What scares me about proposals like this is that it's further stratification of society into two separate classes: those who actually own everything and those who must appease the owners.
For example, I can put £40 in my sock drawer every month and, in eight months, I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life. I could then start save that £40 toward a different purchase. Alternately, I could go with the site you listed and pay £40 a month for the rest of my life just for that same PS4, never making headway.
Now, you can point out that a PS4 is almost the definition of an unnecessary luxury and that I don't have to pay the £40 monthly rental fee, and you'd be right. I mostly went with that example because it was right on the front page and such a terrible deal. Still, in the world where I can own things, I can have the PS4 and the £40 a month, after a little over a half year of hardship, while the rental society won't let me have that. Similarly, I can buy a DVD and watch it forever, instead of shelling out for Netflix each month and hoping that they don't drop that title.
Exactly. This is a very old business model; the UK company "Radio Rentals" pioneered it in the 30s and was very successful in the era when TVs were expensive (compared to housing!). It's been largely obliterated by cheap credit.
All of the items on that front page have a monthly rental cost that's about 1/10 the purchase cost. In most cases you'd be better off with a 12 month personal loan than renting it for 12 months and you get to keep the item. If you want it for 18 months then even buying it on a credit card at 20% looks like a reasonable option.
> Similarly, I can buy a DVD and watch it forever, instead of shelling out for Netflix each month and hoping that they don't drop that title.
I agree and I have piles of DVDs to show for it. Here's my problem. One DVD is a fine example, but what about 10, 100, 1000? At some point, it's worth it to use Netflix for storage.
I also have stacks of VHS tapes, and audio cassettes and LPs. The life of my playback hardware is finite. I can refresh the hardware or somehow try to copy my old media to new media. I'll have to think what I might have done different if something like Netflix had existed when I started buying audio and video to own and accumulate.
I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life
If you're amazingly lucky. In actuality, you've got to replace it (or have it repaired, which is usually almost as expensive) every few years because it wears out.
And you've got to continue paying for electricity to run it all that time. And the TV (and replacements/repairs for it) to play it on. And the electricity to run the TV. And a payment for the dwelling in which it's housed. (Which you can buy outright… but even if you do, the payments for upkeep and the taxes to keep roads/etc coming to it end up being of a similar order…) Etc, etc.
In practice, unless we lived under a radically different system (far more different than [state] capitalism with/without a guaranteed minimum income, or communism), we pretty much have to have a system in which everyone can afford to continue making regular payments on many if not most of the expensive things they use.
For example, I can put £40 in my sock drawer every month and, in eight months, I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life. I could then start save that £40 toward a different purchase. Alternately, I could go with the site you listed and pay £40 a month for the rest of my life just for that same PS4, never making headway.
Now, you can point out that a PS4 is almost the definition of an unnecessary luxury and that I don't have to pay the £40 monthly rental fee, and you'd be right. I mostly went with that example because it was right on the front page and such a terrible deal. Still, in the world where I can own things, I can have the PS4 and the £40 a month, after a little over a half year of hardship, while the rental society won't let me have that. Similarly, I can buy a DVD and watch it forever, instead of shelling out for Netflix each month and hoping that they don't drop that title.