All businesses will eventually turn into subscriptions

Subscriptions make sense for things that you get a regular recurring supply of, like milk and newspapers. They might make sense for things that you can get regular upgrades for, like software (although often the &quot;upgrades&quot; aren&#x27;t really worth much). But they make no sense at all for durable goods that can last for years without significant upgrades, like cars. The whole point with such goods is that you pay once and you own them for their entire useful life.<p>(Actually, there is a subscription-type business model for cars; it&#x27;s called &quot;leasing&quot;. And the only people who do it are people who can afford to be fleeced. It makes no sense at all for an ordinary car owner. I once had a car dealer try to sell me a lease deal when I was there to pick up a new car. His deal had a larger monthly payment than the loan I already had pre-approved from my credit union, and the residual after 3 years--what I would have to pay then to own the car outright--was more than the balance on the loan would be at that point. I asked the dealer how it could possibly make financial sense for me to take such a deal. He had no answer.)

You will own nothing and you will be happy.<p>I am waiting all this to crumble under its own weight. The concept of ownership will not go away. It takes time the masses to realize, but eventually they will realize the truth. And will buy nothing. This ultimately will bring people down to earth and they will revolt. The picture planned by Davos elites and most powerful corporations has one big flaw. There is no way to save corrupt system by pretending that countries can do something for their citizens by some &quot;social&quot; agenda and continue to increase taxation and regulation over small businesses and regular people. Corporations are not paying at all.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itep.org&#x2F;55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-tax&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itep.org&#x2F;55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-t...</a>

&gt;&gt; The subscription model was originally conceived by the utility companies that needed to keep providing a service over a prolonged period of time to their customers. The original subscription service was milk which had to be delivered fresh every day<p>No. &quot;16th century Germany also saw subscription-based, handwritten news. Those who subscribed to these publications were generally low-level government officials and also merchants.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;History_of_newspaper_publishing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;History_of_newspaper_publishin...</a><p>That is just newspapers. The concept of a per-month or per-year rate for access a service has been a thing since at least ancient Rome.

I agree that computer hardware manufacturers need to either build poor quality (selling you a new light bulb every 1000 hours) or rent things out as peak Moores law unfolds, even if some predict the litho to keep getting smaller (EUV) the CPU performance per watt will not increase, mostly because the architecture can&#x27;t take advantage of the new transistors and random memory speed has been stuck for 20 years.

Gaming is ahead here, they thought subscriptions was the future 15 years ago and everyone tried to make subscription games. Then free to play with microtransactions came around and completely turned that on its head, microtransactions generates way more revenue than subscriptions!<p>It might not apply to every field, but it is wrong to say that everything will turn into subscriptions.

I honestly don&#x27;t understand how this makes (macro-) economic sense.<p>The article talks about a situation where there is more supply than demand. We can turn this around and say there is a scarcity of &quot;demand slots&quot;, where a demand slots is the willingness of a consumer to make a single purchase.<p>Demand slots are limited, but at least they are &quot;sustainable&quot;: If you have a middle class with stable jobs and disposable income, you&#x27;ll have a fresh supply of demand slots each month for businesses to consume.<p>Subscriptions are <i>not</i> sustainable: There is only a limited number of subscriptions a household with constant income can take. The number of &quot;subscription slots&quot; has a hard limit given by the number of people employed and overall wage levels. They don&#x27;t renew unless there is significant wage growth.<p>So if businesses want to switch from one-time purchases to subscription models to keep up growth, this new growth will hit limits even sooner.<p>For consumers, it will be a situation where you can either choose to be financially irresponsible - or to subject yourself to a barrage of nag-screens and intentionally worsened service each day, as every company and product you interact will try to upsell you. Also prepare to renounce and abstain from things a lot more consciously as you do today, as you&#x27;ll constantly have to evaluate which functions of daily life you currently need an which you can tolerate giving up for the moment.<p>&quot;Personal responsibility&quot; is all well and good, but the term rings hollow when half of the economy depends on you making irresponsible decisions.

