The theory is simple: instead of buying a household item or a piece of clothing or some equipment you might use once or twice, you take it out and return it.
Always check your public library. The ones in m area have these which cost you nothing to use because they are supported as public services.
Always support public libraries.
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A 3D printer
you joke but i think you can 3d print nearly everything in a 3d printer
The Prusa brand printers are printed by their own printer models and sold that way.
It’s free reel estate.
To wit: RepRap
Having built a number of Repraps, “nearly everything” is highly exaggerated. I have seen 3D printers with an almost entirely printed frame, but using off the shelf T slot rails is a lot more time and cost effective.
It is currently not possible to print the control board, wiring, sensors, hot end, motors, heaters, bearings, slides and rails necessary for a 3D printer. Some of the mechanical parts and a lot of the bracketry that holds the frame together can be 3D printed.
A car
You wouldn’t download a car.
Only people of a certain age will get this lol
That’s all of us here 😂
It’s not a big 🚛, it’s a series of tubes
funnily enough, that’s the part of his speech he got right. like what the fuck even is a truck
deleted by creator
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:476016
I know it’s just an STL of a scale model, but actually printing a real car wouldn’t be cheap in the slightest.
You can make nice little self watering pots with a 3d printer and the right filament.
Those extending swords are really fun.
There are also 3d puzzles you can make.
You can also print models you’d like to paint as minis. You just need the model, sandpaper, primer and some paint.
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Ultra specific storage cubbies for your favorite 5 tools. Label tags. Cabinet door knobs. Print in place toy cars with rolling wheels and doors that open. Compliant mechanisms. A coin sorting device. If they can print flexible things, phone cases.
Do not expect anything 3d printed to be food safe.
Take a look at your hobbies and go on Etsy to find accessories for them. High chance is someone is making and selling a 3D printed item.
For example, an Apple Air tag case/holder for your bike.
You can search through here and make something that looks interesting to you
It helped me to know that checking out items helps the library.
I always thought of it as being a consumer of library resources, but the fact that the books/movies/library of things items are being checked out helps them prove that their services are useful to the community.
Always support your public libraries, and watch out for companies that want to take this over:
https://fair.org/home/a-for-profit-company-is-trying-to-privatize-as-many-public-libraries-as-they-can/
With the size of housing units they build in condo buildings these days, who the fuck has any room to store appliances?
Plus, we live in an era where we produce too much shit anyway and it’s damaging the environment. So by sharing stuff like this, it means we need to produce less.
This is an outstanding idea for an apartment community. It addresses space issues, cost concerns, and largely prevents abuse from the get-go because you know where all your borrowers live.
In great Montreal area it’s more and more enormous, condo 1000sqft+, thousands of them, that people cannot buy because they are too expensive, I don’t understand the system
Yeah they built these big ass luxury condo towers downtown and most of them are empty. I know because I can see in them from my office building.
Some argue this allows richer people to move out of smaller units therefore freeing them for others. But instead you have international investors coming in to buy them up as a real tax haven. Or the rich will simply buy them but keep the old ones and rent them at a premium. It doesn’t help at all.
You don’t have a tax for owning “abandoned” housing (inhabited by noone)? There should be.
There’s a tax for foreign ownership now,I think…
*cough* Maestria *cough*
This sounds neat until it’s run for profit.
There is a business in my town. There’s probably one like it in your town. They rent power equipment. Anything from pressure washers to bobcats to bouncy castles. And as a man who has needed to drill precisely 8 holes into a concrete slab in 37 years, there is a genuine value proposition in renting a hammer drill for an afternoon compared to buying one.
This week’s rental for me:
- hammer chisel, 24h, about $70 canadian.
- E20 excavator, 8h runtime but over the weekend, around $500 with delivery and fuel
Not going to buy those things or pay someone to operate them. It’s a good deal.
We’ve got this & a local option!
