It's a commonly pushed notion that people need to be aided in their ability to own certain items. We are told that we should be home owners, own at least one car and then we start to get into all of the little things we hold as status symbols, nice clothes, a big screen TV, a large music collection. Recently I have started to think more and more that ownership if often hindering us as much as it helps us.
The reason for the push towards ownership is rather simple. By owning particular items we are attempting to guarantee their availability to us. If you are simply renting a house there is the chance that the landlord will kick you out. What would happen if they suddenly jacked up the rent so that you are no longer able to afford to live there. How would you know that you'd be able to find another place to live? With cars we want to have our own mode of transportation. In some locations there is no reliable mode of public transportation so the only option without having a car is to get a ride from friends of relatives that have a car. In many locations that have public transit it's a lot faster to have your own vehicle. If you want to leave at a particular time you can and you don't need to worry about overcrowding or missing the last train.
At face value it seems that ownership affords us with a great deal of freedom because we ostensibly have control over many more items in our life. In addition it creates demand for more goods and creates jobs for building and manufacturing.
The problem is that with each item that we try to own we lose more and more of our freedom. Items like houses and cars are expensive and the most common way of paying for them is on credit. I can't think of the last time I heard of someone buying a new car outright let alone a home. That means that in order to get that house you need to enter into a contract to pay back the borrowed money. You also have to make regular payments and ensure that you have enough income to afford it. In addition you need to maintain your purchases, that means mowing the lawn, keeping the paint up, maintaining the septic system and many other items. With a car you need to go in for regular maintenance, keep the inspection up to date, repair the car if it has any mechanical failures.
With the lock downs that ownership creates there are other factors that come into play. Even though it may spur market demand it also makes it harder for communities to respond to changes and reinvent themselves. People that have a mortgage on a house can't just uproot and move to where news jobs are. Likewise it makes it less likely that the demographic of an area will change. The people that originally settled in an area will likely stay in the homes that they own and new immigrants will be pushed off into the outskirts of the original areas and their communities will have fewer ties to each other.
Now on the other hand if a system is set up to properly support the community and protect the citizens without pushing them into personal ownership they will have less things to tie them down and more freedom when they relocate or simply visit another area. There are additional benefits as well since overproduction is less likely and transit and housing can be created in more economical manners by being developed to accommodate more people in an efficient manner.
By having more items in public control or easily usable by the general populous without the requirements of ownership the individual has less responsibility and gains mobility as well as greater ease when relocation. Renting an apartment instead of owning a house means that there isn't any requirement to sell a property when moving. In addition apartments can be designed to have greater energy efficiency than a stand alone house. The maintenance can be improved because it can be done as a whole instead of peace meal. With transit there are even greater benefits as public transit tends to be significantly more energy efficient fitting a greater quantity of people into a given space and transporting less needless weight. With a well designed transit system there isn't much of a time loss and the public can escape the need to purchase a vehicle, maintain it, keep it registered and insured. There is an extra benefit that when someone moves to, or visits a new location, as long as it also has a proper public transit system they won't need to bring their car out or rend a car at their new location.
