Some great pieces are up at The Atlantic about how the young generation appears uninterested in “owning” (ha ha ha, entering into multi-year debt agreements) the main drivers of the economy: cars and houses. Compounding this shift in desires is the new spate of technologies that will enable options other than “ownership.”
The emergence of the “sharing economy”—services that use the Web to let companies and families share otherwise idle goods—is headlined by Zipcar, but it also involves companies such as Airbnb, a shared marketplace for bedrooms and other accommodations for travelers; and thredUP, a site where parents can buy and sell kids’ used clothing.
From a distance, the sharing of cars, rooms, and clothes may seem a curiosity, more hippie than revolutionary. But technology is allowing these practices to go mainstream, and that represents a big new step for consumers. For decades, inventory management was largely the province of companies, not individuals, and continual efforts to reduce inventory—the stock of things just sitting around—helped companies improve their bottom line. But today, peer-to-peer software and mobile technology allow us all to have access, just when we need it, to the things we used to have to buy and hold. And the most powerful application is for cars.
The typical new car costs $30,000 and sits in a garage or parking spot for 23 hours a day. Zipcar gives drivers access to cars they don’t have to own. Car ownership, meanwhile, has slipped down the hierarchy of status goods for many young adults. “Zipcar conducted a survey of Millennials,” Mark Norman, the company’s president and chief operating officer, told us. “And this generation said, ‘We don’t care about owning a car.’ Cars used to be what people aspired to own. Now it’s the smartphone.”
Yet we still expect the “economy” will keep “growing.”