We're all becoming renters in our own economies

[Churchillvv]

snip

But that's life. Terrible or not, it doesn't matter. That's what it is. I remember a hippie saying "relax, nothing is under control." Perhaps that's the full truth.

There's a bad need to be in control. There's always that struggle. That's probably why decentralization seems revolutionary. It sounds romantic, giving back power and control and ownership to individuals. However, what about the infrastructures on which these decentralized innovations are running? What about the devices by which we can get access to them? Are we in control of them?

Humans are always too quick to adapt or accept their fate on everything, this reason is why even at the point where resistance is supposed to occur it seem stuck because some people already accepted there won’t be change, however we can all accept how messed up things are even though humans can’t leave without control just like one of the old philosophers Thomas Hobbes “said that society without control will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” yet the fact that ownership is more hard than we can imagine has left the state of control or guidance to a state of excessive control which is very terrible.

Hence the fact that we have decentralization which is virtual yet it’s a threat to the centralized system show how much freedom or leaving out of rent is dangerous to the ecosystem of government.

[slapper]

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.

Yes. Absolutely yes.

When the legal option is half a minimum wage just to watch shows that used to be free with cable (which also sucked but at least you owned the box?) then piracy isn't even a moral question anymore. Piracy works for digital stuff because copying doesn't take anything from anyone right? You're not stealing a physical object. You're just refusing to pay rent on information. Which is good. I'm not arguing against it.

The problem is... you can't pirate a house. And the "own your house and rent it out" advice, maybe that works where you are but in most places I know the down payment alone is like 5-10 years of saving if you're lucky. And that's assuming rent, daily basis isn't already eating 60% of your paycheck.

So what happens is the people who already have things are able to use things to own more things. Everyone else is told just to be smarter about it. But what if the masses are trapped and the advice only works among people that were never really trapped to begin with?

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.

That is some bullshit, and in a way that I didn't even consider when I posted. I was talking more abstract about the whole rental economy thing but you're literally talking about the government just taking your land because they found something valuable under it.

How is that even legal? I mean I know it's legal because they wrote the laws to make it legal but how do people just accept that? What country is this occurring in? Genuinely curious because I'm wondering if this is one of those things that is going on everywhere but we only hear about it when it is somewhere else.

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.

You just made this so much more real.

Renting from the government who rents from another country who rents from... That's all the more bad because it's not just economic dependency it's geopolitical. There's so many points of failure. You are probably seeing the future better than people in places where the internet is more stable. Because it is not actually stable anywhere right? It's just some people haven't had it threatened yet so they think it's permanent.

I don't know if there is a good answer here honestly. Like what do you even do with that information? Diversify somehow? But, diversify into what when everything goes through the same infrastructure?

I get your point,indeed everything has turned to be on rent in this world, imagine countries with resources but still yet  they don't have access or the control over where real money is been made. People work but value is being created somewhere else, that occurs on our daily lives also . Okay see the cars we're using, softwares and also the platforms we work with is all borrowed.

Why because all this don't  belong to us, still yet people can't stop thinking on long term and I don't see reason why you build and make plans when you know that the rules will change someday and anytime? That's why decentralisation is an important stuff, that's not because it will make everyone wealthy but rather gives people the little knowledge of power  over their career and future.

Yeah exactly this. The "knowledge of power" is actually the whole game. Because once you begin to see how it works you can't unsee it. And that changes everything even if nothing material changes.

Like you said why plan when the rules change. But the rules don't change for everyone at the same time. The people at the top know the changes are coming because they're the ones making them. They plan around it. They position themselves in advance of time.

The rest of us find out too late.

So decentralization is not about making everyone rich or putting everyone in equal power. That's never going to happen and anyone who promises that is selling something. What it does is to compress the information gap. You know when the rule changes closer to when they're happening instead of 6 months later when you're already screwed. That's not nothing.

Man, whatever you said, I agree with you. Because the idea of decentralization is giving power to every individual entity that is using it. But on the other hand, whatever we have in a centralized space is under someone else's custody, even though we own everything under this system totally. Well, sadly, our decentralized system is breaking down day by day due to changes in government regulations and rules. Now, you may wonder why i am saying this, so the reason is that you may also have noticed that governments are imposing tax on every person who is investing in cryptocurrecny or in bitcoin and to regulate in governments are asking exchanges about the users data and we know that they have to share it so that they can run thier service in these countris to make money from thier users.

Other than this, if we talk about the main point of this topic, then I used to think that in our country government started to impose taxes on every person who owns land and a house, and they have to pay taxes on each land and house. And I was thinking that it feels me like a rent what your topic title said.

Hold on though. You're right that crypto is being squeezed by governments with regulations and KYC and all that. But decentralization was never going to exist in a vacuum. Governments were always going to try and control it. That's what they do. That's their whole job.

If they are going to try, will they succeed? Land is physical. You can't move it. You can't hide it. The government knows exactly where it is, who's on it. So, yes, they can tax it, and if you don't pay they can take it.

But cryptos are slippery. Governments can regulate exchanges sure. They can dictate KYC at the on-ramps and off-ramps. But they can't control the protocol itself. They can't bring down a genuinely decentralized network. They can make it quite difficult to use but they can't kill it.

...Well, sadly, our decentralized system is breaking down day by day due to changes in government regulations and rules...