Rentals seem extremely expensive in my area. $100/day for a shitty 4" wood chipper, $300/day for 6" chipper. For some tools, it’s often about the same price or cheaper to buy a tool from Harbor Freight than to rent.
same price or cheaper
Ah, but is it? A quick search shows wood chippers ranging from $400 to $2400. If they’re renting out the $400 model, yeah, you come out ahead by buying even if you’re only chipping things on two weekends (and you could resell on craigslist or something).
But if they’re renting out a $2000 model, I’m not sure how fair it is to compare to the $400 model (I’m not a wood chipper expert).
Wood chippers might be a bad example. I’d think if you need one, you need one multiple times – chipping branches every fall at a cabin, things like that.
But overall, yeah, you make a good point that the rental prices can change the tipping point in rent vs. buy.
Sorry, I was unclear. Chippers are not the tools I was thinking of that would be cheaper to buy (a low quality version of) than rent. Was thinking more about stuff like torque wrenches and rotary hammers. Chipper rental prices were just one thing I was looking at recently that seemed way out of line with what other people from other regions were paying.
Ha, fair enough. Yeah, a quick search shows low-end torque wrenches available for like $25. It’s hard to see a rental making sense at that scale.
How would that ruin it?
Modest profit isn’t an issue, but most businesses of more than a certain size accumulate MBAs like some kind of parasitic fungus. They then proceed to wring out as much money as possible in the short term while destroying the business in the long term.
If it’s just a local guy making 5% or so a year off his one rental shop, that’s no problem.
Yeah pretty much. There are behaviors that are profitable but not good for the community.
Competition solves this.
The problem is maintaining competition. Another thing those MBAs salivate over is the idea of buying out the competition, and their squeeze-the-company-dry method can give them just enough money for just long enough to buy a competing business to run into the ground when the original one starts to give out. Like I said, parasitic fungus: move to a new host as the old one dies. Keeping them from spreading can only be accomplished by stronger government regulation than many people seem willing to see in place, alas.
Government regulation is needed for a healthy capitalism country yes.
In a purely profit business, you price things based on how much people are willing to pay for them.
That translates into things never being priced as being “worth it”, but almost worth it, and definitely not worth it for people with tighter budget
There’s a local store that rents outdoors gear (climbing stuff, camping supplies etc), it’s for profit and it’s great. Would be way cooler if it were a library, but the local business is totally affordable and easy.
I’ve used it several times. My friends and I plan an outing and plan supply pickup/dropoff as part of the outing.
Wait is this trying to suggest just renting is the same thing as a library?
The benifit of a library is you share the cost as a group and get some fractional use of it. Like books that you only really need access to for small amount of time.
Its not the same as say Amazon owning the book rental space and choosing, without any choice on your point, on what books are there or who could get access to them.
Tool libraries are libraries, not rentals.
So no, they aren’t saying renting is the same thing as a library. They are saying libraries offering more services are a great way for you to save money by not buying a tool you only need once or for a day here and there over the years.
I agree with the first part, but they are using the terms interchangeable of renting and borrowing. Talking about renting and subscription in the same vain as borrowing.
I just don’t want the very cool idea of a library economy to be conflated with the “you own nothing” subscription/rent everything economy.
They both have similarities but the actual ownership matters IMHO or else you get rent seeking/enshittification.
That’s fair, I’d agree the article does a terrible job of differentiating, and a company calling itself a library in it’s name doesn’t make it a library, just a rental service playing pretend for profit.
Growing up, there was an association in my area for common ownership of different types of machinery and other equipment for its members. You paid something like $10 a year, and for that you got to borrow all kinds of things you might need as a home owner, like a wood chopper/splitter, high pressure washer, trailers, leaf blowers, cement mixer, scaffolding etc.
I always thought that was brilliant.
Everything as subscription.
Yeah it is seem to be cheap now, until you become dependent on it.
On the flip side, when you lost your job, cancel your home subscription and become homeless.
Oh, I assumed this article was going to be about public libraries. Often public libraries will have things for checkout, like gardening or cooking equipment. Yeah, this is somewhat distopian. These companies will probably make bank off of this. It should be public. We need a larger library system for much more things.
