Always a clean butt...
There has been something in our food... "Lighting as a service" (LAAS) has its own Wikipedia page. I'll try to sketch the comfortable world of a "Clean butt as a service" (CBAAS). Light as a service is invented by business developers at large companies who think it would be cool to ask a monthly fee for something that people normally buy once. Interestingly, also environmentally conscious people like Thomas Rau seem to fall for it. There are however big problems with this model.
What is light?
Suppose Philips installed their lights in your mansion. Their specialists optimized for the maximum luminous flux per unit area. Neat! However, what if the light is slightly colored? Or if it takes half an hour to get to its maximum strength? Or what it flickers?
If a company makes you pay a monthly fee for a clean butt, you might have some wishes about how the cleaning is done. Is it some kind of coating? Does the cleaning hurt? How long do you need to wait before it is cleaned?
It is not easy to define what is light, or what is clean!
Can I halt my subscription when I go on holidays?
Suppose we have such an amazing monthly contract and the quality of light is beyond our expectations. Are we as customers ready for yet another subscription? I'm on holidays for a month, should I still pay for the light? If I have children, do I have to pay per person? In the summer there is more daylight, do I get a reduction? I'm selling my place, should I transfer my contract to the next lucky person buying this place?
A subscription for a clean butt is less troublesome from this point of view. Your butt is not so easily shared or transferred to someone else. However, on holidays you might want to have a clean butt as well. Time to read the fine print if that's possible!
It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare!
What do we desire?
Philips in its infinite wisdom decides that what we want is light. Is this really the case? Or do we want light only when we are present? What function does a light have if no one looks at it... Light is just a means towards something... For example, we might want to find something. Or we might want to feel certain emotions.
Our monthly clean butt subscription is a technical solution just as LAAS is. We're complex people who care about privacy, social interactions, smell, warmth, etc. A gnome cleaning our butt every time so we don't need to buy toilet paper ourselves, might not tap into our deepest wishes and desires...
Unsustainable
One argument for having Philips providing light as a service, rather than lamps, is sustainability. Normally, Philips makes lamps with short lifetimes. If they can provide a service, they have an incentive to make products with long lifetimes. That's how the story is told.
Suppose, indeed, that I care so much about longevity that I buy technology to register the lifetimes of my lamps. I switch to a sustainable competitor when I'm unhappy about lifetimes. If Philips would offer their lamps as part of a light service, would that make it easier to go to a competitor for reasons of sustainability? I don't think so! We all know the Volkswagen emission scandal.
The butt cleaning service provider would be super sustainable, minimizing the number of toilet paper rolls, just for the sake of its own wallet. Or wouldn't it? The actual costs might be measured in person hours. To clean quickly with more paper would save more money than to clean with less paper.
For now I am just buying my own lamps and my own toilet paper!