I don't think that's quite right. The centralized interfaces to decentralization are failing. Exchanges, custodial wallets, all that stuff. But the real decentralized infrastructure? Still running. Still outside their control.

Property tax situation is different. There's no escape hatch. You can't self-custody your land in such a way that it is invisible to the state. You're stuck.

With crypto at least there's still a choice. It's getting harder to exercise that choice but it's still there. Most people won't bother because it is an inconvenience. But the option is there.

[abhiseshakana]

As a matter of fact, word of balance is bullshit, it is just utopia. We can make analogy through monopoly board game, the game rule, same start line, all throw dice, who the most diligent, clever and lucky will be winner, the player didn't realize that the monopoli board has been manipulated before we play. Ordinary player focus on collecting aset, elit focus on owning special square like water, electricity, bank.

Why, because in this world 97% world population is only part of the system which build by 3% population in the top of pyramid. They don't need to have all the worth something in this world but they ensure can controlling through system they build especially, dominating and rulling important strategic knot such as infrastruktur, standarization, finance, supplychain distribution and legal frame work across the nation.

Almost impossible find exit way or fully separated from their system, what we can do is minimalize their monopoly by creating community economy. Community economy can be establish when population on the bottom of pyramid consolidated to make economy spinning horizontally on the bottom of pyramid and minimalize money rotating vertically from bottom of pyramid to the on top population. the main problem now, population on the bottom of pyramid not consolidateded so top of pyramid always suck wealthy from middle and lower class. We have sources but we don't  have control on our resources. We have sources but elit ensure we can not enjoy it.

For decentralize system can be an alternatif to reduce our interaction with existing system. We can not demolish existing monopoly board but we can play on other smaller monopoly board which we call decentralization.

[imthegreat]

Maybe that's why decentralized stuff is important. Not because it'll make anyone rich (it probably won't) but because it's something that you can actually own.

Governments and businesses in progressive countries have long since reached the point where they need to play for the long term. So they've come up with the idea that while they might offer some decent conditions now to young families and young workers, this strategy could force those same renters to pay more for housing and other services decades down the road. And this is a very smart investment strategy. After all, truly good investors never focus on short-term profits, but strive to earn consistently and significantly, albeit over the long term.

[lornadane]

Governments and businesses in more progressive countries have long accepted that sustainable success requires long-term planning. While they may offer relatively favorable conditions today to young workers and families, these policies often position the same groups to pay higher costs for housing and essential services decades later. From an investment perspective, this is a calculated and intelligent strategy. The most effective investors do not chase short-term gains; they focus on building systems that generate steady, significant returns over time.

[Hispo]

...

Maybe that's why decentralized stuff is important. Not because it'll make anyone rich (it probably won't) but because it's something that you can actually own.

Not maybe, that is actually why decentralization is important and that is the most important advance of asymmetric cryptography: to allow people to own their wealth in a world where everything seems to have become leased or borrowed from people and companies who are the richest in their respective national economies. That is why we must encourage people who keep their Bitcoin in exchanges to withdraw it all to their own privately owned wallets, because as long as they do not control keys, they actually own nothing and their assets as be seized by their governments or by the exchange, thanks to the terms of service which nobody actually reads when they first join the exchange.

[Synchronice]

Everything's borrowed now, even the ground under our feet. Not in the way it used to. Countries dig stuff out of the ground (minerals, oil, whatever ) and then ship it somewhere else where the actual money gets made. The people living on top of those resources get jobs in the mines but never the factories. Never the bit about where value actually occurs.

The world economy is reorganizing itself along a very simple principle: some people own, everybody else rents, and which category you fall into was decided before you were born.

And it's not just countries. Look at how we work now. Everything's a subscription. The software you use to do your job - rented. The car you drive - leased. Even your side hustle is probably going through some sort of platform that takes a cut and can change the rules whenever they want. You don't own any of it.

Small businesses used to have ownership of their entire operation. Now they're just nodes in someone else's network. One change in policy and they're done.

There's something deeply fucked up about this, that one whole generation learned to think like renters even when it comes to their careers or relationships or just their basic sense of their place in the world. When you are always renting, you stop thinking long-term. You can't. Why invest in something that you don't own? Why build for a future that may get pulled out from under you next quarter? An entire generation is learning to think like temporary residents in their own lives.

Maybe that's why decentralized stuff is important. Not because it'll make anyone rich (it probably won't) but because it's something that you can actually own.

The world has always been the same, there are rich and there are poor. Officially, there isn't slavery today but modern days are no different from old slavery. When there was slavery, slaves were working to survive. Aren't there many people working today to survive too? In the past, the owner had to pay for your health and give you an accomodation. Today, we have mandatory health insurance and we pay for that. Basically, with a minimum salary, you get the money to eat, sleep, work and repeat. The mandatory insurance also helps when you are ill. It's not really different from old days. In the past, when slave did something great like killing an important enemy in the battlefield or being an extraordinarily brave, they were rewarded by kings and were moved in a higher class. Today, if you have a talent in football, basketball and other high-paying sports, you move from poor class to rich class. The basics are and has always been the same, rich own and poor rent.

By the way, what do you mean when you say that decentralization is something you can actually own? How does decentralization help in rent? In general, it mas many benefits but I can't see a benefit in terms of owning something. Decentralization means that there is no centralized power but it doesn't mean ownership over rent.