To avoid becoming a digital tenant: The 'ownership' we have surrendered in exchange for convenience

"Living without owning things is free and smart."
"With a subscription, you can listen to tens of millions of songs for a few hundred yen a month. You can also use the latest software without any upfront costs."

These values have already deeply permeated our lives. From music, movies, books, and software to AI tools, furniture, and even cars, everything is shifting from 'ownership' to 'usage'.

Admittedly, subscriptions have significant advantages. They don't take up space, the initial costs are low, and you can cancel whenever you no longer need them. It is not necessarily correct to own everything. Considering maintenance fees, storage costs, and the speed of obsolescence, there are many situations where usage is more rational.

However, we still need to pause and think.
What are we losing in exchange for this 'lightness'?

One answer to that is ownership.

Chapter 1: Nothing remains

In the past, buying CDs, books, or software was not merely consumption. They remained in your possession, and you could reread, lend, sell, or give them away. While there were inconveniences, there was also a strength in having things under your own control.

On the other hand, what you get with a subscription is basically 'temporary access'.
You can use it only as long as you keep paying. If you stop paying, you can no longer listen, read, or use it. If the service provider changes their terms, the conditions from yesterday can change today. Even if there are price hikes or feature restrictions, the user has no choice but to accept them or leave.

The important point here is not a matter of preference between 'ownership or usage'.
It is a question of how much you are entrusting the foundation of your life and work to the convenience of others.

Chapter 2: Cannot leave

The true strength of a subscription is not the low price itself, but its power to permeate daily life.

For music, it's playlists; for videos, it's viewing history; for software, it's the operating environment; for the cloud, it's saved data. The more you use it, the more your time and habits are optimized for that service. As a result, the hurdle for cancellation becomes more than just the monthly fee.

Because what you lose is not the content, but the very environment you have built up.

This is not just convenience, but lock-in (a 'fencing-in' phenomenon where you become deeply dependent on a specific service, making it difficult to switch to another). It is a structure that makes it hard to leave the platform.

Chapter 3: Whose land is it?

Thinking about it this way, platformers appear to be entities that own 'digital land'. We live there, work, leave records, and build relationships. However, the land itself is not ours. We are just being allowed to use it.

You can live comfortably as long as you keep paying, but it is the landowner who sets the conditions.

It might sound a bit exaggerated, but this composition is somewhat similar to a modern version of tenant farming.

I don't mean to say that we are being completely exploited. That is because subscriptions have clear benefits. However, it is also a fact that behind that convenience, ownership and initiative are concentrated on the corporate side.

Chapter 4: Don't entrust everything

I don't want to be misunderstood here; I am not trying to deny subscriptions entirely.

In fact, depending on how you use them, they are very rational. For movies you watch occasionally, software you want to try out, or short-term services, subscriptions are often superior to buying outright.

The problem is that the sentiment that it is smarter not to own anything is becoming too strong.

Ultimately, what we should be choosing is not 'ownership or usage', but what is okay to settle for with usage, and what should be held by oneself.

For example, core work tools, knowledge you refer to over the long term, irreplaceable creative data, photos and videos of memories, and the foundations of your human relationships like customer information and contacts. If you entrust even these things entirely to third-party platforms, the very core of your life becomes externally dependent.

You gain convenience. But at the same time, you are giving up a portion of your freedom.

Conclusion: Take it back

What is needed in the coming era is not to stop using subscriptions, but to regain a sense of distance from subscriptions.

You should use convenient things as convenient things. However, it is better to think separately about whether something is 'consumption' or a 'foundation for life'.

Things you rent for daily comfort are different from things you should own to support your life. While the former is fine to use, if you turn the latter into something you just use, your own footing will disappear before you know it.

Ownership is not outdated.

In fact, precisely because we live in an era where everything is turning into usage rights, the sense of what to keep in your own hands has become much more important than before.

In exchange for convenience, we may be choosing a 'life where we have no choice but to keep paying usage fees' without even realizing it.

Even so, if you want to protect the initiative of your own life, you must rethink it.

Ask yourself: is it really okay to keep even the things that are truly important to you on someone else's land?