My point is that the renting/lending/borrowing does not need the mediation on Lowe’s or Home Depot, it can happen within a community or, even better, because no one really keeps tabs, within a family–however it is defined.

The rent vs. own thing is already happening left-and-right. The product-as-service model has been adopted by Xerox, Zipcar and Bag-borrow-steal to name a few! Sharing makes more sense if space and resources are at a premium. I mean, I would kill to keep my power drill somewhere other than my precious NY closet space! Also, if it were more expensive to buy a power drill, meaning I’d have to pay the real cost – including externalities – I’d probably think twice before I bought it… The point isn’t that its bad to have a drill, just that most people don’t really need their very own one, as long as one is close enough when needed.

Remy: Check out nuride.com and I think you’ll find what you were asking about. Oh, and how about the couch surfing project?

I can easily understand how many people right off the bat would scoff at his power drill proposal. I mean really…share a power drill? But not I friend. The power drill you see is just the concept, or the representation of, and a good one at that. It is an item which the average homeowner may need only once a month for 10 sec. at a time, not to mention, let’s just say 1/4 of homeowners will never in their lives even touch one. Why than make so many when we can all just share – at a small price of course (for logistical requirements and maintenances, not to mention collateral for any possible damage inflicted, not to mention time and energy spent to deliver/pickup the drill {considering the drill is falling into the category of “the easiest things to share” in an implementation of this sort, not even thinking about say a deep-freezer storage unit, I just happen to know three families who went out and bought one just for the convenience in the preparation of a ONCE in a life time occurrence [but I don’t blame them, my sister’s wedding went perfectly thanks to the freezer and now we can buy a shit load of food on sale and save it]}, not to mention the ability to cater to that part of the community which is not e-friendly {the goal with anything being progressive in any facet of society I would assume should be to encompass everyone in the community, otherwise being flawed, also assuming this would be an e-based endeavor}, not to mention the energy spent to launch a campaign like this even in a small test community, must not forget to facilitate those non e-people…wow this is seeming more and more like a bad idea… these are all things which are coming to me at this very moment I swear, this is not meant to be a sarcastic message…) o.k. I just better get back to my point, so yeah at a small price to cover all that shit. But once again a very good example because not a lot use it, but when we need it, it is indeed crucial. No my friends, it is not the concept that is flawed, the proposition in my opinion is simply grand. Think of the connectivity involved, and the potential of. Hey anything that unites more so the individual with whole I’m for (provided I can close my bedroom door once in a while and turn off my cell phone, actually I’m a loaner at heart, but I promote globalization…..on all scales apparently). So my friends power tool idea actually does exist, exclusively for tools, and it does in the most optimal way it possibly can in our community at large. I just quickly perused threw a few earlier comments and some of them I think recognized…yes, that’s right, it’s Home Depot. Shit they are open from 6-10 mon.-sat. What more could a home owner want. Is he going to be drilling at 3 in the morning (I actually find myself doing that often, I swear it’s crazy, but I own a drill, 8 different kinds to be exact). The idea is valiant and hopefully it shall incite other more valiant ideas upon those who experience it. It is the context in which he places it.

Assuming it wasn’t a capitalist society which bread our notions of consumption and production, materialism, ownership,…it can be viable. This is truly the problem with the concept. Even if by some miracle we can strip the american mentality and have a tabula rasa upon which we may begin, everything around us was created in this most capital producing efficient manner, the factory, the car, the method of production, the market… So what then, sticking to the example of the power tool, we have to redesign the factory which made it, and since it won’t be shitting out drills all year, it’s got to make other things. Than to consider all these other things it will make, with hundreds of thousands of product manufacturing design specs. that will only every be particular to that item, all those factories will close because we’re only going to be producing a smaller amount of them, than provided we still don’t have a sustainable replacement for crude oil, the pan American transportation of all this stuff. Well o.k. maybe we like four or five of the super-megamultiwunderuberabsurd factories so we cut down on spent resources, or would that even be cutting down…on that note, it is exactly my point – to considered the reciprocation of an endeavor like this how much expenditure will it involve. To address the pursuit of sustainability and environmental balancing in the way of production is not a task of citizen to corporation, no that can only be done through the government; through the citizen to the gov. of course. Ya gotta fight money with money that’s it. You’re only allowed to make x amount of drills a year, you wanna make more, fine we’ll tax the shit out of you. Who knows then, dewalt jacks the price of a drill than we can all share. Because now we’re affected in our wallets, now it truly becomes and inconvenience. My power drill friend has a technique of application that is to say “how can we best retro-fit life style with balance,” in my opinion it just isn’t a well thought out idea…speaking of I got a archi 264 mid-term I really gotta study for, and I just spent 45 min. spewing banter. how’s that for inefficiency

Well folks, it’s culture… when videos appeared on the scene, they were a lot more costly to produce than vinyl records… so the only way people could really afford them was to rent a video… like you rent a seat in a movie theater to see a film… the habit stuck… but now that DVDs are priced like CDs… the movie studios would much rather you buy a DVD than rent it… they’re priced to sell…

In Japan there’s a new trend… Manga stores… where you can actually rent everything… it’s like a library, except instead of the books being free, afforded to you courtesy your tax dollars… you rent a book… the advantage? You save money, you preserve resources… but that happens in a society where disposible income isn’t so readily obtainable. It’s the business model of the Environmental Library Fund, which still can’t find any investors in the US… because “renting” is unamerican… that’s socialism, and that’s bad… that’s green is red inside!

Imagine if Home Depot and Ace Hardware suddenly started renting tools? Wow! What a paradigm shift. Imagine if Nike started selling running shoes where you could, like in the old days, replace the heels? They’d sell ten times less shoes!!! Can’t have that, can we? Buying green is OK, as long as you buy just as much… if not more… but the instant buying green also means buying “less”? Ouch, they don’t want Reverend Billy’s gospel singers in front of their stores during AdBusters’s Buy Nothing Day… that would mean the end of commerce as we know it… sales people would lose their jobs, factories would close… it would spell the end of the consumer society… and would that be such a bad thing? If you’re a green, a real green? No, obviously not, a lot of us already live this way, through trading clubs on the Internet, swap shops, a whole green alternative counterculture lifestyle erupting…

But it’s going to take a long time… it’s going take people realizing the earth isn’t finite… grow from the 80’s greed is good, to a little human compassion and empathy… here use mine… here, you can have a bit of mine… here, you can have half… but are we that way? New Yorkers especially? Despite all the ‘green” stuff that’s going on… are you going to lend your drill to a neighbor if he knocks on your door, are you going to share a cup of sugar?

Live simply so that other may simply live… to quote a model I know quoting Gandhi… and that says it all… where are the hitch hiking clubs Lü magazine have been advocating since 2001? So we can start removing half the cars off the road? I ask you?