The End of Ownership: How Renting Became the New Economic Feudalism

By Nicole Chan Aug. 29, 2025

For most of modern history, ownership meant freedom. Land, housing, machinery, even the personal computer—each symbolized autonomy within capitalism: the ability to produce, store, and control one’s own value. But in the 21st century, the economy has quietly inverted that principle. We no longer own; we subscribe. Cars are leased, homes mortgaged, software rented monthly, and data—our most personal asset—is borrowed from us by the very companies that claim to protect it.

According to the World Bank Global Wealth Database (2024), the share of household-owned assets in developed economies has declined from 78 percent in 1980 to under 49 percent in 2023. Meanwhile, recurring payments for digital, housing, and mobility services have tripled in the same period (OECD Consumption Model Review, 2024). Capitalism, once defined by property, now thrives on perpetual access without acquisition.

Ownership is dying not by ideology, but by design.

From Capitalism to Access-ism

The subscription model, once confined to magazines and gyms, has become capitalism’s default operating system. The “everything-as-a-service” model promises flexibility and affordability but extracts dependency. Consumers no longer buy tools—they rent participation in ecosystems.

Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft 365, and Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” are not products; they are leases on functionality. In 2024, Adobe Systems reported that over 93 percent of its revenue came from subscriptions—a figure that doubled its 2015 profit margins. Access generates predictability for corporations and precarity for users. If payment stops, capability disappears.

Ownership once conferred agency. Access confers permission.

The Architecture of Dependency

The logic of non-ownership extends far beyond consumer markets. In housing, corporate landlords now own vast portions of national housing stocks. The Financial Times Real Estate Index (2024) found that institutional investors control 25 percent of all U.S. rental properties, up from 8 percent a decade ago. In Europe, “build-to-rent” developments dominate new construction pipelines.

At the urban scale, cities have become portfolios. Blackstone, Brookfield, and other asset managers do not build communities; they manage yield streams. Residents no longer accumulate equity—they service someone else’s spreadsheet. The political economist Brett Christophers calls this “asset manager society,” where the economy’s purpose is no longer production but possession by the few.

Ownership has been financialized out of reach and sold back as a service.

Digital Feudalism

The feudal metaphor is not hyperbole. In the Middle Ages, peasants farmed land they did not own, paying rent in labor and yield to lords who offered “protection.” In the digital age, users create data they do not control, paying rent through attention and consent to corporations that offer “security.”

Our devices are serfs. Even purchased hardware is incomplete without constant verification from remote servers. When John Deere or Tesla disables software access for non-subscribers, they reproduce the same medieval structure: possession without autonomy. The right to repair has become the modern equivalent of the right to till—granted conditionally, revoked instantly.

Data is the new harvest, extracted daily and fenced off by terms of service written in code.

The Economics of Perpetual Rent

Economists describe this shift as the rentier revival. Classical rentier capitalism referred to landowners extracting value from tenants. Today, rent has been digitized and democratized: everyone pays, every month, for everything.

The IMF Structural Trends Report (2024) notes that rent-based income now accounts for 43 percent of total corporate profit globally, up from 25 percent in 2000. Subscription pricing, licensing, and platform fees function as invisible taxation. Unlike ownership, rent has no endpoint—only escalation.

Even innovation now revolves around inventing new forms of rent. Cloud computing monetizes idle storage; fintech monetizes transaction latency; AI monetizes uncertainty itself. Each advance offers convenience but deepens captivity.

The Disappearance of the Exit

In earlier economies, consumers could “exit” by saving, buying outright, or producing independently. That exit option is closing. Streaming replaced physical media, eliminating personal archives. E-commerce outcompeted local shops, making independent access impractical. Even open-source software—once a haven of ownership—now depends on corporate cloud hosting and funding.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato describes this as “the privatization of public infrastructure in reverse”: rather than public assets being sold to private hands, private tools are now leased back to individuals as public utilities. Society rents its own means of participation.

When everything is temporary, permanence becomes a privilege.

The Psychological Cost of Renting Life

The erosion of ownership is not only economic but existential. Ownership once provided continuity—the sense that effort today built security tomorrow. Without it, life becomes a series of renewals and cancellations.

A Pew Research Center survey (2024) found that 64 percent of adults under 35 feel they “own less of their life” than their parents did, despite higher access to goods and services. Economists might call this the paradox of abundance: the more accessible everything becomes, the less agency individuals possess.

Renting is marketed as freedom from responsibility, but it often becomes freedom from roots.

Policy in the Age of Access

Policymakers have begun to notice the social cost of subscription capitalism. Germany’s Digital Property Rights Act (2024) reclassifies long-term software leases as ownership equivalents, granting users partial rights to functionality even after cancellation. South Korea’s Right to Modify Framework forces hardware manufacturers to release repair codes after warranty expiration. These reforms suggest a broader shift: ownership may evolve into a spectrum rather than a binary.

But the deeper question remains political: Can citizenship survive when the economy no longer rewards permanence?

If individuals can no longer own their homes, data, or tools, democratic participation risks becoming another form of rent—revocable, tiered, and conditional. The infrastructure of belonging itself becomes a subscription.

Reclaiming Permanence

Reclaiming ownership in the 21st century may not mean rejecting technology but redesigning its terms. Cooperative housing models, open-source federations, and decentralized data trusts represent early prototypes of post-rental capitalism. These models distribute control rather than access, permanence rather than permission.

True freedom, in this emerging landscape, will depend not on what we can use—but on what we can keep.

Because when nothing is owned, everything must be obeyed.

Works Cited

“Global Wealth Database 2024.” World Bank, 2024, www.worldbank.org.

 “Consumption Model Review 2024.” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2024, www.oecd.org.

 “Global Housing and Rental Trends.” Financial Times Real Estate Index, 2024, www.ft.com.

 “Structural Trends Report 2024.” International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2024, www.imf.org.

 “Subscription Capitalism Metrics.” Adobe Systems Investor Report, 2024, www.adobe.com.

 “Technology Ownership Survey 2024.” Pew Research Center, 2024, www.pewresearch.org.

 “Digital Property Rights Act.” German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2024, www.bmwk.de.

 “Right to Modify Framework.” Government of South Korea, 2024, www.mss.go.kr.