Not sure I agree that it’s dystopian. Imagine how much less waste there would be. People with less crowded storage/garages/houses with less junk they use rarely. Like, I have this scroll saw I’ve used for like one project. Why the fuck do I own this thing?
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
I guess so, but I just see this going in the direction of not wining anything and needing a subscription service. They end up costing a lot more and nearly killing off alternatives.
We need a larger library system for much more things.
Private Equity goes REEEEEE!
I remember when corner stores rented DVDs, this could be another business for them. But…since they haven’t adopted it I guess it really isn’t that profitable. Power tool prices have come down in price and size.
Ubik was right
What could go wrong with depending on such a service? The things up for rental here are only things that have to be frequently changed or used just once or twice. I don’t expect to subscribe to more permanent things as part of the expansion of tool rentals. Yes, some like Adobe have already adopted subscription for permanenty things, but that’s different from this topic.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/gMt-Opo1Ovw?si=kUUwG4InmnP0UkL4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’ve rented things like carpet cleaners, floor polishers, chainsaws, splitters for the chainsawed wood, generators, a bunch of weird things from a rental place down the street that seems to have at least one of anything I could ever need. It’s awesome! Not having to maintain a bunch of shitty two stroke engines is phenomenal.
Not having to maintain a bunch of shitty two stroke engines is phenomenal.
Kinda off topic, but this reminded me of the lawn mower I bought a few summers ago. It was on sale for like 200, it was an electric Li-Ion battery though.
It was my first Li-Ion mower, but not the first electric and the first electric was just…shitty…pros definitely did not put weigh the cons so I was hesitant, but bit the bullet anyways because that first electric had to have been like 15+ years ago so things must have improved
So glad I did, this MF is so damn quiet, I don’t even need hearing protection AND I can mow at like 9PM because it’s so quiet that the barking neighbor dogs are louder AND I don’t have to fuck with gas and oil. I even picked up the same thing but the trimmer and weed whacker version at a thrift store. So now I don’t have to fuck with has and oil and MIXING them just right for 2 strokes.
Even with the big battery they’re still lighter than the equivalent 2 stroke.
Tl;Dr FUCK 2/4 stroke engine equipment, I’m never going back lmao
I’m hoping to have bought my last engine. maybe there will be another ICE car or motorcycle in my future, I don’t think I’ll ever own another airplane and I’m 100% done with gas powered lawn tools. I’ve got a set of electric lawn tools that do a fantastic job and they don’t pack their sinuses with their own shit all winter so they work when it’s time.
And my father has fought me tooth and nail the entire way. “You sure you don’t want the gas one? It’s slightly bigger! Let’s get the gas one.” Dad, why are we here for the second year in a row buying a string trimmer? “We can’t get the old one to start.” Wrong. We’re buying a new one because we can’t get the almost brand new one we bought last year to start. Now what chemical did you consume in the 60’s that makes you think a nearly identical one we buy this year will be any different? “Ohh come on.” This one works almost exactly like a power drill. When’s the last time you put a battery in the power drill and spent an hour failing to get it to start drilling? “Sigh I guess.”
It’s lighter, quieter, runs on a battery system we’re already very invested in, starts every time, requires less maintenance and fueling is a lot more convenient. Every electric lawn tool we’ve bought bar none works great.
Torque from a high voltage electric battery lawnmower motor just can’t be beat in my experience. Just chews up things that would make a similarly priced gas engine stall.
Yeah I love my 40v job too!! I can crush the lawn in record time on a single charge and its whisper quiet.
Dude, I’ve had my 40V mower for almost 8 years and it’s still kicking. So incredibly easy to use. One of my batteries crapped out after about 6 years, but the other still holds a great charge, and I’ve collected a couple others over the years as I’ve added the trimmer, blower, and chainsaw from the same brand. In retrospect, my life was terrible in the before-times.
My mid life birthday gift was an electric zero turn mower. Already had all electric yard tools. Will buy Tesla or best option in couple years. Never going to a gas station again!
