The endgame is becoming clear: everything is a subscription. Your doors unlock if you’re up to date on your dues. Your stove heats for fees. Your shoes track steps behind paywalls. You own nothing, pay forever, and corporations control everything.
This isn’t innovation, it’s digital feudalism. Medieval peasants paid lords for the right to farm land. Today, we pay corporations for the right to use tools, software, even the features in cars we already bought. Heated seats, tractor repairs, printer cartridges, each sliced into monthly fees. The packaging is new. The power dynamic is ancient.
It reminds me of what I’ve seen play out in my own city. Developers pitch “special area plans” and massive projects as progress for the neighborhood. But behind the smoke and mirrors, the same equation unfolds: those with the resources get exemptions, shortcuts, and guaranteed profits, while small businesses and residents carry the burden of bureaucracy and rising costs. We’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into our communities for decades, yet the rewards are siphoned off by those with enough leverage to tilt the playing field.
In either case, tech subscriptions or urban development, the story is the same: concentration of power dressed up as progress. We’re told it’s about convenience, efficiency, or revitalization. But what it often delivers is dependency and increased disparity. A model where survival means signing the contract, keeping the auto-renew box checked, watching your neighborhood rebranded in whatever image suits the marketing team’s strategy.
We need systems that let people create, own, and sustain without paying forever just to stand on ground they already tended. It’s not too late to demand better. Friendlier cities, fairer tech, more honest economies. But it starts with seeing clearly: when ownership disappears, when contracts are written intentionally to disenfranchise, we’re not being offered freedom. We’re being ushered into a new fiefdom.
