Are We All Just Tenants in Our Own Economies

Everything feels rented now, even the ground we walk on. Not in the traditional sense. Countries pull resources from the earth minerals, oil, whatever and ship them off where the real cash flow happens. The locals working on those resources might get jobs in the mines, but they never see the factories. They’re left out of where the actual value is created. The global economy is shifting toward a pretty straightforward reality: some folks own everything while the rest of us just rent, and your fate was pretty much sealed before you even showed up. It's not just about nations, either. Check out how work is set up these days. Everything runs on subscriptions. The software for your job? Rented. The car you drive? Leased. Even your side hustle is probably on some kind of platform that takes a cut and can change the rules whenever. You really don’t own anything. Small businesses used to really own their whole setup. Now they’re just parts in someone else’s machine. One policy shift and it’s game over for them. There’s something seriously messed up about this. A whole generation has learned to live like they’re just renting, even regarding their careers, relationships, or just how they see their role in the world. When you have a renting mindset, you stop thinking about the long term. Why invest in something that isn't yours? Why plan for a future that could vanish any moment? An entire generation is starting to feel like temporary visitors in their own lives. Maybe that's why decentralized systems matter. Not because they’ll make anyone a millionaire (they likely won’t) but because they can change how we think about ownership.

I deeply understand the points you are trying to make, the world today is more like a rented place even from our birth you can see that you are not assured of living but very much guaranteed of your death and the mere fact that you will temporarily here, furthermore; government or individuals that we elected to represent us in the day to day running of our countries now force everyone leave their properties in their hands to share amount us, it’s really bad that we can’t own lands for really, it’s all rented, we pay taxes for everything which also a subscription for living in our fathers land… infact in general the live we live are rented, when they decide to take it away from us they can. What a terrible life.

In my country, we have schemes of "Rent to Own" for Condominiums, which is essentially renting until you fail that 1 month of payment and it's all gone. It's masquerading the OG way of handling debt because of saturated real estate markets and over development of cities. Inflation is on the high and the dreams of owning a piece of land is a distant dream, Buying it would tie you to your jobs at the expense of your dreams and family's aspiration. Rent is not bad, atleast not as bad as owning a property with less than 1% rental yield.

Decentralisation means taking away control from the few elites who control the world's resources and giving it to the people. This is why they are fighting decentralisation, because it will make them lose the power to regulate the people as they want. Nothing is certain again because there are laws that have taken away your power to own anything. Job security is gradually becoming a mirage because they have been able to subdue labour laws through middlemen and temporary employment. Small and medium-scale businesses would have to close down or become middlemen for large enterprises owned by politically connected businessmen. Since they cannot compete, the only option is to become enslaved. It's like we are living a borrowed life and we have to work ass off to repay this debt and the high interest.

What do you mean by decentralized stuff? Bitcoin? Then I'm going to disappoint you. You (no one) can own a decentralized stuff like bitcoin, because, in fact, even during transactions, no bitcoin is sent to the recipient's address - only information about "ownership" is transmitted. You retain this "right" as long as you have access to your wallet (ownership of access keys - seed phrase). It's also worth noting that bitcoin simply doesn't exist in the physical world. These are the "harsh" times when we don't actually own anything.

I get your point, but there are also advantages to this. I cant tell if it outweighs the disadvantages, though, but I believe it depends on the region you are in. With the rate of inflation and how expensive things are now, it would be very difficult for poor or middle-class people to have anything if they were not allowed to rent. How would they afford a house or a car with a one-time payment? Even the streaming platforms. With Netflix, Apple Music or Spotify, they can have all the music and a lot of movies to watch for as low as $20 a month. Would they be able to buy all the movies and music they watch and listen to a month if this weren't possible? I agree that it's now extreme because every service wants a subscription system, but as I said before, it has its upsides.   The subscription system has made it possible for a lot of other services to be created. It has also created means for people to earn money. Side hustle platforms like Fiverr and Upwork create a place where it's easy to get work or hire a professional for your job, so I think it's not all bad.

Where is this happening? In general, everything is for rent for most. Everything is owned by several super-rich families. Is this a society where the majority are poor and happy, the way Klaus Schwab dreamed of a future social order? The peasants in the Middle Ages at least had some kind of property, but here it just looks like slavery somewhere like the Roman Empire. Although in a milder form. But that's just for now...

So the bitcoin network doesn't do anything but so electricity demanding to just change the ownership rights? At least it's in a public network, your cash is being used by banks for lending while you make a mere 6% for holding money locked in for years.

You're right but you're also letting it beat you and that's just what they want. Yes we're born into a system we didn't choose. Yes the land is rented. Yes taxes are subscription fees for already. Yes they can take it all away whenever they choose to. All of that is true. But we can see the cage quite well. We have language for it. We have the tools to create alternatives. Our great-grandfathers didn't have encrypted communication or decentralized networks or the ability to transfer value across borders without having to ask for permission. We do. So yeah life is rented. Death is guaranteed. The government will take what it wants. But sitting in that despair is just another way of paying rent. That rent to own business is nuts. A single late pay and decades of equity simply disappear. It is made to appear as a road to ownership yet it is in fact a method of taking the most rent. Worse than direct renting since at least with direct renting you know what to expect. It's not even about the middle man taking a cut (though obviously they do). The whole structure is now restructured in such a way that to survive, being a middleman is like the only option left. Like you can't just make something and sell it anymore. There's always a platform though, always a processor, always someone who "facilitates" and takes their piece. And we're supposed to be grateful for an opportunity to be efficiently exploited? When we take such an argument to its logical conclusion then what would even counts as ownership anymore? Everything is information today. Ownership is the just whoever controls the database right? By that standard nothing's real. Then, who has the keys becomes the answer. With bitcoin its you (assuming you don't lose the seed phrase which yeah is a whole other problem). With literally everything else it's someone that can override you whenever. You're right that we do not own anything in the old sense anymore. But there's a difference between "I don't own this because it's abstract" and "I don't own this because someone else can take it". I'd rather own information I control rather than stuff that someone else has a right to confiscate. At least I know where I stand.

