The abundance (of mostly idle drills) the author points to is one of the main ideas behind Kropotkin's mutualism ("anarcho-communism"). Industrialization and agricultural breakthroughs have produced such plenty that it is inexcusable that anybody wants for, well, any common need. In a mutual system, the drill belongs to nobody, and it is taken and used as needed. Idealism? Surely. But many anarchists would tell you that anarchism is an ideal, a goal, more than it is a destination to be arrived at in short order.
So, I'd much rather see a tools co-op than yet another tools rental service; perhaps I fail at capitalism in seeing this as something other than a startup opportunity. Maybe this is what the author is getting at, but the article is couched in startup language.
> Idealism? Surely. But many anarchists would tell you that anarchism is an ideal, a goal, more than it is a destination to be arrived at in short order.
It always struck me, that so many people discard the idea of anarchism either as "a teenage rebel idealism", terrorism, or simply "not going to work". Hence they go back to capitalism or however things work today.
But in the end, what anarcho-communism is trying to achieve is what most of us would agree with: eliminate poverty and exploitation (via equal rights to access means of production), let people have control over their own lives, direct democracy and self-organization. And when people say it's not going to work, it saddens me that we are not even trying to move in that direction. Of course, it may not ever happen, but innovating in this direction surely could lead us to a better world.
Of course, don't take my word for it, as I'm obviously biased. Instead research the topic if you're interested.
Capitalism wins mostly because prices communicate information more efficiently than community meetings. Say your society is running scarce of drills, how do people coordinate another drill being manufactured? Maybe someone just likes making drills, but what about more messy things like sewage or garbage or elderly care. Capitalism solves these problems more efficiently. It is more efficient for us all to have a drill than it is for you to waste time going to walk for a drill, finding it not there, etc.
So, I'd much rather see a tools co-op than yet
another tools rental service
Having visited my local hackspace I discovered that machines are easily broken and time-consuming to repair, especially when you rely on skilled volunteers doing repairs in their free time.
They had several broken rapid prototyping machines, lathes, drill presses and similar.
I think things getting broken is inevitable, and if I expect other people to fix the things I broke it only seems fair for me to give them something for their trouble. So for-profit tool loans seem like the common sense path IMHO.
After having seen the following talk with Noam Chomsky, I said to myself "I should really learn more about the history of anarchism and the causes and conditions of its demise".
There is a tool rental service close to home. Unfortuately it costs a third of the price to rent it for a day, so I end up buying the tools even if I need them for a week and I know I'll never ever need them again (I"m renovating my house).
The drill example is a good one. I'm currently building a pergola. It's nearly complete, but I need to cut a few more pieces from 4x4s at a 45 degree angle. Somehow I did a decent job of this already on a few pieces with my handheld circular saw, but it's just not the right tool for the job. I screwed up a few times trying last night. What I really need is a chopsaw that will cut @ 45 degrees perfectly well.
I could go buy a chopsaw. I will probably keep using it on occasion. But it's another $200 or so and - I'd rather just borrow one from a friend. But I don't really know who of my friends has a chopsaw I can borrow, I don't want to invest the time to figure that out and then go and get it, and tool rental is ridiculously expensive, and it doesn't generally deliver without even more ridiculous expense.
I also need a nail gun, and the good ones are all air powered, which means I need a compressor, too. Again, I could go rent this stuff, but I want it delivered, and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it would cost to just buy the tool!
I have several power tools I rarely use. If I could sign up for a service that would let me loan my tools out and borrow tools from others that also join the service, and if the tool sharing service delivered and picked up tools from my home and I requested what I want and made known what I have via an app, I'd sign up right away.
I think it could be done with little cost to the end user.
So - Uber for everything - yes - and Uber for powertools - give it to me now!
> Again, I could go rent this stuff, but I want it delivered, and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it would cost to just buy the tool!
This is probably the biggest problem with a sharing/renting economy.
Manufacturing has gotten to the point where producing an object is so inexpensive, it's cheaper to buy than rent. But why should that be? At any given production cost, why isn't it still cheaper to produce fewer and let multiple people use them, either via a renting system or something else? You're making fewer objects and still satisfying demand, so why doesn't this save money?