So indeed, fuck gas
A friend of mine who lived in Berkeley in the early aughts was a member of her local tool library. I thought it was a brilliant idea. You just had to be live in the community and getting your library card was free.
At one point my roommate needed a drill to complete some home improvement, so I got the drill, committing to be the drill guy the buddy that had a borrow-able power drill.
Curiously, when I moved, I needed to reduce my stuff drastically, so my roommate inherited the drill.
Yeah I borrowed a bunch of hand and power tools from the Oakland public library when I lived there in the 2010s. They also had a shit ton of video games
Hopefully opportunity attracted you elsewhere, re: leaving Oakland?
Housing was too expensive and we wanted to move back east closer to family. Most of our Oakland friends took a similar path between ‘18 and ‘22
too expensive … [people moved elsewhere]
A huge loss, generally speaking. Darn the almighty dollar!
Obligatory Library Socialism Link: https://librarysocialism.org/
In the simplest terms, the right of usufruct means you can use things, but you cannot deny them to others when you’re not using them, and you do not have the right to destroy them to prevent others from using them. So, for example, the farmer is welcome to grow crops on a given plot of land - but if they choose not to, somebody else can use the land.
Given this, it’s easy to see that this principle already exists in public libraries. You can borrow a book to help you start a business, but you can’t prevent others from reading it after you - or threaten to destroy the book unless you receive the profits of the next reader’s business. You can hold the book exclusively (of other library patrons), but only temporarily.
When I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, we had a toy-library across from our house. You could rent all kinds of toys for a week, extend if needed, and return it when the kids got bored with it. Good times.
They also had LEGO, and every piece had to be accounted for on return.
They went out of business when people started buying their own GameBoys and PlayStations.
My public library had toys for rent when I was a kid. You could check out Teddy Ruskpin and Power Wheels and full sets of sports equipment to use in the park next door. Then the neighborhood got hit by the late 80s financial crisis and the program was cut. And then they spent an enormous amount of money on a computer lab. And then an Adult Learning Center. And then they decided too many poor people were near the library, making it unsafe, so people stopped bringing their kids there. And then it got defunded. And now its abandoned.
Libraries used to have all sorts of cool high end shit in them. Now they’re so heavily deferred on maintenance that people don’t feel safe working inside.
Real shit.
The USA has been going backwards for some time now. I’m not even some Chinese simp or very political (I made an account on .ml before I even knew what I was doing) but it’s impressive how far they have advanced over the last 20-30 years and how the USA has just stagnated or regressed.
I’m not even some Chinese simp or very political (I made an account on .ml before I even knew what I was doing) but it’s impressive how far they have advanced over the last 20-30 years and how the USA has just stagnated or regressed.
The Chinese had a ton of catching up to do after WW2. So the first major industrializations in nearly a century are going to hit different than what Americans were trying to do at the bleeding economic edge.
But the mismanagement of the American economy has been glaring. Trillions into a series of disastrous wars. A desperate clutching to legacy ICE, long past its expiration date. De-investment in education, in health care, and in mass transit infrastructure. Financialization run amuck, to the point that fictitious speculative assets are outpacing the value of real capital and estates. Stagnant wages. Declining living standards. Police violence from coast to coast that seems to worsen with each new administration.
Now that the US and China are roughly on par technologically, there’s no strong reason for China to continue to outpace the US. Certainly, they’ve come down quite a bit from the heyday of double-digit annual growth figures. And we’ve got ample opportunity for domestic investment in a country that’s needed an infrastructure overhaul since the turn of the 21st century.
But nationalism is like rooting for your local baseball team. It doesn’t matter how bad the Yankees are doing this season. You wave that fucking pennant or you get your ass back to Boston.
We had a rental thing for toys in our old neighbourhood, but you paid for it with currency made from helping at the nearby petting zoo.
We had the same, and it rented video game console and games, it was great.
What the fuck is this rent-a-center propaganda?
How stupid are we?
Pretty dumb. I thought this would be about lending libraries -_-
Tf are both you talking about. The article talks about Tool Libraries and The Library of Thing at length. It name drops a few subscription services for reused baby clothes and kids toys but those are still temporary items people need.