I think also op talked about the fact that the citizens of areas where natural resources can be found and not benefiting from those natural resources as they should and I think that is very true. Many countries with high rate of poverty have natural resources that should be able to guarantee them a good standard of living but they are living so poorly that they can even beg those purchasing or plundering their natural resources for aids. The government of countries blessed with natural resources are very greedy and they leave the less privileged and average people in abject poverty.

If you think of it as a very diplomatic issue you will find out that those resources are mined by foreign miners which means even the government of the country has no sole control of the country to an extent because some are even been put in their with the effort of an international community or country which means that even the control system of the country is rented, it goes beyond what we might be looking at it as, just like I said it seems like life itself is now borrowed and will be returned to the owners. The word Elites are the renters and every other person are just borrowers including countries with lesser power as big economic countries seem to be the people renting out to them regardless they own the materials.

Regards softwares and virtual content in general, piracy solves a big part of the problem, as it always did. I've seen people calculating where I live how much you would have to pay in order to have access to every streaming apps, movies, music and every other digital stuff we consume daily, and they reached to the conclusion it would cost between 144,30$ - 180,38$ in a monthly basis. That is an absurd, considering minimum wage is about 270$. And that is, to have access to old content people used to own on DVDs, for an example, and to subscription channels which display a huge number of ads along the day. About everything else, you can still own your car, you can still own your house and you can still profit by renting it to someone else... The possibilities are many. Of course it's not easy and fast to save money, but we have to try making progress somehow. Don't imitate the masses. Draw your own way and avoid the technocrats consumerist's traps.

The wealth gap is widening more and more these days to be honest. Being middle class still means having loans these days. I see kids these days saying they wish they had bought houses earlier because now it’s almost impossible to afford one.

Sure it's being pushed back a bit and that does need solving, but the world is not as dire as the media likes to make out. There are plenty of people successfully moving into home ownership in their 30's, but it can take that long for anyone to figure out and establish the career that they want. Renting is also not the calamity that many people make it out to be, especially when the government steps up with the proper processes to hold landlords accountable. Plenty of small businesses, depending on what they do, have often been reliant on just a few profitable contracts and this is nothing new. I remember hearing businesses folding a couple decades ago when things go wrong with their key clients, but sometimes they make it through all these struggles and evolve into medium/large businesses that eventually end up going public. The picture is not as black and white as some people might visualize it.

Corporate slavery while making people believe they are free and equal as if they have a choice.

I once watched a video that suggested that in the far future, if the world continues as it is, the propaganda "you own nothing but you're happy" will soon become a reality. The capitalist system allows the super-rich to accumulate wealth by purchasing numerous assets such as land, property, companies, and their distribution chains. And when low-income people can't afford to buy, renting will become a forced option. Currently, we can see many things being "rented." In fact, almost all the digital services we use are subscription-based, which is essentially renting digital property. Renting will become a human necessity, and it will create a clear divide between the rich and the poor.

Exactly, its the fact what happen in my country right now all becoming renters from land, water and anything we have some time easily claim owning by the country. Simple when your land have many potential from mineral, gold and oil if government get it become state property and you must leave without get return in accordance with the value and content in the land. Ironic when imagining what happen right now, you have buy land most expensive price but one day later if government found the above kinds in your land easily you loss of ownership with your land. So  need some one wake up and fight for bad regulation for the citizen how to make the government not easily claiming their ownership what have been the people ownership.

You're right, I have thought about this before. I live in a poor country where most salaries aren't enough, so most of my income comes from my online work. That's why this idea came to my mind: what if the internet were to go down one day? I rent internet access from the government, which in turn rents internet infrastructure from another country or organization, which may then rent from a third organization and so on. In the end I'm an employee of the main company, and if they cut off the internet, all my income will cease. This is just one real life example among hundreds of others ranging from the simplest aspects of our daily lives to much more complex matters.

I completely agree with you here, even after paying huge amount for our property we can't get full ownership, govt can take it away anytime from us. I feel like we are living in a world of rented economy where the dream of ownership is becoming difficult day by day. Rented economy is our new reality. Because of the huge increase in prices, owning anything has almost become a dream. Govt or big companies together introduce the policies by which they push the public to buy things on installments .Houses, cars, home appliances ,even the mobile phones in our hands are mostly bought on installments. I think People purchasing power is decreasing and ownership is slowly shifting away from ordinary people into the hands of big companies and the government. Even buying a small piece of land  become extremely expensive and one has to pay heavy charges just to transfer it into your own name. As a result, many middle-class families prefer to live in rented houses not by choice but because ownership has become nearly impossible.

I think right now I’m stuck within believing we are in a capitalist society or socialist society (the gap between socialism and capitalism is now so small) the government owns the means of production and distribution of all things in the country. I agree with you too that installment is now the new standard of living especially in the western world that is why people in some part of the world like my country seem to be happy over the people in other part of the world as ownership is not yet solely in the hands of government yet properties can be taken away at anytime by the government. With this life of renting standards I consider living a a rural area better than the urban areas.