount. That can happen, and a lot of people,
a lot of poor people in states controlled by Republicans
never saw that expansion. And so there's a lot of
concerning among some of the advocates for these policies that
while the White House is trumpeting these pleasures as fulfilling
(05:47):
these probably health social goals, that they're not actually willing
to do the requisite spending to achieve them. You know,
it's already getting kind of panned on both sides, really
on the Democratic side on some areas for not going
too far obviously on the Republican side for raising taxes
too much, and the increase in the role that government
would play in American society. One of those things that
(06:08):
I guess being criticized for maybe not going too far.
Those child text credits that were kind of implemented so far.
I think they want to try to extend it to
with this new plan, but you know, they're trying to
keep the cost down of the overall bill. So they
said let's keep not extended indefinitely, you know. So there's
like a lot of wiggle room and jockeying with all
(06:29):
of this. It's such a strange dynamic you put your
finger on because while as you correctly say, the White
House plan only expends the tax credit through the White
House and Biden themselves keep saying that they want to
make it permanent, and it's basically an admission that they're
trying to play games with the number that they envisioned
(06:49):
this policy being permanently enacted. But they do not want
to be tied to the implication that because this program
will be expensive in the back half of the decade,
it gets actually much more expensive to extend after because
that is the year at which the Republican increase in
the child tax credit from twenty seven team from the
(07:10):
seventeen Taxhall if that will end. So to extend it
beyond five would require them not only to pay for
the extension from the stimulus plan passed in March, but
also the expansion from the twenty seventeen Republican tax with
some jobs back. So they're trying to avoid being sound
the sticker shock, but at the same time acknowledging that
their intention is to spend the same amount of money
(07:32):
as it's an awkward dance they're trying to pull off.
So we have the Infrastructure Plan, we have the American
Families Plan. Now they're both going to be really tough
to get through. What would a win look like for
the Biden administration with these two bills, because, as I mentioned,
you know, they put a lot in it. They know
they're gonna have to negotiate a lot of things and
then they won't be the same at the end. But
what would a win look like for them? From the
(07:54):
people I talked to in the White House? There's some
debate about whether they're acting on this appropriately, but I
think is a broad recognition that under the Obama years,
Democrats didn't really do enough to prove to everyday Americans
that the federal government was capable of delivering concrete, material
benefits that would improve their economic well being and standing.
(08:14):
And I think, you know, there's a lot of different provisions,
but the White House is hoping that these two packages
combined and enough of them gets through that the economy
is changed. I know it sounds maybe amorphous, but it's
changed in a way that that people noticed in their
daily lives. They have these plants to you know, build
electric vehicle charging stations throughout the country, to weather rize
(08:37):
millions and millions of homes, to traumatically reduce the amount
of families face and their childcare bills, um what they
pay to have their parents and grandparents watched through the
elder care system that's so broken in this country. And
I don't know what the precise metrics for success for
them looks like, but I think they're really aiming to
have an impact so that people really notice sort of
(09:00):
the economy gets better and not you know, they're they're
they're very careful about this and sort of understated, but
the way they frame it is build back better. That's
by and slogan, and it's it's a call to say,
you know, let's not just go back to where we
were before COVID, make sort of these structural adjustments to
the American economy that go beyond you know, immediate emergency release.
(09:22):
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
It's extent to which we own those things is limited
by the extent to which they can do a lot
(09:43):
of these fancy and cool things. There's all these limits
that come from essentially licensing access to software that's now
just inescapable in our lives. Joining us now is Dan Green,
contributor to Vox. Thanks for joining us, Dan, thank you
for having me on. You wrote an interesting piece for
Vox that I wanted to talk about the erosion of
personal ownership and the tagline everything from your Fritish to
(10:06):
your tractor can change without your permission. So that caught me.
