You Will Never Own Anything (But You'll Pay Forever)

you will never own anything the death of ownership is here and the subscription model industry has scrupled since 2014 by now pay later is booming and death is on the rise and gen Z are the guinea pigs in this new experiment today Generation Z is in record levels of death while earning far less than the generations before them so let's take a look at the day-to-day life of someone growing up in the anti- ownership economy however young or old you are the first thing most people do when they wake up is look at their phones

over 80% of people would do this in the first 15 minutes of the day for some people it's just an alarm clock but most are plugging into the digital world as soon as possible the smartphone has become the starting point for nearly everyone's day and it was also what first enabled the subscription model to really take off before their meteoric rise in both functionality and price phones generally want something you bought through a rolling contract some people paid a monthly bill for access to the sell your network but most of the time that wasn't for

the physical device itself instead before smartphones came around the device were cheap and more disposable people would pay Upfront for phones as well as all other Tech products this even extended to software music and other products that are really just packets of data people expected to pay once for something then own it forever that was how the rest of the world worked when smartphones and high-speed internet came along they changed the entire game phones became high-tech gateways into the wider world of services they also got a lot more sophisticated and expensive pushing them out of

the reach for most consumers of course some of this was due to higher production costs but much larger part of the price Cy was because tech companies realized they could justify these much higher prices if that wasn't enough it gave mobile phone companies a huge opportunity to change their entire business model instead of just selling the phones as individual devices they could push forward the idea of paying for both the device and the networking in one single contract it was just one small step for consumers and for many of them it was a better option

instead of paying hundreds up front they could pay it off over a few years keeping it generally affordable and this didn't seem like much of a big change either because the data texts and course were already off in a monthly payment but why were these companies so intent on pushing this kind of business model well the author Terry pratchet came up with a classic example that shows why being poor generally means that you end up paying far more for the exact same things imagine that a really good pair of boots the kind that will last

you a decade cost $100 a man on minimum wage likely couldn't afford all of that at once he can't spend the time saving up for them either as he needs the shoes now so that he can work in the first place so he goes for the cheaper cor option a $10 pair of boots that don't really keep his feet dry and only last around 6 months to a year at best over time this man will spend more money on his boots than the rich man who just bought the nice ones in the first place W

meanwhile despite paying more he'll still have wet feet and a subscription model is like an even worst version of this imagine that for just $3.99 a month the man could subscribe to boots plus they provide a service which gives you access to a pair of their cheap boots as well as monthly repairs maintenance and Replacements as well while the initial cost is even less for the service over time it'll mean paying about $48 a year for boots over a decade this will cost nearly five times more than the expensive boots ever did up front so

it's pretty obvious now why companies all trying to switch their customers onto the subscription model it simply makes them far more money and there's a whole host of other hidden tricks and benefits for them that we'll get into later but before we continue I want to tell you about a video sponsor Nord VPN you see the internet is an incredible tool but it does come with some risks that we often speak about on the channel cyber threats data breaches and privacy invasions are more common than ever whether you're working remotely traveling or simply browsing at

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four extra months and nordvpn.com moonvpn it's completely risk-free with a 30-day money back guarantee so protect yourself online and get nordvpn today but for now let's get back to Generation Z who are nearly all hooked into the subscription models they dominate nearly everything they do including when they first wake up but it isn't just their phones if it's a week day most people in Generation Z will either be heading to school college or work and most of them will be listening to music as they go in this modern world most people try to distract themselves

from their surroundings in whatever way they can all while keeping the dopamine pipeline flowing for the brain music is yet another massive industry that has fully embraced the subscription model at first it just wasn't feasible the rise of Napster and other file sharing Services made getting free music incredibly easy to access as long as you knew how to use a computer the problem was there really wasn't any way to monetize this because it was nearly impossible to provide a better service than these Shady websites did the record labels just wouldn't let anyone do it legally

that was until Spotify came along and forced it all to change they co-opted the file sharing business model for free unlimited access and they even illegally downloaded music to fill the first versions of the app the only difference was that they played ball with the record labels and worked out a deal with them by passing nearly all the costs on to the artist and the consumers they convinced them to to give up some of their control over the rights of the music to this deal all they needed was a simple subscription model to keep the

money flowing in it l the record companies redefine the deal with the artists paying them fractions of pennies per stream rather than a cut of all their album sales consumers got a rough deal as well you see most people don't actually listen to tons of new music all the time they just listen to their favorite songs over and over and as a result spotify's algorithms are designed around this rarely promoting music people haven't heard already most people end up getting the same thing they would have gotten with a modest collection of Records or digital albums

