You Don't Own Anything Anymore

What's a scam so normalized we don't even realize it's a scam anymore?

The subscription model.

Think about it: Apple sells you a $1,000 phone with barely enough storage, then charges you monthly to keep your own photos and videos. Miss your $0.99 (or in some case $59.99/month) iCloud payment? Your memories disappear.

Apple is not just selling you a phone. They are making you a digital tenant in your own device.

That realization sent me down a rabbit hole of calculating how much I'm paying monthly for things in today's digital world. Google One: $10/month. Claude: $20/month. Netflix: $17.99/month. Lemonade Renters Insurance: $10/month. And the list goes on.

We're living in a real-life episode ("Common People") of Black Mirror, where Amanda needs a neural implant to survive, but the payments keep rising until her husband resorts to humiliating livestreams to afford the next payment. We are all Amanda now, except instead of life-saving tech, it's our creative tools, our entertainment, our cloud storage. And instead of one desperate subscription, we're juggling dozens.

When did everything become a rental with no option to buy?

I remember buying Microsoft Office in 2010 for $150 and wincing at the price. But it was mine. Now that same software costs $130 every single year, forever. Miss a payment? Your files become hostages.

The crazy part is how seamlessly this transition happened. We just accepted that our $3,000 Peloton needs a monthly subscription to work. That our $2,000 Eight Sleep mattress pad requires ongoing payments to regulate temperature. That our fitness tracker demands a subscription to tell us how poorly we slept.

Even Google, the company that built an empire on "free" services funded by ads, is pivoting hard toward subscriptions. Google One, YouTube Premium, and the latest Google AI Ultra that comes with a $250/month price tag: they're dshifting from ads to subscriptions because it's more predictable, more profitable, and more controlling.

And control is exactly what this is about.

When you buy something, you own it. You can use it, fix it, modify it.

When you rent it, you are at the mercy of the landlord. Terms change, features disappear, prices go up.

The subscription economy sells convenience and always-updated features. What it actually delivers is a world where we own less while paying more. Where companies transform customers into tenants, and tenants can always be evicted.

And it's just getting started. Your car will soon require a subscription to unlock built-in features. Your refrigerator will demand monthly payments to stay cold. Your door locks will hold your own house hostage until you pay up.

We're all paying rent on our own digital lives now. And the landlords can raise the rent whenever they want.