I think the Jetbrains model of perpetual fallback licence and renewals for continuous updates beyond the subscription period is the most fair model for both the user and the developer. Wish more companies would adopt this.

The reason this will happen is NOT because it’s better for the customer (though in some cases it is).<p>If a company is getting a recurring payment they can afford to spend a lot more acquiring a customer because they can compare that with a yearly &#x2F; lifetime cost.<p>If you’re selling a one off you can’t justify any more than that in your marketing.<p>It becomes an arms race and the subscription companies win out because they get more money from more customers and ultimately use that to make a better product.<p>It’s happened like that with iPhone apps. Remember when you could buy a gif editing app and it didn’t come with an annual subscription? I miss those days.

Seems like one of those articles that predicts whatever&#x27;s somewhat true right now, will continue getting ever more true forever. Like the growth of my puppy.<p>I imagine in 100 years, people will look back at articles like this as evidence of the strange time when people didn&#x27;t own things. But eventually - so will go the article - the disadvantages outweighed the advantages and a new business model (or the recurrence of an old model) came to prevail. Until it too passed.

The transition from &quot;slow-down in working age population&quot; to &quot;subscription model&quot; appears a bit drastic. Both are huge topics, but could be slightly unrelated. Population growth stagnation may not be the major driver for subscription model. It is just a new way to to increase the cost of product and spread the cost in time so that it doesn&#x27;t hurt the customer.<p>Same as buying stuff on loan. You can buy a car or home with almost zero down payment and keep paying the amount over next 20 years. It is essentially paying for usage. You can call it subscription.<p>Outrageously, I find that even education&#x2F;training also moved to subscription model. You keep taking the same exam every few years and keep paying them.

&gt; There are still places in the world where getting things is hard; but in most of the developed and developing nations, that is not the case. [*except in America where it seems like getting anything involves a 3-week wait]<p>Except in America? That&#x27;s a hell of a caveat.<p>Putting that aside, as an American who lives overseas, it all depends on what things you want to get and in many cases, how fast you want them, how much you&#x27;re you&#x27;re willing to pay. Things you take for granted in one place can be very difficult to get in another.

I read stuff like that and I shake my head. I mean from get go the premise that everything will be subscription based is about as valid as that everything will be digital is just not true. There are things that people will not be willing to subscribe to ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;car-subscription-service-buying-leasing-explainer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;car-subscription-service-...</a> ) and if you see the prices you can immediately tell why.<p>I will admit that I am biased, because I hate the trend Tesla started with making cars more like trial software and I absolutely despite Musk for his role in that, but based on what I saw in my MBA classes, he is certainly not a lone voice.<p>In other words, attempts will be made, but its hardly unavoidable version of the future. I sure as fuck am not paying extra for DRM&#x27;d lights in my car.

All my life, quite a while, subscriptions have been available. In spite of that I have almost none. I prefer to buy the flat, car, even my phone for cash. It&#x27;s mostly cheaper and less hassle. I think subscriptions will me available in most businesses but whether consumers will chose them is another matter.

So I&#x27;m going to get a subscription to MacDo, just because I want a burger three times a year?

The first part that then seques into the subscription based economy part is pretty shallow and fails to provide much of an argument for the emergence of subscription based services. Imo, it&#x27;s not very accurate either. European immigrants didn&#x27;t conquer the US from native americans primarily because of a higher birthrate, it had more to do with firepower. Japan accepts very few immigrants simply because they don&#x27;t want to, not because of language barriers or lack of a colonial past. And so on.

This article did not live up to the promise of its headline. I stopped reading part way through the meandering generalizations (with no references or citations) before I got to the main thesis.

IMO, appreciating assets should be owned, depreciating consumables should be rented.

Countries are already (mostly mandatory) subscription based

The title was more intriguing than the article. It seemed a bit incoherent.

All subscriptions will eventually be free

I hope not.

Wet dreams