but they'll be paying for it for the rest of their lives instead of just at once even subscription Services the lay you make concrete purchases don't actually Grant you ownership of anything Sony clearly demonstrated this in 2023 when they removed tons of discovery shows from people's digital libraries even though they'd already bought them in fact we've actually lost so much with the subscription Revolution including the basic idea of ownership itself meanwhile companies can abuse the many tricks that are now possible with this business model as it's just so much easier to lure people into subscription

models giving out free CDs or free samples of any product isn't guaranteed to make people come back but free easy to join trials on the other hand are far easier and much cheaper even if loads of people go in with the intention of canceling it later lots of them will forget most people just don't even realize how many subscriptions they really have some companies like Amazon set up traps by making a subscription the default option for some of their products meanwhile they call it subscribe and save implying they're doing all of this to save you

money and it's a problem that's growing surprisingly fast unus subscriptions went from cost in the UK 306 million in 2022 to 688 million just one year later and it's probably the same all across the Western World the focus changes from the consumer making the active choice to buy something again to the consumer choosing not to continue paying even upsetting is easier with subscription Services as lots of companies artificially restrict features gatekeeping them for a more expensive Premium plan and if that's not enough they can use a trick that Amazon Netflix and many other big companies

have recently introduced instead of just raising the price you can introduce a new subscription level with adverts you can use this to replace the old basic subscription which becomes the new premium subscription the old premium subscription with whatever add-ons you can invent becomes a premium plus and now you can charge even more for that one as well and if all the major companies agree to this then there's really nothing the consumer can do these companies have learned that despite the backlash they often end up making so much more money from the people who stick around

compared to the customers they lose all this and now so many companies are doing this the actual service and offer has gotten so much worse there was a short period in time where a Netflix subscription would give you tons of different films and shows to watch but now all the content is split up across a dozen different apps which all cost far more individually than the old Netflix used to and you still get vs on top and it's almost worse than cable used to be or without ever actually earing anything so Generation Z are already

on the back foot unlike previous generation ations they don't own things like their music and even without inflation they're going to be paying far more than previous generations did for the exact same things but unfortunately subscription models aren't the only thing that's changing lots of the older members of Generation Z after going through their morning routines will end up at work but lots of generations Z is already checking out to the system because no matter how much they work it isn't going to make their lives any better cost of living are incredibly High across the

developed world and this affects young people much more than older and richer Generations a lots of people this means they're barely staying afloat and they're definitely not building up any savings A Bank of America's survey of their adult genz customers showed that over half didn't even have savings to cover just 3 months of expenses 46% have also had to rely on their parents or family financially just to get by they're living paycheck to paycheck one or two bad days could financially them they're the ones who are comparatively well off lots of generations Z don't have

access to those kinds of privileges instead they're sinking further into debt to keep up since 2022 credit card balances for Generation Z have increased by more than 50% the average balance for someone age 22 to 24 and 2023 was nearly $3,000 26% more than it was for Millennials that were the same age just 10 years ago and at the same time delinquency rates have also risen as well these aren't signs that Generations Z are naturally careless or looser with their money compared to Millennials more so is the conditions that have changed they simply squeezing them

harder it all means that a large larger part of Generation Z are working just to pay off their debts and survive there isn't any room for building a life and that's for the people lucky enough to have a job in the first place every young person knows just how hard it is to get a job in the modern world especially when you're fresh out of school or university even the lowest paying jobs becoming even more hard to get nowadays in fact we made an entire video on just this topic alone as it's not uncommon for

companies to force people into multiple interviews team building exercises and other pointless tasks the kinds of jobs that let you climb to society's ladder or even worse they log behind layers upon layers of time destroying bureaucracy first there the standard AI systems that filter out most the applications based on just random keywords and invisible tests and once you get past those you'll get your CVN application read by an overworked stressed HR intern who's often far less qualified in your field than you are then there are the tests interviews group exercises callbacks and more sites like

LinkedIn have monetized this process and make more money the harder the whole process is whole industries of sprung up to take advantage of the desperate people just looking for stable work eventually if you're one of the lucky few that does get a job offer then all it does is Elevate you to the first group who are paying off their debts but they still probably won't own anything either the cimut home is yet another example of this it's another subscription service again this time though it's mandatory for all but the richest either you travel on public

transport which in some cities can cost as much as your rent or you use a car something that most genz can only buy with credit today even a used car is out of reach for most of Generation Z the cheaper ones will break down and cost thousands to repair anyway the most expensive ones are just as expensive as new cars they've actually started integrating further subscription plans into the cars themselves until recently BMW were planning to lock their heated seats behind a monthly pay even though the feature was already built into the car showing the

absurdly dystopian levels of how far the practice of blocking off things that used to come for free has really become instead they revers that decision but not for any more reasons instead they'll just stick to char ing for software features that they could have included anyway like parking assistance companies are always trying to erode the will of consumers to resist these creeping changes they only roll them back when they get such a massive backlash that it will actually impact their sales once they're home jensy are then confronted by yet another thing they won't own which

should be obvious at this point if you don't have any hope of owning your own music or a car then a house or a flat is definitely Out Of Reach the average price of a home in the UK is nearly reached £300,000 and similarly in the US it's around £49 $19,000 in the big cities it's so much worse to just rent in Manhattan it costs almost $5,000 on average just for a tiny little box with barely any bedrooms but just on average Generation Z firsttime buyers will pay over 100,000 of Mortgage repayments in the first

