In the past decades there were still plenty of businesses renting things if you so desired. And, even better - they were often pretty small scale enterprises, because we hadn't yet entered the realm of corporations buying up basically everything in existence, including other businesses. Actually you made me look this up and it's kind of a neat factoid. Hertz's rent a car service started in 1918, with a dozen Model Ts! [1]
So the basic functioning of the economy would probably be unlikely to change in a really fundamental way. But I think what would change is that overall society would have a much healthier distribution of wealth/'things', with the cost being that the overall GDP and economic growth would probably be significantly slower.
So the basic functioning of the economy would probably be unlikely to change in a really fundamental way. But I think what would change is that overall society would have a much healthier distribution of wealth/'things', with the cost being that the overall GDP and economic growth would probably be significantly slower.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz_Global_Holdings#The_comp...