The reason is the labor and real estate costs of administering such a system. You need people to staff the rental/sharing agency. You also need a conveniently-located (and thus expensive) building where people go to pick up and return the objects. Or, if you're doing delivery, you can choose a more out-of-the-way location, but now you're paying the labor cost of drivers.
Because the overhead of running a sharing system is so high, it's actually cheaper most of the time to allocate one of each object to each person, except for the most expensive objects.
> "and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it would cost to just buy the tool!"
Why not pay the full price for the tool + delivery (handled by some monthly membership fee, maybe) to keep it as long as you like, and then push a button on your phone and someone shows up from the service to "buy it back" and return it to the cloud. You'd essentially be paying a deposit to cover the item, and then get the money back when the service got it back.
I'd liken this more to the original "netflix-for-everything", with a dash of exec/uber-for-everything.
I just went through this with a desk I built: https://twitter.com/jlongster/status/370760915735420928. I spent way too many hours balancing my tool budget. I had to do exactly the same thing: cut 4x4s with a circular saw. I also had to make several crappy jigs for various uses.
I would love a real tool rental service that had everything and at good prices.
EDIT: my 4x4 cuts were straight. I can't imagine trying to do a 45deg cut with a circular saw...
Yeah, that's an important point. Tool rental exists now, but they use tools so powerful and rugged that they cost an order of magnitude or two more than your consumer-grade tool. And because of their high cost and the normal overhead of running any rental business, they end up offering rental for the same price as you can own a lower-quality lighter tool. And the lower-quality tools are still pretty good. They're a little light on power, and they will break after a lot of usage... but if you had a lot of usage planned you wouldn't be looking to rent either.
I bought most of the tools I use, eg framing nail gun and compressor. I have bought some tools used, like the PEX (plumbing) expanders. For me, buying is cheaper than renting.
I don't know how long I'll need the tools. And I've been very careful to buy models and brands with high resale value.
The contractors I hire often rent tools. Because they're pros. They know the task, correctly estimate the duration, get the job done, and return the tool. When the tool breaks, it's not their problem. And they can pass the rental costs thru to me.
These are problems and solutions created by a very weak American social fabric that no longer has any meaningful element larger than the nuclear family. See Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone."
When I stay with my cousins in India, they can borrow anything they need on pretty short notice. We wanted to play chess -- my cousin went a few doors down to borrow their chess board. He saw that the cardboard chess board was falling apart -- he spent about half an hour fixing it up with tape.
The closest that you see in America, since the days of Elks Lodges and bowling leagues are behind us, are religious communities. Mormons, for example, have a very tight-knit community of friends that they see frequently. Forget a power drill -- if your house burns down, your fellow Mormons will be there in an hour to get you housed/clothed/fed/taken care of.
I think this line of thinking, while interesting, is backwards-looking.
One of the major advancements of mankind was precisely being able to manufacture goods at a minimal marginal cost. Set up a billion dollar stamping machine and now you can produce widgets for a marginal cost of a few cents.
Compare that to centuries past where manufacturing goods of any kind- metal, clothing, or food took enormous amounts of resources compared to today and therefore goods were either too expensive to purchase, or had to be shared. Ironically, computers are probably the single best example of this. Previously they were complex and expensive to make, so the fortunate few who had access to one had to share it. Nowadays you can go to Best Buy and buy your own for a few hundred bucks. That is a huge leap in progress. Why would you want to move the other way?
That's a different use case. Computer owners usually use their computers every single day for multiple hours, while drill owners, unless they are professionals or hobbyists in construction, use them very rarely, maybe once or twice a year.
Abundant commodities, energy, and capital make low cost mass manufacture possible.
There are numerous items consumers, buy, use a few times, and then discard or store. There are even more items consumers use, and due to poor quality turn in to trash.
I'm not sure which is more backwards thinking. I am annoyed when something breaks and the cost to repair it exceeds the replacement cost.
