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How rental ‘libraries of things’ have become the new way to save money (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

223 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The theory is simple: instead of buying a household item or a piece of clothing or some equipment you might use once or twice, you take it out and return it.

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[–] slumberlust@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is an interesting thought angle, thanks for sharing! Given the conditions you've stated, why haven't books inflated in price given the abundance of libraries in developed worlds?

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Libraries are non profits, everyone who works there just gets paid a wage, no one makes more money if libraries make more money.

Or from a systemic standpoint, the library system is effectively separate from the capitalist system we use for distributing everything else. In capitalism if you have no competition you raise prices so you get richer, so functioning capitalism requires multiple copies of everything and a lot of redundancy all actively competing. The library being non-profit sidesteps that effect.