As you read these lines, the idea of owning your own home is slowly becoming a museum exhibit—something between a gramophone and women's suffrage in the 19th century: once seemed impossible, then became the norm, and now, apparently, is becoming a privilege of the chosen few again.
Let's be honest: do you actually own your apartment? Or are you just paying the government a tax for the right to consider yourself the master of four walls that the bank will seize at the first missed payment? Welcome to an era where the word "property" requires an asterisk and twenty pages of fine print.
But why dramatize? Perhaps our grandchildren will look at us with bewilderment: "You actually bought square footage? How barbaric!" Just as we're surprised today that people once bought music on physical media. The Spotify generation is already here, and they want a subscription to everything—including the roof over their heads.
The Sacred Cow Goes to Slaughter
Private housing ownership is a religion of the 20th century. No better or worse than other beliefs: it has its temples (mortgage banks), priests (realtors), sacred texts (constitutions with the right to housing), and, of course, heretics (those who dare suggest the system is outdated).
Our parents' generation literally worshipped square meters. And not without reason: in the USSR, an apartment meant stability; in the 90s—the only asset that couldn't be stolen. Privatization created millions of small landlords, convinced that a concrete box in a panel building was a ticket to the middle class.
But here's the catch: while boomers accumulated real estate, the economy changed. Mobility became currency. Why buy an apartment in a city if your profession will move to another continent in three years? Why spend thirty years giving half your salary to the bank when that money could be working? Oh right, because "that's how it's done" and "you have to live somewhere." Arguments at the level of "because I said so."
The Great Migration to the Subscription Model
Welcome to the economy of perpetual rental. Netflix for movies, Spotify for music, WeWork for offices, and—the logical continuation—"housing as a service" for the roof over your head. Sounds futuristic? In Germany, more than half the population lives this way. In Switzerland—almost two-thirds. And they seem to be managing just fine.
Rental model apologists speak beautifully: flexibility, no commitments, freedom from repairs and taxes. Tired of the neighborhood—move. Air conditioning broke—call the manager. Romance! True, they forget to mention that rent rises faster than wages, and the lease can be terminated at any moment. Trifles that respectable people don't discuss.
What's amusing: the very companies preaching the sharing economy and "ownership is the past" are somehow actively buying up real estate. Blackstone, Invitation Homes, Greystar—these folks don't rent. They own. Millions of homes and apartments worldwide. Interesting coincidence, isn't it?
Corporate Feudalism with a Human Face
Here's a dystopia that's already happened: in the US, institutional investors own approximately a third of rental housing. Every year, their share grows. It's not malice—it's just business. Housing turned out to be the perfect asset: people will always need shelter, demand is stable, returns are predictable. What could go wrong?
Here's what: when your landlord isn't the neighbor upstairs with his cockroaches, but a hedge fund algorithm, the rules of the game change. The algorithm won't give a discount because "you're such good tenants." The algorithm won't wait for payment because your child got sick. The algorithm exists to maximize shareholder profits. Period.
Remember feudalism? The one where peasants worked land owned by a lord and paid him tribute? We seem to have invented its digital version. Only instead of land—square meters, instead of a lord—an investment trust, and instead of tribute—a monthly payment indexed to inflation plus a "market premium." Progress!
The State: Savior or Alternative Master?
Okay, suppose corporations are evil. Then maybe the government will save us? After all, it works in beautiful social-democratic countries! Vienna with its municipal housing, Singapore with government apartments—quite working examples.
But let's lose the rose-colored glasses. Government housing means decade-long waiting lists, bureaucracy at "Kafka nervously smokes" levels, and political dependence. Today you're a prosperous citizen with a government apartment. Tomorrow you wrote an inconvenient social media post, and suddenly someone is reviewing your "right to residence." Paranoia? Ask residents of authoritarian regimes how safe it is to depend on the government for a roof over your head.
There's also an economic argument: the government is a terrible manager. Maintaining municipal housing costs more, quality is worse, innovation is absent. Why? Because the incentives are wrong. A bureaucrat won't earn more if residents are satisfied. They'll earn more if they fill out reports correctly. A substantial difference.
Digital Escape: When Walls No Longer Save You
So we're trapped. Private property is inaccessible to most. Corporations are turning housing into a rent extraction tool. The government offers dependence in exchange for shelter. What's left?
Perhaps it's time to rethink the question itself. The problem isn't who owns the walls—it's how to protect your savings from a system working against you. Inflation devours savings faster than you can save for a down payment. Banks print money, devaluing your salary. And real estate, once a "reliable asset," now requires capital you simply don't have.
Cryptocurrencies emerged as an answer to this systemic failure. Not all, of course—most crypto assets are just as speculative as traditional markets. But there are projects trying to solve the fundamental problem: creating an asset protected from inflation and independent of central bank or corporate decisions.
Deflation as a Philosophy of Freedom
DeflationCoin represents an attempt to turn the logic of traditional finance upside down. While fiat currencies depreciate (reminder: approximately 4,755 banknotes are printed every second worldwide), the deflationary model makes an asset scarcer over time. The mechanism of burning coins not placed in staking creates an economy where time works for the holder, not against them.
What's particularly curious is that the project is building an entire "digital state" ecosystem: from educational platforms to decentralized social networks. This isn't just a cryptocurrency—it's an attempt to create parallel infrastructure, independent of the very institutions that made housing unaffordable.
You may not own an apartment in a world where corporations and governments control real estate. But you can own an asset that they cannot print, confiscate, or devalue. This, perhaps, is the irony of our era: true property today isn't concrete and brick, but a line of code on the blockchain.
However, the choice is yours. You can keep saving for a down payment while inflation makes your goal ever more unattainable. Or you can acknowledge the obvious: the rules of the game have changed, and adapting isn't a betrayal of values—it's the only way to preserve freedom of choice in a world where there's less and less of it.