This works for most goods, but some goods still cost $1k+ to manufacturer and need to be manufactured at some level of quality to be of value to the user. Also, even if these goods could be manufacture cheaply, do I really want to own, store, and maintain all of these items? There are many things that maybe I could purchase and own. Just because I can, doesn't mean I want to. Examples:
-A $1500 bouncy castle
-A floor sander
-Safe and high quality ocean kayak
-100 folding chairs
I think the author hasn't researched the topic very well - there are a ton of startups who have tried this "stuff-sharing/selling model" and it hasn't really worked out.
Your post and outlook on this problem is the result of your definition of "sharing economy" being too narrowly focused.
To me it seems most people interested in the sharing economy only care about to talk about sharing if both sides of the transaction are individuals. If you're open to the idea that the sharing economy could be a transaction between a business and individual, then the market for temporary product rentals suddenly becomes a $40B space. This is nothing new, either. Small businesses have been renting out to other businesses and individuals since the 1950s. And, it's an existing $40B+ industry.
So while sure, peer to peer rentals for small items might never work, that's not to say that an "Uber for rentals" model wouldn't work. Uber started by bringing existing limo drivers online... not by trying to create a new supply side.
Edit: I also find the conclusion and only looking at drills to also be too narrow of a conclusion. Seems like most people when they look at tools only think about power drills. Totally agree that there isn't a $2B market for power drill rentals. However, there is a massive market for all other types of tool rentals.
Who want to deal with spending, at minimum, two hours of time to buy and then sell a $40 item, when you can just buy the $40 item and keep it on a shelf.
This has been tried so many times, and failed. I suspect that the reason is that it's just not a big deal to buy and have tools you use rarely. Compare that to the cost of owning a car, which includes insurance, maintenance, parking, and not to mention the actual purchase price. That makes car sharing much more valuable, like orders of magnitude more valuable.
It won't work in areas of low density - the convenience and per-transaction cost would be lost. But in dense cities with an ability to deliver in an hour/day to/from your door, it could be very nice. I would get rid of quite a bit of my stuff that I never use, but I keep around in case I buy a desk, or move, etc.
To me, the drill example misses a crucial point about cars. Cars are a pain in the ass to own. First you need a license. Then you need insurance. You need to get it checked up once a year. You need to park it every day and night. You need to refuel it every so often. So Uber doesn't only solves the transportation problem. It relieves you of all these (super) annoying chores and is much more convenient for a lot of people. But uber for drills? Brings more problems than it solves at an individual level imo.
Craigslist has no persistence of reputation, so you don't know whether you're dealing with a timewaster or a professional. I find selling things on Craigslist incredibly annoying, with most people just dropping out of communciation,.
It's different just like it's different from finding someone to drive you across town on craigslist (or perhaps hiring a random person on the street with a sign) is different from Uber/Hailo/Lyft. On craigslist, I don't know the person who is renting these tools out, what their reputation for renting things in good condition is, if they're still available, if I can pay with a credit card, and how quickly I can get it and many more questions (Do I have to drive to them? Will they deliver? Do I have to wait until after 6 when they get off work?).
Don't hackerspaces[0] solve this issue? I mean, with hackerspaces, the emphasis is more on building stuff in the space, instead of taking the tools home. But the idea is the same, and it's been around for a while.
The car service he describes actually sort of exists. It's car2go and it's around in Amsterdam and London as well.
You rent little electric smarts per minute and get free minutes for putting it back at a charging location. The cars can be put back anywhere in the city though and you can find them using the app which shows you all the locations.
I've thought of putting together a "Netflix for tools" where you order a tool, it gets sent to you with a returnable box and label and you send it back when you're done. A drill is a bad example though. I wouldn't stock commodity tools like drills and saws, it'd be things you're going to have to order online anyway, like tools made specifically for one car.
A good example that I could use right now is a BMW airbag reset tool. I stupidly disconnected an airbag when replacing my window regulator. Now I need a very basic, $20 on eBay, electronic tool to reset the system and get rid of the warning light. I'd pay $10 to have it by the weekend when I'll do the work, and it could be used many, many times over. Every German car I've ever owned had similar electrical and mechanical specialty tools I've had to buy and can't use when I get a new car.
