Also rent!
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We’re used to being told that the super-rich enjoy an alien, unreachable lifestyle, but I think this is becoming less true as time goes on. The progress of technology and the free market has delivered not only abundance but a democratization of experiences, goods, and services. Unlike certain 19th and 20th century philosophies regarding the “distribution of wealth,” the free market has not divided up what already is so that the poor have slightly more of it but made it so the poorest people now have access to what only the super-rich could experience before.
Consider the novelty of some experiences in the past compared to their universal presence in the first world: food served on demand, meat at every meal, personal waste removal on demand, lighting on demand even at night, music performance, the viewing of art, the viewing of drama, owning and reading books, owning fine musical instruments like pianos, and traveling to any place on earth.
Hungry? Go to McDonald’s and get hot, good-tasting food within minutes. Or stay home and use your magical telepathy device (aka a phone) to order a pizza, and within half an hour, a servant will arrive with a fresh, meat-filled meal for your whole family. Talk about living like a king! And the best part? Those “servants” who made and delivered your food can afford to pay for the same thing themselves. That is amazing.
Frankly, we don’t appreciate indoor plumbing enough. It’s amazing, and like other things, it’s the common man who benefits the most. The King of France didn’t need running water – he had running servants to bring his water and carry away his waste. He didn’t need a radio – he could hire the best musicians in the world to perform just for him. He didn’t need a TV because he owned the theater. He didn’t need a washing machine or a microwave because he had maids and cooks.
It is technology delivered through the free market that allows even a person of poor means in the first world to have all the luxuries of a king of yore. Not only that, but the modest modern man has access to magic that the king could never conceive of nor purchase for any amount of gold: video games, virtual reality, social media, computers, planes that go all over the world in a few hours, cars that can take you across the country in a few hours, the list goes on.
Those who benefit from this technowealth rarely take stock of their unique position. The broke kid booting up his second-hand PS4 doesn’t realize that he is living better than a king in many ways. This is natural; we tend to judge our circumstances relative to others we can see, not past people whose lives we can only imagine. The broke kid doesn’t have a PS5 or a new 5090 rig. He takes the train instead of driving his own car. The middle-class, white-collar worker longs for a Ferrari and takes his Honda for granted. Much of the 20th century’s celebrity media was spent hyping up the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and promoting consumerist culture. We aren’t taught to be thankful for the miracles we already possess or to think how the rich share in those.
What is remarkable about the free market and its progress is that those incredible lifestyles are now, to a great degree, accessible to the man of much less means through rental.
You don’t need to buy a Ferrari; you can rent one and enjoy it temporarily without having to worry about keeping it safe and paying for upkeep. You can even rent an opportunity to drive it on a race track. After all, if you own a Ferrari, where exactly are you going to take advantage of all its speed when every surface street has a modest speed limit? The Tesla (which many people can afford) is better for what you end up using a car for 95% of the time anyway. Same with the Honda!
You don’t need to buy a vacation home; you can rent an Air BnB for a week in the location of your choice. No need to worry about a second mortgage and taxes. And next year, you can go to a new vacation home in a new place.
You don’t need a yacht; you can buy a cruise ticket. It’s probably more fun because it’s full of other people (if that’s your thing), along with a variety of food and entertainment. And if you own a yacht, you must maintain the yacht. You must worry about it. The things you own end up owning you, after all. Private jet? Is that necessary when you can book a flight anywhere in the world at virtually any hour? You can buy a lot of first-class tickets for the price of a jet.
By the way, if you have met any rich people, like really rich people, you will realize they rent a lot of the things that appear to be “theirs.” I knew a man who rented a mansion in San Diego, and some YouTubers thought it was a gotcha that he rented it. Why would you own it, though? When you rent, you have the option to leave any time you want and rent something else. Most of the mega-houses in California are actually owned by investment groups and rented out, even in the short term. Rent allows capital goods to be shared in a more finely graded fashion, and that efficiency increase applies to lots of other things. “You will own nothing and be happy” sounds dystopian, but for most people, the possessions of the super-rich are things you really wouldn’t want to own full-time anyway.
All this technological power and the efficiency it brings are usually thought of as mundane. We adjust to normal and complain when it doesn’t meet our expectations. It is worthwhile, however, to take stock every once in a while and give thanks for what millions of people coordinating with each other, with people they do not know or might even hate if they did, have delivered for low prices. The parable of the pencil applies equally well to the iPhone. Next time you check your messages, you can wonder at the magic of it and possibly know that you are using the same phone as the President and the richest man in the world. They could afford to cover the phone with gold, but that doesn’t make it any better than yours.
Isn’t it amazing that you can just BUY books? Consider that not even the richest kings of yore could have the luxury of reading this amazing tome: King Leper!
I am an independent artist and musician. You can get my books by joining my Patreon, and you can listen to my current music on YouTube or buy my albums at BandCamp.
