Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ragnese 2051 days ago
The article is definitely not the "best" version of this vision of the future I've read...

Not that I'm advocating for this future in any way, but I assume that a more realistic version of this (especially for as near as 2030) is that many people still have jobs that have an actual schedule. Maybe we can be optimistic and dream that people get to work less than 40 hours a week to have a reasonable quality of life.

But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense. In a future of "no ownership", you'd still own your shirt and toothbrush. Probably you'd still own your playstation (but do you actually own your video games today??? Can you play them offline? Does your console have ads?) as well. You wouldn't own a car, or your home (you'd have rights while you occupy your home, but not after you move), maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free.

So for your example, I imagine that immediate delivery services might still exist, but that would be kind of a "high class" service and might be expensive. More than likely, you'd have Amazon dropping off your weekly grocery list on your designated day (e.g., "Wednesdays are trash day and grocery day in my neighborhood").

I highly doubt that we'll have that much more robot workforce by 2030. The only industry where that's possible is brick-and-mortar shopping having no more cashiers, which I do see as somewhat likely.

4 comments

I'm not even taking into consideration de 2030 part.

But yeah, I generally agree with you. Especially in this:

> But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense ... maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free.

You could rent clothes for a day...

Wake up. Clothes have been delivered overnight. Put them on, wear for the day. At the end of the day, put them in a box outside wherever you're staying the night.

That seems like a feasible thing to build today, if you ignored all the current consequences of fast-fashion.

And in the sense of formal wear, it has for decades. Other than James Bond, I don't think most people have any need to own a tuxedo and rent one in the handful of times in their life when they need it.
> Probably you'd still own your playstation

We're not far off to rent that, with streaming. Which I can totally see myself doing one day actually.