Rent-over-own actually applies to capital too. Think about bitcoin mining contracts or timeshare vacation homes. The defining characteristic of “owning” capital is participating in the risk of catastrophic loss, not physical possession or operational control.
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Ownership is not actually a necessary concept. De jure ownership (“name on title”) is a legal fiction that you can easily chip away at via secondary fictions that distribute risk of name-on-title in a zillion ways. Insurance is paying someone to take over a risk fraction for eg.
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Even a scheme as elemental as say land titles in a purely Georgist/LVT regime is not a pristine embodiment of “ownership”. You can bolt creative rent-like schemes on top of it.
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At the other limit, “public” ownership of a commons is not a necessary relationship with an asset but a set of mutual expectations among humans about human behavior in relation to that asset. You don’t sue squirrels for trespassing on “your” land for example.
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As a commenter points out, rent-over-own really only works for standardized things. This is actually the risk point in disguise. For standardized things there is no information asymmetry that can be exploited *at that level* to informationally distinguish renter and owner
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What do you think is the solution to rent-over-own only really working on things that can be easily standardized?
Eg. there are 50 apartments broadly like mine available for rent, and only one is unfurnished; I want to use my own unusual bed, so my options are extremely limited.
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Ecomomically - almost by definition - long term rental costs exceed long ownership costs IF 100% utilization is economically beneficial. The exceptions being certain ROC calcs.
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Thought about this recently. Beyond owning enough for basic comfort and security it sounds true. Put this perspective on investors: renting capital as a leverage to amplify your decision making (and get the pleasures of playing high stakes while limiting risk).



