Rethinking Consumerism

“We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity, where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.” — President Obama
What will be the next drive to consume?  It’s our patriotic duty in resulting in a Paradox of Thrift.  Consumerism [...]

Did Wal-Mart’s CEO call for a reduction in consumption?

Not quite but he is saying he’d like to see quality improve such that consumers don’t need to replace their toasters each year.  Now the old adage is that you get what you pay for and this is exceedingly true at Wal-Mart.  Their products are cheap, the companies that make them are forced to cut [...]

It’s not your father’s country anymore…

So Jack Cafferty over at cnn.com has a interesting commentary on the state of the country and how it’s changed over time.  He talks about what was the American dream was back in the early 60s.
I have kicked around longer than most people: I’m 66 years old. I remember well the ’50s and early ’60s, [...]

Renting as a Green Concept

Renting as a Green Concept, what a concept.  It’s one of the reasons we started Crowd Rent.  Consuming requires massive resources, renting reuses resources already spent.  Now the article in question points to a sort of competing service in that they sell ads and Crowd Rent is free to list but it’s the same idea.
The [...]

Self storage

One of the most perplexing trends I’ve seen is self-storage facilities that rent people space to store their things.  Working at U-Haul I Saw first hand the demand for storage.  Renting trucks was expensive for the company.  You need to maintain them, fix them, tow them when the die, and rotate them out of the [...]

Wal-Mart CEO Sees Long-Lasting Shift In Consumer Spending

Wal-Mart CEO Sees Long-Lasting Shift In Consumer Spending.
Even Wal-Mart admits that consumer spending habits have changed and probably won’t go back to the way they used to be.  Gone are the days of buying until we’re blue in the face.  Where we had to have it all and the fuller our garage/basement the happier we [...]

Rentalisim, the new Consumerisim?

Some people bemoan the death of consumerism as the downfall of our economy.  That if we, as a people, are not willing to spend all our money to acquire things we’re causing this economic strife.  Now let’s set the record straight, we here at Crowd Rent are not against consumerism.  We buy things too!  We [...]