Buying Stuff
Buying stuff is weird now. This isn't even about the terribleness of being off the gold standard or fiat problems or the invention of currency.
Before, when you bought stuff, you mostly knew what you were buying. You'd bring some cash or something to a specific location, find the item, give someone some money, then basically take the item and go home.
Now, with online shopping and stuff, you're technically buying nothing but a promise, the promise that if you give the right amount of money, you'll eventually get a box or something with the item that you wanted. For the most part this has worked fine, and sure there are some sites that can be considered unholy for shopping, but whatever.
What I find most striking, in today's time, now, is the fact that some things that we consider "ours" are more or less subscriptions, or not even tangible. For example, when NFTs were first popularized, the real question was like why though -- you 'owned' a picture that was online and there was proof of it, but that wouldn't stop anyone else from
- taking a screenshot of it
- using it without your permission
- literally viewing it
- making an almost exact replica of it and holding that so it was like why buy one?
Anyways, back to my main point, subscriptions. What I feel is interesting and that I wanted to highlight is the entitlement we feel, not in a bad sense, but more of a 'we bought x thinking it was y'. For example, with Netflix prices being raised, everyone now suddenly realizes that they didn't actually buy a "library of movies," it was more like buying a subscription to a library of movies. The difference is crucial -- in one case we think we own that library and are free to watch whatever is on there, whereas in the second, there is a very obvious and striking relationship we have with the library; the fact that it is not permanently ours.
Buyer beware, I guess. I don't buy much, and when I do, it's all physical stuffs so that's cool.