5 Years yet not that long ago people only paid about £74,000 in today's money for exactly the same thing and that's only if they can actually convince a bank to let them buy a home in the first place but most people aren't buying homes in the middle of nowhere if you're trying to make money and get a good job you end up in a city where you just can never save any money and these high rents mean that most people in Generation Z will never have enough savings for a deposit and Banks today want you

to easily be able to reafferent thing which creates an excruciating contradiction jenzi are left paying tons more in rent than their house would cost a mortgage while still not being able to actually buy the home they're living in as your position and Security in society is purely based on who your parents were and as these assets s value it means it will always be completely out of reach for most people in society and only in reach for people who inherited it I think a lot of people know there's fundamental inequity intergenerational inequity which is because

salaries are taxed very highly and wealth particularly capital gains from your main property are barely taxed at all and that leads to I think a kind of absurdity which is that one one piece written about this is it's not actually intergenerational inequality that's the problem it's going to be intragenerational inequality when people start inheriting houses or not inheriting houses because you can literally have the situation where you can work incredibly hard for 30 years and reach a um a position of some Eminence in a business or in an institution and because your parents happen to

live in an area of low house prices or didn't own a house at all you're still living somewhere crap whereas your underlings you know whose parents lived in ceton or Kensington or whatever it may be okay are basically swanning swanning around in palaces going on cruises all the time meaning you just get rich if you're already rich and the glass seating is unbreakable and now as we're reaching the end of the day most people from Generation Z will be relaxing with TV shows film and music it are most likely come from yet another streaming service

and a subscription plan but for lots of generations e it goes even further than that many of them won't even own the TV they're watching things on or the speakers they're using to listen to music it's all part of yet another evolution in the anti- ownership economy by now pay later schemes at first nobody expected this to ever take off even the supposed experts in the field it All Began in 2008 when three students from the Stockholm School of Economics competed in a university entrepreneurship competition they pitched their idea for an e-commerce business revolving around

this new type of selling products but it was just laughed out of the room reportedly the panel of Judges told them the idea would never make any money and that they should just give up despite losing the competition their confidence remained unshaken and they would found the company anyway and after months of work they finally found investors to join the company 3 years later their new company clana had already expanded from Sweden into the rest of Europe and today they're aiming for an IPO valuing the company at around $15 billion now this might be a

happy great story for the founders but it wasn't for the rest of the world the rise of Cl represents the rise of a new type of consumption taking out debt for trivial purchases these so-called buy now pay lator schemes are the Apex of this entire problem death and a lack of ownership Fuel and consumerism and exploitation their 0% interest promises sound enticing at first but once you miss a payment the late fees add up and eventually they can push people into bankruptcy and tragically this isn't the only reason people use these loans the more desperate

often rely on them for groceries and everyday essentials it means that lots of Generation Z don't even own the food in their own fridge all the things we've discussed today are part of a global movement that's eroding the very idea of ownership itself while Generation Z is bearing the brunt of it it's still something that affects all of us in many ways it's a necessary consequence of inequality the fact that a smaller and smaller proportion of people earn nearly all of the wealth creates the need for these exact conditions in another way though it's the

evolution of the consumer culture itself actual ownership is unnecessary when it's the experience of consumption that people crave modern services are completely focused on this they make the user experience as smooth as possible when you're paying everything is there on demand it's all accessible meanwhile free users are constantly badgered harassed and interrupted to try and push them towards paying they're trying to turn you into an addict someone who's so enthralled in the experience of consumption that they're unaware of how badly they're getting ripped off the only real barrier to not paying for digital content for

example is that it's annoying and timec consuming most people don't care one bit about the ethics of it or the legality because the laws are generally so rarely enforced it's only the convenience that holds people back and pushes them towards the legal paid all town atives and this shows us just how strong this desire for instant content has become in the average consumer to beat this you have to rise above it and while you can't change the wider economic realities or the appetites of the average consumer you can change your own priorities because if enough

people actually value true ownership there will always be an economic niche in serving them every generation faces new challenges and for Generation Z one of theirs is to resist this tempting but exploitative World they've grown up in