> In GENERAL, it seems like it takes a lot more money and resources nowadays to do this, relative to other benefits you can have.
If you're talking about small ticket items, this seems true, but it certainly doesn't hold for more consequential expenditures like real estate or even cars.
Are you sure it "certainly" doesn't hold for cars? Cars are expensive as hell: after the amortized sticker price, maintenance, gas, parking (I pay $150/month to park near downtown Seattle) and insurance, it takes quite a few Uber rides before choosing the renting economy puts you in the red overall. And by contrast with a house, a car really isn't any household wealth worth speaking of, they depreciate so fast.
If cars had a delivery system as efficient as netflix, it would make far less sense to own a car. Longer-term "capital" goods are very different than disposable media consumption - some like cars (and media, and technology) deprecate but land is an investment in a commodity that is getting more in demand over time.
It's especially true for cars. Uber style car renting brings a much higher utilization for them, and the costs of car ownership are almost all in capital and fixed ones.
Isn’t it especially true for cars and houses? You need a substantial amount of capital for both of those, especially for a mortgage. And that’s not even getting into whether you actually own something if the bank can take it from you for missed payments.
