From BoingBoing:
Monday, March 20, 2006
Coping with plenty - stuff gets cheaper, space gets pricier
Britain is facing a WalMart-style glut of cheap consumer goods, but without the monster homes characteristic of the American suburbs. This Guardian article goes into fascinating detail about the lives of Britons
...
"Attachment is briefer and there is the constant pain of divestiture [getting rid of things]."
..
Here's a solution to both these problems:
Our Pool
Our pool is a collection of stuff for anyone to add to or borrow from for free, for as long as desired. There's only one condition: everything borrowed from the pool is returned to the pool.
If you could have anything you want, the concept of ownership would change. A lessened sense of attachment would result in people freely contributing to the pool.
This concept is already in practice with free open source software. The pool just extends it to include all kind of goods and posessions.
