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Comment by philk | Hacker News Reader

Awesome, I'd like to take one of my Lamborghinis for a spin.

Oh, wait, I can't, because I don't actually own any.

Paul Graham's Stuff essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html) makes the case for not worrying about possessions far better than this hilariously bad analogy.

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It's not that bad of an analogy. PG notes that 'stuff' is a highly illiquid asset, but the ebay analogy promotes liquidity by buying and selling used "stuff". This helps you not accumlate junk, and you get to consume a products utility for some time and return it. I think its consistent with the theme of use what you need.

> Awesome, I'd like to take one of my Lamborghinis for a spin. > > Oh, wait, I can't, because I don't actually own any.

If you have a spare £600:

http://www.dreamcarhire.com/cars/lamborghini_lp560_4_spyder....

If their market was as liquid as, say, shares of Berkshire Hathaway (current price: 121,000 dollars) then you could easily buy one in the morning, sell it in the afternoon and likely lose only the transaction cost.

Unless you crash it.

crash what?

BRK.A is a terrible liquidity example.

Crash a Lamborghini.

You do, you just haven't got enough money to pay the "storage costs for them up to this point."

So is it okay to covet having enough money to pay for storage costs?

Actually, by the same logic, you already own the money to pay the costs. You just need to perform the right actions and labor to convince people to take it out of storage for you.

PGs essay is great. To better understand how companies got good at selling us stuff I recommend watching the BBC special "the century of self." It goes over the how and the (amazingly recent) when of developed consumerization. It's available on google video :)

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