From Apple to BlackRock: The Masterplan to End Ownership Itself

You probably still believe you own things.

That phone in your pocket. That car outside. The Netflix show you “bought.” Maybe even the house you live in. But the truth is you don’t own any of it. You rent access to it for as long as the system allows. Ownership, the backbone of independence, has quietly been replaced with something else — a world of subscriptions, licences, and rental agreements masquerading as progress.

It started small, disguised as convenience. Companies began building things that didn’t quite last as long as they should. A cracked screen here, a sealed battery there. They called it innovation. Economists called it planned obsolescence — designing failure into the product so you’ll buy another one. And when people began demanding the right to fix what they owned, corporations like Apple and Tesla argued it was a safety risk. They weren’t wrong — just not in the way they meant. It’s unsafe for them when you don’t keep spending.

That’s what the Right to Repair movement is really about — not fixing things, but reclaiming autonomy. Laws like California’s SB 244 Right to Repair Act and the EU’s Directive (EU) 2024/1799 promoting repair now have to remind companies that products should be repairable. A ridiculous situation, really. We’re legislating basic common sense because corporations found out that broken things make better profits than working ones.

But hardware was just the testing ground. The real coup happened in the digital world — and we all clicked “Agree.”

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, was sold as protection against piracy. In practice, it just means your purchases aren’t really yours. When PlayStation warned Discovery titles could disappear, or when Nintendo shut down the Wii U/3DS eShops and online services (further update), entire digital collections became contingent on licensing and servers. You didn’t buy the film, you bought permission to view it — permission that can be revoked at any time. And when your device becomes “unsupported,” you don’t upgrade because you want to. You upgrade because you’re locked out.

Durability is now a liability. A product that lasts too long is bad for business. A phone that can’t be updated, a car that needs a software subscription for its heated seats — these aren’t bugs, they’re features. The modern economy rewards control, not craftsmanship. Your device isn’t built to endure; it’s built to expire, both physically and digitally. Permanence doesn’t generate revenue.

The next phase was to monetise the act of existing. Why sell things once when you can charge forever?

Microsoft, Adobe, Netflix — even BMW’s infamous heated-seat subscription — all figured out that the real profit comes from never letting you go. Everything became a subscription. Economists call it inattention in subscriptions — revenues jump 14% to 200% when customers aren’t paying attention, per Stanford. Translation: they profit from your forgetfulness. A treadmill for your wallet. The modern world doesn’t want customers, it wants captives.

Then came the junk fees — hidden pricing disguised as transparency. The U.S. bleeds around $90 billion a year to these extras, according to the Council of Economic Advisers. The FTC’s new rule on unfair or deceptive fees took effect in May 2025 (think hotels and ticketing), but the bigger game is algorithmic price-setting. A Senate investigation found airlines are exploring customer-specific fees using algorithms — two people, same flight, different price — while DOT tried to force clearer fee disclosures with an ancillary fee transparency rule (later procedurally blocked in court and kicked back to the agency). Dynamic pricing, they call it. Dynamic robbery is closer.

And while everyone was arguing about digital rights and service plans, the last piece fell quietly into place: housing.

Large investors moved in. Blackstone’s $3.5 billion deal for Tricon Residential deepened Wall Street’s bet on single-family rentals, and Invitation Homes remains one of the sector’s biggest operators. The GAO estimates institutional investors own only a small share nationally, but much higher shares in specific metros (e.g., ~25% of SFRs in Atlanta) — with evidence some investor activity can raise prices and rents. The dream of owning a house — the last bastion of independence — is being reclassified as a luxury. Renting, once a temporary phase, is now a destination. Why sell a house once when you can rent it forever? Why compete for customers when you can buy the market? You’ll own nothing — not because of ideology, but because it’s simply more profitable that way.

The same playbook repeats at every level. Limit ownership, centralise control, extract indefinitely. We’ve replaced freedom with access, and access expires monthly. Even your data — the one thing uniquely yours — is mined, packaged, and used to fine-tune the cost of your dependency.

Your data profile already knows your weaknesses. It knows how far your overdraft stretches before you flinch. Which subscriptions you’ll cancel and which you’ll forget. How often you move, what you search at 3 a.m., and which brand of toothpaste will make you feel momentarily in control again. Algorithms don’t just predict your behaviour anymore — they invoice it.

And that’s the bit people still miss: this isn’t chaos. It’s precision. Ownership didn’t collapse by accident; it was replaced by a system that discovered control is more valuable than innovation. Products, media, homes, even attention — all rebuilt around the same principle: recurring revenue from a captive population.

The irony is that it doesn’t even feel like oppression. It feels smooth. Seamless. Frictionless. You’re not being coerced; you’re being upgraded. The new world doesn’t need to chain you — it just auto-renews you.

Planned dependence isn’t coming. It’s here, glowing from your devices, whispering from your smart fridge, sitting quietly in the fine print of your mortgage. And you agreed to it, not under duress, but with a single, casual click.

So before you scroll away, ask yourself one thing.

Do you actually own your phone? The software that runs it? The films in your library, the games on your console, the apps on your screen? Did you ever — really? Or were you just renting the illusion of ownership, waiting for the inevitable message that flashes when the licence runs out:

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE.