> milk delivery subscriptions used to be common. when you'd cancel your membership, they'd just stop delivering. they didn't come back to repossess your unused milk.
No, because they charged you $1 for every bottle they delivered. You bought the entire bottle upfront (you may have paid in arrears, but when it was delivered you agreed to pay)
Imagine instead the milkman drops 10 bottles on your doorstep. Some days you only want 1 bottle for tea and a bit of cereal, but other days you make some pancakes and need 6 bottles. At the end of the day the milkman takes back the unused milk and charges you for what you used.
Aside from the problem of milk spoiling that seems a perfectly reasonable model.
A potentially better analogy might be a library. The library borrowing model existed long before software, so one can't argue that modern software subscription models "enabled" this "predatory" practice.
I can borrow as much as I can read from the library, but I can't keep the books I haven't read at home while I am not a member. The books never really belong to me, just as the HP ink never really belong to users (until they are printed onto paper, at which point they become a constituent part of a "page" which _is_ owned by the user).
I think the cognitive dissonance arises because this "borrowing" model is being applied to a _consumable product_, which is not common.
When the product costs essentially little to nothing to manufacture - in comparison to the cost charged to the consumer - it may as well be considered a durable good to the manufacturer which allows you to "borrow" it for a fee that far exceeds the cost of lifetime replacement.
No, because they charged you $1 for every bottle they delivered. You bought the entire bottle upfront (you may have paid in arrears, but when it was delivered you agreed to pay)
Imagine instead the milkman drops 10 bottles on your doorstep. Some days you only want 1 bottle for tea and a bit of cereal, but other days you make some pancakes and need 6 bottles. At the end of the day the milkman takes back the unused milk and charges you for what you used.
Aside from the problem of milk spoiling that seems a perfectly reasonable model.