The article addresses a very common problem. Drills are not the best example of tools to rent, since they relatively cheap and you use them quite often. I personally have gone through this thought process every time I worked on my car and needed new expensive tools that are used once. When I moved to a house, I always needed equipment (not only tools) on a short term basis. This is why I started https://www.1000tools.com I wanted to be able to rent tools [specifically tools] from people around me and couldn't find a good enough solution. So, we built our solution.
It's live and open in select cities, 8 weeks old startup.
Not to be overly philosophical, but this problem was more or less created by the urbanization of human culture. I live in a small town in Maine and telecommute to my job. If I need a tool, before I ever even think of hitting up Amazon or Home Depot, I ask around.
Problem solved. Live in communities where your peer group is varied enough that you're likely to be friends with someone with what you don't have and this is a non-issue.
Of course, that's not realistic for the vast majority of the U.S. So I suppose, good luck. I'm gonna go chat with my neighbor about something and see if needs any help.
And that's just the ones who are still trying. Many domains are dead.
And honestly, I suspect that they'll all fail. "Rent anything" is too big of a problem for a startup to solve in one fell swoop. I think someone could succeed at it if they picked a market that is really underserved by other existing options and focus on just a small set of goods, in a specific geographic area, and really work the kinks out before slowly expanding.
Becoming the go-to place for tool rentals in San Francisco before your team burns out is doable. Becoming the "rent anything from anyone" company is not.
Hm, diminishing the importance of exclusive ownership? Sharing and optimization of utilization? Doesn't sound very American or capitalistic to me. What's next, long term sustainability and planning? Sounds like socialism, if not communism!
It is kind of ironic that now there is a for-profit, commercial product based on the concept that has been so stigmatized during the Cold War. Perhaps rebranding is what it will take for a less consumerist, less wasteful and more efficient society that can survive global warming and overpopulation.
Markets like "Airbnb for drilling holes in my wall" will take off once we have self-driving cars. Right now to order a "hole in my wall" you need to pay:
1) A human's time to come to you
2) A human's time to drill the hole
3) Capex for the drilling machine
Self driving car tech can solve point 1, which would leave a huge incentive to solve point 2. Even a low cost worker can easily cost $50K all-in (including overhead), so if self driving car tech is commonplace that would mean a "robot that drills holes and knows how to drive itself to the customer's wall" can cost up to $50K / risk adjusted interest rate.
Take interest rate at 10%, that means the market will pay upto $500K per such robot, multiply by a few of those in a few hundred cities and you now have a market oppotunity for 1000 hole drilling robots i.e. 500 million USD. It now becomes interesting for VCs.
Now redo this scenario for every little thing people do in life. Of course eventually someone who will invent the "iPhone for robots", a base robot that does the self driving and developers can make apps on top of it to do different tasks. The robot can go back to base to retool when needed.
This is why I am convinced self-driving cars will take automation to a whole new level. I think PG is right when he says ownership could turn out to be a temporary hack for efficient crowd sharing. (I am saying this as a 100% capitalist.)
NeighBorrow was trying to do this, but it looks like they've gone from "share the things you don't need with your neighbors" to "pay us a montly price and when you need something you'll get it."
Honestly, wishing to absolve yourself of common tools? Shame on you.
I've driven back and forth across the country twice with everything in the trunk of a Honda Civic and still brought a drill with me both times. $13 will get you a corded drill (no battery to wear out) at Harbor Fright. While you're there, get a few more simple hand tools you may need someday.
People should strive to own more tools and learn to do at least some things for themselves. It sounds like this guy's actual problem is that he needs to pick up that drill and start using it more without too much planning. Imagine how good of a coder you'd be if you had to schedule an hour ahead and pay $10 every time you saved a file!
Spend some time in LA if you'd like to see the broken society that develops from outsourcing everything to services performed by cheap labor. Utterly disempowered people floating through life afraid of doing anything besides what they're told, because they have no clue how anything actually functions. And it's not like they save time either, dealing with administrative overhead for every little task and invariably supervising the worker from the shade.