I wanted to talk about it, and you do mention
a lot of the stuff that really I feel attached
to streaming services, movies, music, you know, and kind of
how a lot of ways you don't own that stuff anymore,
unless you have a really killer record collection or a
CD collection. I guess if you want to throw it
out that way. You don't have ownership of those things
(10:29):
that much anymore. You subscribe to a service and you
can get all the songs you want the same thing
with movies and TV stuff, but you don't necessarily own
those things, and you go into a bunch of other
things as well. So Dan, tell us a little bit
about this, the erosion of personal ownership. You know, it
was DVDs that were kind of my entry point to
thinking about this. Most prepared to move apartment and my
(10:51):
girlfriend wanted me to get rid of my DVD collection
to save space, and you know, I kind of balked
at the idea that I wouldn't be able to watch
some of these moves or TV shows anytime. I wanted
to write that's the whole allure of these subscriptions to
things like Netflix and Hulu and whatever, all these streaming
services that you can watch them any time and on demand.
But you can't really because you don't know that you're
(11:13):
going to have access to those things forever. That you know,
the libraries can change, the selection available to you can change,
and you have to keep paying forever to continue to
have that access. So it's a very different model of consumption.
And that just got me thinking about all sorts of
other things that are kind of tied to this digitization
of our possessions, for lack of a better term, whether
(11:35):
it's MP three, is even that you download and own,
or digital movies that you download and own through Amazon
or whatever it may be, those can be revoked. You're
really licensing access to that specific file, and you can't
do whatever you want with it. You can't lend it
out to a friend the same way you could with
a physical copy of the of that same piece of media.
The reasons that you can't do that stem from these
(11:57):
legal decisions and licensing issue is that now because so
much of our life and so many of the objects
in our life, like refrigerators, like tractors, cars, phones obviously
become embedded with software, and that software is, you know,
susceptible to or governed by the same licensing regulations and
(12:18):
the same limitations on what you can do with those things.
So all these things that we think that we have,
whether it's music and movies and things you stream, or
the phone in your hand that you do everything on,
or the refrigerator that has some cool software inn that
lets you do some cool, fancy stuff, it's extent to
which we own those things is limited by the extent
(12:39):
to which they can do a lot of these fancy
and cool things. There's all these limits that come from
essentially licensing access to software that's now just inescapable in
our lives. So now that we kind of realize how
little control over some of the things we think we
own we have. Tell me about the personal attachments that
we form with the things that we own. You mention
(13:00):
and in the article it could be a book that
has the you know you write in the margins. You know,
that's something very personal, your own personal notes that you
put it, but it's a physical copy of the book.
Going back to music, if you own that record collection,
it's curated music. Things that you own, we form attachments
to that, identities to that. Tell me a little bit
about that. There's this idea that I talked about in
(13:21):
the piece called the Extended Self, and it comes from
this professor Russell Belk be coined in the eighties and
how possessions kind of come to be part of our identity,
of of who we are. And one of the ways
that they do that is through our use of them
and the control that we exercise over them. But also
over time we imprint ourselves on them. As you mentioned
(13:44):
notes in the margins of books. You know, those are
ways that we make make it so that that copy
of that book, it's not just a copy of that
book that could be interchanged with anyone' that's that's our
copy and we know that it's ours and you know
that comes from the dense and dings, uncertain possessions, or
you know, just a you know, a little spill on
something that reminds you of, oh yeah, when I spilled
some coffee on the corner of that book, or whatever
(14:06):
it may be. There are all these ways that we
then kind of mark ourselves onto our possessions. And you know,
there have been experiments that have been done, studies that
have been done that show the way that people hold
these objects to be more valuable than their replacements. What's
known as the endowment effect. Where if you have a
copy of a book that you've had for five ten years,
and especially if it's a book you really love and
(14:28):
means something you or it could be a chair, it
could be all sorts of things, someone offers you what's
essentially an identical copy of that. Here's a different copy
of that book, or here's a different chair, or here's
a different table, or whatever it may be. Often people
won't make that swap. You know, it's one thing maybe
if it's if it's damaged beyond repair the version that
you have and and the other one's kind of better
(14:49):
in that way, But often we want our version of
that thing. So we established a relationship with these objects
that way, and they develop what's known in some circles
as a cultural biography. These items in our lives come
to have their own personal histories attached to them, and
that adds a value to them that can't be replaced
(15:10):
by just essentially an identical copy of that same object.
