How Self Storage Thrives Off The American Dream
Video from Modern MBA
The American Dream of Materialism and Excess
"Self-service storage is an American phenomenon. While self-storage facilities exist in Europe and Asia, the business overseas does not come close to the scale and demand in the United States over the past decade. Self-storage is a direct monetization of American overconsumption so any bet on the industry is a bet that Americans will keep buying so much stuff that they’ll always need to rent extra space to store it. In a time where the economy is contracting, institutional and retail investors are looking for defensive businesses that deal in essentials. Self storage companies have become attractive as stable, recession-proof, operationally lean lean real estate businesses where cash flows in every month, overhead is minimal, and the customers literally do all the heavy lifting themselves. In this episode, we’ll cover the business of self storage, how the industry’s success rides on the death of the American Dream, how it all relates to skyrocketing home prices, wages stagnation, inflation - and how one company has remained the uncontested industry leader since the 1990’s." from video introduction
Materialism Is Easy to Decry and Hard to Avoid
"The Christmas season is an easy target to attack for its rampant materialism. We enter the new year emotionally and financially exhausted, both corporately and individually. I’m not going to disagree with that assessment.
However . . .
Most people think materialism is the desire for many things, or expensive things, or unique things, or all three. But the truth is you can be a materialist at any income level (or none). All that’s required is you look to the material comforts of this world for your happiness.
Heart of Materialism
C. S. Lewis exposed the breadth of gluttony in his famous Screwtape Letters by showing that a sinful relationship to food doesn’t only take the form of overindulgence. Sometimes it’s just an insistence on “a cup of tea, weak, but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”—no matter what has been offered (Letter XVII).." from the article: Materialism Is Easy to Decry and Hard to Avoid