[+] [-] oinksoft|12 years ago|reply
So, I'd much rather see a tools co-op than yet another tools rental service; perhaps I fail at capitalism in seeing this as something other than a startup opportunity. Maybe this is what the author is getting at, but the article is couched in startup language.
[+] [-] NSMeta|12 years ago|reply
It always struck me, that so many people discard the idea of anarchism either as "a teenage rebel idealism", terrorism, or simply "not going to work". Hence they go back to capitalism or however things work today.
But in the end, what anarcho-communism is trying to achieve is what most of us would agree with: eliminate poverty and exploitation (via equal rights to access means of production), let people have control over their own lives, direct democracy and self-organization. And when people say it's not going to work, it saddens me that we are not even trying to move in that direction. Of course, it may not ever happen, but innovating in this direction surely could lead us to a better world.
Of course, don't take my word for it, as I'm obviously biased. Instead research the topic if you're interested.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelt|12 years ago|reply
They had several broken rapid prototyping machines, lathes, drill presses and similar.
I think things getting broken is inevitable, and if I expect other people to fix the things I broke it only seems fair for me to give them something for their trouble. So for-profit tool loans seem like the common sense path IMHO.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olaf|12 years ago|reply
Who is Chomsky's Favorite Anarchist? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8KpRb38Uks
[+] [-] eloisant|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teej|12 years ago|reply
"Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/323875236225363968
[+] [-] j2d3|12 years ago|reply
I could go buy a chopsaw. I will probably keep using it on occasion. But it's another $200 or so and - I'd rather just borrow one from a friend. But I don't really know who of my friends has a chopsaw I can borrow, I don't want to invest the time to figure that out and then go and get it, and tool rental is ridiculously expensive, and it doesn't generally deliver without even more ridiculous expense.
I also need a nail gun, and the good ones are all air powered, which means I need a compressor, too. Again, I could go rent this stuff, but I want it delivered, and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it would cost to just buy the tool!
I have several power tools I rarely use. If I could sign up for a service that would let me loan my tools out and borrow tools from others that also join the service, and if the tool sharing service delivered and picked up tools from my home and I requested what I want and made known what I have via an app, I'd sign up right away.
I think it could be done with little cost to the end user.
So - Uber for everything - yes - and Uber for powertools - give it to me now!
[+] [-] jarrett|12 years ago|reply
This is probably the biggest problem with a sharing/renting economy.
Manufacturing has gotten to the point where producing an object is so inexpensive, it's cheaper to buy than rent. But why should that be? At any given production cost, why isn't it still cheaper to produce fewer and let multiple people use them, either via a renting system or something else? You're making fewer objects and still satisfying demand, so why doesn't this save money?
The reason is the labor and real estate costs of administering such a system. You need people to staff the rental/sharing agency. You also need a conveniently-located (and thus expensive) building where people go to pick up and return the objects. Or, if you're doing delivery, you can choose a more out-of-the-way location, but now you're paying the labor cost of drivers.
Because the overhead of running a sharing system is so high, it's actually cheaper most of the time to allocate one of each object to each person, except for the most expensive objects.
[+] [-] chollida1|12 years ago|reply
The Home Depot in North America already rents out all those tools. You can usually do it for 4 hours or a day at a time.
I've done this for jack hammers, paint sprayers, post hole augers and concrete mixers. As long as you live near one then it works well.
The best thing about this is the price, very cheap. You can even rent minor tools like drills:)
I guess home delivery would be the next step?
[+] [-] sgrove|12 years ago|reply
Why not pay the full price for the tool + delivery (handled by some monthly membership fee, maybe) to keep it as long as you like, and then push a button on your phone and someone shows up from the service to "buy it back" and return it to the cloud. You'd essentially be paying a deposit to cover the item, and then get the money back when the service got it back.
I'd liken this more to the original "netflix-for-everything", with a dash of exec/uber-for-everything.
[+] [-] jlongster|12 years ago|reply
I would love a real tool rental service that had everything and at good prices.
