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Notes -
There's a cohort that largely already owns nothing, they don't seem very happy. Must everyone own nothing for them to be happy?
Renting / leasing may be more cost efficient if your the sort that updates on a regular cycle. New phone every year, new car every 1 - 3 years, etc. If you're the sort to buy a good 10 year old used car and drive it until it dies or is un-economical to repair in 12+ years, you've already optimized this as much as possible. Unless you only have a car and don't need a car, people living in cities who rarely drive etc.
I'd suggest that's downstream of them being poor, not necessarily their lack of ownership rights (which is, in this case, ALSO downstream of being poor).
Or you live in a time where tech advances quite rapidly and so a ten year old car is qualitatively different and arguably inferior to the new versions, so you're missing some tangible benefits from not being up to date.
Kind rolls into the software as a service thing too. If you buy a piece of software outright but don't pay for patches and updates, eventually it might stop working, have security vulnerabilities, or otherwise become less useful as it is outdated. vs. subscribing to a piece of software, guaranteeing ongoing development and updates in response to security threats or new tech.
If you find it worthwhile to subscribe to a piece of software to keep it up to date and functional, why not do the same for hardware? The computer you're running the software on, for instance. Or, how big of a leap is it to subscribing to a service that does this for vehicles? They get you an upgrade whenever there's an improvement in safety tech or fuel efficiency, for example.
What situations does it make absolute economic sense to hold onto an older piece of tech, even if it is 'obsolete' or 'outdated,' for the sake of owning it outright?
Do we live in this time now?
I've not seen any recent technology advances in cars that I'm willing to pay a premium for.
This is the model software companies use now. This hasn't always been so. There are still many use cases (mostly offline specialized stuff) that is seldom updated. It was feature complete when it shipped.
Software publishers like SaaS as it improves their revenue. I preferred the previous business model.
Me neither, but occasionally I drive a modern car as a rental and there's a lot of safety and convenience features that have arisen in just the past, call it 8 years alone.
But this model seems dominant now, and consumers generally don't seem to be en masse demanding one-time purchases (although for video games this is still a thing).
And from the standpoint of "everything is internet connected and thus a possible security risk" I can see the basic logic of paying to keep vulnerabilities patched, at least!
These are the same people that were renting their landline phones from the phone company, are renting their cable modems / firewalls from their ISP and own a timeshare.
Maybe everything doesn't need to be connected to the internet?
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