And that's something that's very true in the physical world.
In the digital world, you don't necessarily have that relationship.
You know, you're reading the books, there's nothing like that
where oh, it's a different copy of the book that
that's not personally yours. You know, I don't I don't
really know how that would necessarily even be determined. You know.
There's one of the professors I talked to in the
(15:32):
story talked about how she found in her studies and
related to this, that people will have a copy of
a book, especially younger people, and she gave the example
of Harry Potter fans that they will have a copy
of the book, a physical copy of the book, and
they'll also have a digital version of the book in
the book because that's what they read. They read it
on their kindle or whatever device, and because that's just
(15:53):
the way that they consume things, but they want to
have the physical copy as well, because that's the one
that they have, that's the that gets to sit on
the shelf. That's part of their lives and it comes
with them when they moved to a new home. It's
just part of their actual physical world. So there's another
relationship that they have their beyond just consuming this text.
So what's the next step to this conversation? Because also
(16:14):
when some of the experts you spoke to, they talk
about these four rights of traditional ownership that are lost
in this shift that we get on license based subscription
based systems. The right to ban, right to run, right
to hack, and right to sell. And you know, these
are all things you know, as simple as uh as
you mentioned those kind of John Deer tractors and all
that stuff modify things that would ruin the license for them.
(16:36):
But you know, we own that tractor, so we should
be able to do what we want. The right to
sell passing on of digital goods, I know, in the
video game industry that's tough. You buy a digital form
of video game, you basically own it for life. You
can't really sell that to another person. It's very difficult.
So we lose these types of things when we go
to that. So what's kind of the next step, How
(16:56):
do we regain it or will we ever regain it
now that everything's kind of moved past that. To completely
regain it might be difficult, just because so many of
these things are going to continue to be intangible and
they're not going to be physical things that you can
just go around at hand to somebody else or pass
on to other people who take the possessions out of
your house after you pass away or whatever maybe, or
(17:18):
if you lend to a friend or give to a
friend or sell at at a yard sale. So that's
going to be hard in a lot of ways to
completely regain. But one of the entry points to getting
some of these rights back centers on the right to
hack or the right to repair, and the right to
repair is growing as a movement that incorporates a lot
of different people from different sectors of life, whether that
(17:40):
is the owners of tractors, the farmers who have these
John Deer tractors with software in them that then they
can't repair the way they want to because John Deer
owns the intellectual property of the software, so they get
to control anything connected to that software gets repaired, and
so you have people fighting battles on that front with
psical items like that they want to repair according to
(18:03):
their own wishes and their own financial interests, you know,
just as a consumer that you want to find the
best deal to get it fixed. And then you have
people who want to run certain software on their phones
and other devices that they feel like, these are my devices,
A should run the software I want to own or
I want to run on them. So a lot of
this gets kind of lump together under the right to repair,
(18:25):
are also the right to hack, the right to kind
of do what you want with these goods, and that's
gaining steam sometimes on the state level, also on the
international level in Europe, is something that states and governments
are carving out as a protection that they are willing
to kind of legally granted consumers beyond the normal kind
(18:46):
of legally established precedents in these cases. So there are
bills that are aimed at trying to establish your right
to repair that once you have a device, you can
repair it in the way that you want, you can
run it the way that you want. I think that
of of four rights, that's going to be the one
or it has so far been the one where there's
been the most ground gained, and that that might open
(19:06):
up a lot of doors for us to be able
to treat these kind of digital and software based properties
the same way we often treat physical ones, where they
are ours to do what we want with once we
own them. Dan Green, contributor to Vox, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.
(19:30):
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
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a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
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The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your Daily
(19:52):
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