EDIT: my 4x4 cuts were straight. I can't imagine trying to do a 45deg cut with a circular saw...
[+] [-] Pxtl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squeakywheel|12 years ago|reply
(disclaimer: I started it)
[+] [-] specialist|12 years ago|reply
I bought most of the tools I use, eg framing nail gun and compressor. I have bought some tools used, like the PEX (plumbing) expanders. For me, buying is cheaper than renting.
I don't know how long I'll need the tools. And I've been very careful to buy models and brands with high resale value.
The contractors I hire often rent tools. Because they're pros. They know the task, correctly estimate the duration, get the job done, and return the tool. When the tool breaks, it's not their problem. And they can pass the rental costs thru to me.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] qq66|12 years ago|reply
When I stay with my cousins in India, they can borrow anything they need on pretty short notice. We wanted to play chess -- my cousin went a few doors down to borrow their chess board. He saw that the cardboard chess board was falling apart -- he spent about half an hour fixing it up with tape.
The closest that you see in America, since the days of Elks Lodges and bowling leagues are behind us, are religious communities. Mormons, for example, have a very tight-knit community of friends that they see frequently. Forget a power drill -- if your house burns down, your fellow Mormons will be there in an hour to get you housed/clothed/fed/taken care of.
[+] [-] aacook|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkrich|12 years ago|reply
One of the major advancements of mankind was precisely being able to manufacture goods at a minimal marginal cost. Set up a billion dollar stamping machine and now you can produce widgets for a marginal cost of a few cents.
Compare that to centuries past where manufacturing goods of any kind- metal, clothing, or food took enormous amounts of resources compared to today and therefore goods were either too expensive to purchase, or had to be shared. Ironically, computers are probably the single best example of this. Previously they were complex and expensive to make, so the fortunate few who had access to one had to share it. Nowadays you can go to Best Buy and buy your own for a few hundred bucks. That is a huge leap in progress. Why would you want to move the other way?
[+] [-] commanda|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AJ007|12 years ago|reply
There are numerous items consumers, buy, use a few times, and then discard or store. There are even more items consumers use, and due to poor quality turn in to trash.
I'm not sure which is more backwards thinking. I am annoyed when something breaks and the cost to repair it exceeds the replacement cost.
[+] [-] aacook|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmcewen|12 years ago|reply
I wrote a blog post about why a drill is a bad example for the sharing economy: https://www.credport.org/blog/12-Why-a-Drill-is-a-Bad-Exampl...
[+] [-] aacook|12 years ago|reply
To me it seems most people interested in the sharing economy only care about to talk about sharing if both sides of the transaction are individuals. If you're open to the idea that the sharing economy could be a transaction between a business and individual, then the market for temporary product rentals suddenly becomes a $40B space. This is nothing new, either. Small businesses have been renting out to other businesses and individuals since the 1950s. And, it's an existing $40B+ industry.
So while sure, peer to peer rentals for small items might never work, that's not to say that an "Uber for rentals" model wouldn't work. Uber started by bringing existing limo drivers online... not by trying to create a new supply side.
Edit: I also find the conclusion and only looking at drills to also be too narrow of a conclusion. Seems like most people when they look at tools only think about power drills. Totally agree that there isn't a $2B market for power drill rentals. However, there is a massive market for all other types of tool rentals.
[+] [-] JoelSutherland|12 years ago|reply
It's a fairly efficient market which means you can generally buy a used drill for the same price that you can sell it for.
[+] [-] mason240|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonny_eh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgrove|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] czzarr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonchalance|12 years ago|reply
Searching for "drill rent" in the NYC page reveals http://newhaven.craigslist.org/tls/3961251107.html
[+] [-] jarek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq66|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travisp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dajohnson89|12 years ago|reply
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace
[+] [-] JelteF|12 years ago|reply
You rent little electric smarts per minute and get free minutes for putting it back at a charging location. The cars can be put back anywhere in the city though and you can find them using the app which shows you all the locations.