Rent-a-centers core business model consists of predatory loans for household appliances that you need continuously. This article talks about rentals for things you only need for a short period of time.
Subscriptions are just as predatory. I won’t applaud them.
There is a tool library near me and it is $45/yr. It’s amazing. These are really good services and this comment section has no idea what it’s talking about.
Hmm. It sounds to me you just don’t want to acknowledge when you’re being taken for a ride.
But hey, to each their own.
Businesses want a lifeline to our wallets, which is why subscriptions and renting are pushed on useful idiots.
“We can share books if you pay me to maintain the book sharing system via a non optional tax.” Universally loved system.
“We can share tools if you pay me to maintain those tools via a non optional tax.” A niche program most libraries have.
“We can share tools if you pay me to maintain those tools via an subscription where I have a profit incentive.” Literally 1984 and late stage capitalism.
Yep.
I feel like digital software subscriptions have stigmatized subscriptions in general. Subscriptions are great for things that require constant investment to be meaningful. One subscribes to news and receive constant reporting on the latest news; one subscribes to a tool library and get access to nearly every tool one can need. Plus a large part of the article is about non-profit libraries anyway.
The problem is that you’re renting access to something you’re not actually consuming.
Once you stop paying, you lose access and have nothing to show for it. They still have your money, though.
This is different than, say, paying for electricity which is consumed and no longer available for either party after consumption.
Sorry bud, you’re defending being scammed.
Plus a large part of the article is about non-profit libraries anyway.
Nice talking point just to cover your bum from shilling.
They can be, sure, but they can also be a really good deal. If I know I’ll need a certain amount of something on a fixed schedule, I can subscribe to it and save money. This helps reduce costs for suppliers because they have a better idea of how much stock they need on hand, so they’ll want to encourage you to subscribe with discounts.
Subscriptions are bad when there’s some form of lock-in, such as a fee for breaking the subscription, or if the cost is arbitrarily high without the subscription because of a lack of competition. I dislike digital subscriptions in general because of this, since you’ll lose access to all of the content you’ve enjoyed to that point.
But subscriptions to consumables are fine by me.
Stupid enough to wake up in this world. It didn’t happen in one day.
It’s nice however let’s assume that it is the main consumer model. Then everything becomes possibly 20 times more expensive as companies need to keep same profit (shareholders) and now 20 people pool money to share the thing. It’s not a solution to capitalism, however it would work wonders for environment.
Yet it is us doing all the work for the environment while companies don’t lift a finger and get all the profit. Not a viable long term solution to a fundamental problem of wealth.
The companies who have 20x the mark up necessary to survive will quickly see new businesses occupy the space to undercut them.
Yeah, this is the one piece a lot of people miss: in any decently competitive market, individual firms have effectively zero power to set prices; they must instead accept the prices determined by the market.
Knowing that, the solution to that sort of corporate BS, then, is to ensure markets are competitive by busting monopolies, lowering barriers to entry, and getting money out of politics to reduce the effect of lobbying.
Hmmm I wouldn’t be so sure… It depends on their position in the market and how well they lobby the government
Not really, not every business is in bed with the politicians. This was a worse case scenario where rentals became the main method of purchasing, so everyone would be on level ground. Those making 20 times profit margins are not everyday businesses, they ae luxury brands who would still thrive on their branding alone.
Which business isn’t? I honestly want to know to restore a semblance of hope in humanity
AFAIK, a business that is not in bed with corrupt politicians is because they have ready been beaten or they can’t afford it
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It’s not a solution by itself, but a library economy can form part of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“You will own nothing and like it”
I’m so down for this for items that I don’t need indefinitely. It reduces waste.
It also allows people to use much higher quality products. She’s pulling a power tool out in the picture and goddamn, there’s some garbage tools out there, even from quality brands. Renting a $1000 tool sounds better than buying a $100 tool and encouraging the race to the bottom.
Yeah, that’s how libraries work.
Libraries don’t cost.
