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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 weekday, 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 artists and the consumers. They convinced them 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 let 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 once.
Even subscription services that let 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. Unused subscriptions went from costing 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 on 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 ads on top. And it's almost worse than cable used to be, without ever actually owning anything.
So Generation Z are already on the back foot. Unlike previous generations, 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 Generation Z is already checking out of the system, because no matter how much they work, it isn't going to make their lives any better. Costs of living are incredibly high across the developed world, and this affects young people much more than older and richer generations. For lots of people, this means they're barely staying afloat, and they're definitely not building up any savings.
A Bank of America survey of their adult Gen Z 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 ruin them. They're the ones who are comparatively well off. Lots of Generation 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 aged 22 to 24 in 2023 was nearly $3,000—26% more than it was for Millennials at the same age just 10 years ago. And at the same time, delinquency rates have also risen as well.
These aren't signs that Generation Z are naturally careless or looser with their money compared to Millennials—more so, it's the conditions that have changed. They're simply squeezing them harder. It all means that a 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 are becoming even harder to get nowadays. In fact, 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 society's ladder are even worse—they lie behind layers upon layers of time-destroying bureaucracy. First, there are the standard AI systems that filter out most applications based on just random keywords and invisible tests. And once you get past those, you'll get your CV and 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 have 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 commute 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 Gen Z 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 paywall, 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 reversed that decision—but not for any moral reasons. Instead, they'll just stick to charging 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, Gen Z 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 has nearly reached £300,000, and similarly in the US it's around $419,000. 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 first-time 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 afford everything, which creates an excruciating contradiction. Gen Z are left paying tons more in rent than their house would cost in 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' value rises, 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 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 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 position of some eminence in a business or in an institution, and because your parents happened 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—whose parents lived in certain high-value areas—are basically swanning around in palaces, going on cruises all the time. Meaning you just get rich if you're already rich, and the class ceiling is unbreakable.
And now, as we're reaching the end of the day, most people from Generation Z will be relaxing with TV shows, films, and music—that most likely come from yet another streaming service and a subscription plan. But for lots of Generation Z, 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: buy 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 founded the company anyway. And after months of work, they finally found investors to join. Three years later, their new company, Klarna, 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 great story for the founders, but it wasn't for the rest of the world. The rise of Klarna represents the rise of a new type of consumption: taking out debt for trivial purchases. These so-called buy now, pay later schemes are the apex of this entire problem. Debt and a lack of ownership fuel endless 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 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 time-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 alternatives. 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.