[+] [-] jarek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retroafroman|12 years ago|reply
A good example that I could use right now is a BMW airbag reset tool. I stupidly disconnected an airbag when replacing my window regulator. Now I need a very basic, $20 on eBay, electronic tool to reset the system and get rid of the warning light. I'd pay $10 to have it by the weekend when I'll do the work, and it could be used many, many times over. Every German car I've ever owned had similar electrical and mechanical specialty tools I've had to buy and can't use when I get a new car.
[+] [-] squeakywheel|12 years ago|reply
It's live and open in select cities, 8 weeks old startup.
[+] [-] secstate|12 years ago|reply
Problem solved. Live in communities where your peer group is varied enough that you're likely to be friends with someone with what you don't have and this is a non-issue.
Of course, that's not realistic for the vast majority of the U.S. So I suppose, good luck. I'm gonna go chat with my neighbor about something and see if needs any help.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|12 years ago|reply
http://snapgoods.com/ http://us.zilok.com/ http://www.openshed.com.au/ http://irent2u.com/ http://www.hirethings.co.nz/ http://rentalic.com/ http://www.rentstuff.com/ http://www.loanables.com/ http://www.rentoid.com/
And that's just the ones who are still trying. Many domains are dead.
And honestly, I suspect that they'll all fail. "Rent anything" is too big of a problem for a startup to solve in one fell swoop. I think someone could succeed at it if they picked a market that is really underserved by other existing options and focus on just a small set of goods, in a specific geographic area, and really work the kinks out before slowly expanding.
Becoming the go-to place for tool rentals in San Francisco before your team burns out is doable. Becoming the "rent anything from anyone" company is not.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|12 years ago|reply
What if Amazon had a "Rent for 4 hours for $5" option on their site (right below the buy button).
[+] [-] Demiurge|12 years ago|reply
It is kind of ironic that now there is a for-profit, commercial product based on the concept that has been so stigmatized during the Cold War. Perhaps rebranding is what it will take for a less consumerist, less wasteful and more efficient society that can survive global warming and overpopulation.
[+] [-] peterjancelis|12 years ago|reply
1) A human's time to come to you 2) A human's time to drill the hole 3) Capex for the drilling machine
Self driving car tech can solve point 1, which would leave a huge incentive to solve point 2. Even a low cost worker can easily cost $50K all-in (including overhead), so if self driving car tech is commonplace that would mean a "robot that drills holes and knows how to drive itself to the customer's wall" can cost up to $50K / risk adjusted interest rate.
Take interest rate at 10%, that means the market will pay upto $500K per such robot, multiply by a few of those in a few hundred cities and you now have a market oppotunity for 1000 hole drilling robots i.e. 500 million USD. It now becomes interesting for VCs.
Now redo this scenario for every little thing people do in life. Of course eventually someone who will invent the "iPhone for robots", a base robot that does the self driving and developers can make apps on top of it to do different tasks. The robot can go back to base to retool when needed.
This is why I am convinced self-driving cars will take automation to a whole new level. I think PG is right when he says ownership could turn out to be a temporary hack for efficient crowd sharing. (I am saying this as a 100% capitalist.)
[+] [-] Navarr|12 years ago|reply
They're over at http://beta.neighborrow.com/
Disclosure: I used to be contracted as a developer by the guy running it. I wasn't the best developer then, but I was a lot younger too.
[+] [-] mindslight|12 years ago|reply
I've driven back and forth across the country twice with everything in the trunk of a Honda Civic and still brought a drill with me both times. $13 will get you a corded drill (no battery to wear out) at Harbor Fright. While you're there, get a few more simple hand tools you may need someday.
People should strive to own more tools and learn to do at least some things for themselves. It sounds like this guy's actual problem is that he needs to pick up that drill and start using it more without too much planning. Imagine how good of a coder you'd be if you had to schedule an hour ahead and pay $10 every time you saved a file!
Spend some time in LA if you'd like to see the broken society that develops from outsourcing everything to services performed by cheap labor. Utterly disempowered people floating through life afraid of doing anything besides what they're told, because they have no clue how anything actually functions. And it's not like they save time either, dealing with administrative overhead for every little task and invariably supervising the worker from the shade.