For what it's worth, economists have a confusing language. The earlier thread was about "rents" as in profits earned beyond what's needed to bring the supply to the market (under competition). This one is about "rents" as in the price one pays for using something over time (as in "the rent is too damned high") instead of buying it outright. Often the two meanings coincide, but not always.
Sometimes the rent-to-use model is more profitable (or provides more revenues, depending on the goals of the company) and sometimes the straight-out sell/purchase model (the buyer gets the ownership rights) model is more profitable. Harry Shearer (the comic/actor) argues that we're moving toward a time when everything is rented, not purchased. That seems plausible, though at this time of the morning I haven't figured out why this might be true. When I download music from E-Music, I get full ownership of the MP3 files. But I-Tunes seems to have the dominant model. As I understand it, you don't really own the music you download from I-Tunes. I don't really know, however, since the time I got music from them I immediately converted it into a different format so I could have full ownership. Don't tell them, since I probably broke some sort of licensing rule. -- Jim Devine / "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
