Would you subscribe to these shoes?

Then there are new shopping and buying models entirely, such as Stitch Fix’s human-and-algorithm-personalized recommendations, and Rent The Runway’s subscription rental concept, to compete with.

The switch from “ownership that you purchase” to “access that you subscribe to” overturns many conventions. Ownership is casual, fickle. If something better comes along, grab it. A subscription, on the other hand, gushes a never-ending stream of updates, issues, and versions that force a constant interaction between the producer and the consumer. I

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The shift away from traditional subscriptions will quicken pace, driven by the proliferation of on-demand solutions across all areas of modern life. Categories like content consumption (Netflix, Spotify), Travel (Uber, Lime), and food delivery (Deliveroo, DoorDash) are creating an atmosphere on everything on our terms, at all times. These category-... See more

Imagine buying the perfect pair of pants. Their hem length and bagginess were debated and voted on by their future wearers. Their fabric was sourced ethically, and you can look up the metadata of where it was milled. They have been minted on the blockchain, so if you resell them, the next buyer knows they’re legit. And instead of the pants pattern ... See more

And, in another sense, hardware companies that shift to a subscription model are pricing according to reality. If you buy something and use it every day for years, it makes sense that you’d pay for it as you use it rather than buy an uncertain amount of usage at one upfront price. The gradual shift to subscription-based hardware is just the economi... See more

In Rifkin’s 2001 book Age of Access, he anticipated a society not unlike the one we’ll soon have, where “every activity outside the confines of family relations is a paid-for experience, a world in which traditional reciprocal obligations and expectations—mediated by feelings of faith, empathy, and solidarity—are replaced by contractual relations i... See more