My library has a power tools wing. Also a seasonal seeds section. They have gotten very fancy.
Taxes are a cost.
Well that’s just not true…
You pay for them through taxes.
It’s interesting how individualism and socialism interact with each other, and how a degree of the latter can promote the former.
There is a “tool library” sort of service (for profit) operating in my area. The prices are absurd—people are charging like $20/day for a tool that would cost $100 new, or half that used on craigslist. My projects often span multiple days, especially if there’s an unforeseen delay—which there always is because I’m a good engineer but a shitty carpenter.
I don’t use the service. I’m all for communal ownership but it still has to make sense.
Rent-to-Own has always been a scam predicated on people too poor to enjoy a stable life.
Hopefully you have an actually competent and accurately-priced makerspace near.
Renting stuff makes sense, but there are still lots of inherent problems with tool libraries and the like.
They’re great for a carpet shampooer or chainsaw you need once a year, but if you actually want to fix and build stuff around the home then booking a tool, taking perfect measurements, hauling your stuff over to a tool library, building it, hauling everything back home to check it, is simply an infeasibly onerous process. The instant you make a mistake and need a different tool, or check a measurement, etc, you’re wasting hours of time, which is most often the biggest limiter for home projects anyways.
You also don’t get to learn on the same tool and build up instincts and understanding of how it behaves.
I think you ahve a fundamental misunderstanding on how the tool libraries and stuff work…
I’m conflating a tool library and a maker space but the same issues apply to both. Either way, for home projects you end up with a whole lot of extra transportation.
None of this was about a maker space either
Cool beans bro, learn how to read a full comment and you’d see the part where it doesn’t matter since theyre basically the same and have the same drawbacks.
No, conflating them doesn’t make any sense. You bring home the tool from the tool library, and you bring it back when you’re done. It’s one extra trip vs. going to the hardware store to buy the tool. The concerns about mismeasurements and extra trips don’t apply.
You’d have a point if the thread were about maker spaces, I’ll give you that. As it stands, though, I’d say your concerns are misdirected.
You cut the first piece, realize you actually need a different type of saw for the next cut, it’s booked out, now your project is indefinitely delayed.
They are similar because in both cases you are sacrificing resiliency (multiple copies of a resource), for efficiency (a singular shared copy).
A tool library is still a great idea / resource for when you’re doing a project and need one weird tool that youll never use again, but most people who do any real amount of DIY over their lives will want their own set of tools that cover most of the bases.
Counterpoint: You go to the store to buy the saw you think you’ll need, come home, cut the first piece – boom, same realization. Same time-sink to go back to the store. I don’t think that’s a concern unique to tool libs.
need one weird tool
Well, yeah. We’re talking more expensive things that you only need for one project, or maybe a couple of times. Not the screwdriver set that you use for everything from box-cutting to adjusting the screws on your cabinet doors when they seem wonky.
I don’t see how going to the library is such a big hurdle? The closest library to me is less than ten minutes drive, and on the way to a lot of stuff. I don’t know this seems like a kind of insane objection. If you’re poor, it’s not like you’re just gonna spend $200 on a new tool anyway because you can’t. In my experience I’m more likely to just try to make do with the crappy alternative I have available.
This take just seems really privileged. The biggest barrier for a lot of people isn’t the time - it’s affording the tools in the first place.
I mean if you’re trying to learn to be a competent handyman or build a bookcase maybe yeah, but I just need a screwdriver set for like 30 minutes to put something together.
Now a multi screwdriver is something you can buy.
You had it, then you lost it. It’s for those things you need only once a year or two years or never again.
Libraries of things should be state run and free at point of use. They should also be integrated into communities in a way that makes them easy to access. Instead of everyone having a lawn mower, you check out an electric mower once a week, on a date that you’ve reserved it, and the entire community uses it, or if in a large community, your immediate neighbors use it, and then it’s returned for the next people to use it.
Libraries of things should not only be for things you use once a year. They should be for just about everything that you don’t use every day.
Usafruct >>>>>> UsusFructisAbusus.
