I despise the whole sharing economy.
I prefer the good old days where i own everything i use.
For an example of the actual sharing economy: I'm a member of a local cooperative that owns and maintains a fleet of ~3k cars, distributed across the country at most train stations and in many neighborhoods. For an initial deposit of $1k, "my car" is whatever I need it to be at that moment. If I need to transport furniture in the morning, it's a Mercedes Vito. For a leisurely drive in the countryside at lunch, it's an Audi convertible. And for a quick grocery run before stores close, a cheap Citroën C1 will do the trick. And because the whole thing is a cooperative, per-km prices are around what I'd pay if I owned any of the cars myself.
Sharing is great. Regulatory arbitrage masquerading as the sharing economy, less so.
I want to leave items in my car for tomorrow: my face mask, (previously) CDs and tapes, etc.
I want to spend the extra money for 'grippy' tires on my car, or do other mods like use sticky notes on the dash. I want my seat to be in the same position I left it in: It can take a day or two to get it just right. I want to have the option to use a seat cover for comfort.
I want to eat my lunch in my car: I control the climate, I control the music, and I can vape or smoke to my hearts content. It's mine to do that with.
I want to put off unloading my vehicle after a long and arduous camping trip, It's already 8PM when I get home. It can wait for tomorrow, and doesn't cost me anything.
I want to let my muddy dog jump into the back seats, I don't care if they get 'ruined', that's my choice about my property. I don't want a cleaning fee.
Lastly, I want to know for sure my dog won't eat the used condom the last person left under the seat. People are animals, no amount of cleaning between uses can ensure cleanliness 100% of the time. But I can in my car.
The point I want to make: SaaS, RegArb and the sharing economy are different things. If VW tries to charge you per-hour to use the software installed on your car, then let's talk about abusive software licensing. If Uber skirts regulations to muscle into the transportation market, let's frame the discussion around employment law and transport regulations. RegArb startups make it a habit of framing their business model as something else; and we're all better off if we don't fall for that trap :)
I own my home so that I can do what I want with it, and I own my car so that I can take it off road, leave my stuff in it, and work on it.
Rental services are bland as fuck. I can organize my music and movies way better than Spotify and Netflix so that it meets my exact preferences.
No. I don't want to live in the rental economy future, and I find it hard to relate to those that do.
But renting a car that would show up at my door and can drive it self back? Man, that would be cool. Would just need it a few time per year.
I'd like to believe a "rentier" future will empower renters with even cheaper options due to efficiency of utility. As you say, having a big chunk of capability sit there most of the time is wasteful in a sense.
However it also feels like it entrenches the rich with further options of rent-seeking.
And it doesn't take much cynicism to think that any benefits due to efficient use of resources will go to the owners pocket, not the customer/renter.
It's so bad that it was cheaper for me to buy a wide format printer than it was to pay a print shop for prints to submit to the planning department.
To me it'd be worth a premium to not have to buy, store and dispose of something I know I'd rarely use, to the point that for some things I might well be fine with paying full purchase price if I can just avoid the hassle.
Renting in those instances would be more about avoiding annoyances than saving money.
At the same time I'd assume the amount of time specialized tools lay idle but lock up capital and storage space for providers of rented capacity means you need to recoup a lot of cost per rental event.
The way I'd explain it, is both ownership and privacy can be boiled down to some simplified abstract terms to show that society benefits more when they are traded away for convenience or price.
However, in practice and in history, this is not the case, and those tradeoffs almost always result in a worse quality of life and economic standpoint for the individual, and more profit, power, and control for the governments and corporations that took those benefits away from the people.
Meant to initiate some thought, but don't take it too seriously.