"Over the past decade or so, an array of venture-backed companies have emerged from the ooze of Silicon Valley armed with a single goal: to give people like me—relatively young, relatively (but not too) affluent, in possession of some degree of “taste”—temporary access to nice things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. The biggest and most well-known of these companies is Rent the Runway. Founded in 2009 as a formalwear rental company for women, it has since expanded to everyday wear and now offers a monthly designer clothing rental subscription service: starting at $89 a month for the base plan, women can access “hundreds of thousands of options” on a rotating basis. Clothing rental services ushered in the new rental economy. Where parasitic rent-to-own businesses stepped into the aftermath after the financial crisis to fleece the already vulnerable, several startups now target more well-off consumers to rent pricey mid-century modern furniture; organic, high thread-count sheets; and expensive kitchen appliances like KitchenAids and Vitamixes. Their terms are less predatory than those offered by companies targeting the working class, but the premise remains unchanged. Kept afloat not by the cost of their subscriptions but hundreds of millions of dollars in VC cash, these startups all use similarly idealistic buzzwords: “flexibility”; “freedom”; “sustainability.” Why spend your hard-earned cash on cheap clothes that will end up in a landfill in a season or two when you could pay slightly more for an endless stream of designer dresses?, their sales pitches ask. Why buy a shitty IKEA couch and a particle board coffee table for an apartment you’ll only live in for a year or two max, when you could spend twice as much for a sofa that’s twice as good—and that you won’t have to take with you once you move?"