You'll own nothing and you'll be happy (predictive programming)
“Own nothing & be relatively happy” is not sci-fi; it’s one logical extrapolation of already-revealed preferences.
At this point, almost everyone will have seen the “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” clip from the World Economic Forum’s 2030 predictions.
The full quote: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. Whatever you want you’ll rent, and it’ll be delivered by a drone.“
Notice that the tweet is from 2016. The Controllers are playing the long game.
This is just another predictive programming campaign to normalize the abnormal.
Predictive programming campaigns train human cognitive patterns to align with systemic objectives.
They pre-encode acceptable behavioral norms before the actual infrastructure is deployed.
So predictive programming is about normalizing future societal behaviors, beliefs, or technologies before they are actually rolled out. By doing so, the population is pre-conditioned to accept radical changes as inevitable or familiar.
In this article, I’ll explore how we actually end up in a world where we own nothing and are ‘happy’.
Starting Point: We’re already half-way there
Most people are unaware that ownership is whatever the enforcement rails say it is at seizure time.
For more context, you can listen to the Great Taking by David Rogers Webb.
I’ll give you the TL;DR on the Great Taking here.
Definition: A jurisdiction-synchronized legal/financial stack (custody law + rehypothecation + bail-ins + CSD plumbing + digital ledgers) that allows seizing collateralized claims during a systemic event.
Scope: Anything inside the custody/tiering chain (bank deposits, brokerage assets, CSD-registered securities, pooled gold, mortgages, money funds) is claim-on-a-claim, not direct property.
Exemptions in practice: Only outside-chain assets resist (physical bearer, lien-free land in your name, and resilient self-custody digital assets with your keys).
Enabling Mechanisms (already installed):
Custody law: Title sits at CSD (Central Securities Depository)/nominee; beneficial owner = entitlement holder, subordinated in stress.
Rehypothecation: Chains turn your assets into counter-party collateral.
Bail-ins/Resolution: Banks/brokers convert claims to equity/IOUs; stays and moratoria freeze transfers.
Emergency powers: Harmonized templates to override contract terms “for stability”.
Digital rails: CBDC/stable/tokenized deposit scaffolds = instant perimeter control (KYC spend, tax split, revocation).
Conclusion: The tooling exists. You only need a narrative ignition.
Coincidentally, the law that allows for a Great Taking is in place in every country on Earth.
If you play fiat games, you have to think about the scenario in which the system fails.
Most people already:
Don’t own their home outright (mortgage = callable tenancy).
Don’t own their money (bank deposits = unsecured claims).
Don’t own their securities (dematerialized, omnibus accounts, broker failure risk).
Don’t own their “tools” (cloud, SaaS, Digital Rights Management, platform permission).
They own:
Access rights
Claims in hierarchies of custodians
Terms-of-service dependent privileges
The “you will own nothing and be happy” future is not a hard regime change from full sovereignty; it’s a continuation + compression of what already exists:
Take everything that’s currently “softly controlled” via contracts and plumbing.
Make it more explicit, real-time, and programmable via CBDCs, identity, IoT, AI scoring.
Wrap it in narratives: climate, safety, fairness, inclusion, convenience.
So the question is not “how do we get from 0 to 1?” but “how do we move from 0.5 to 0.9?”
What “own nothing & be happy” actually means
1) Legal / registries layer
Almost all economically relevant assets are:
Dematerialized (no paper certificates, only registry entries).
Held in omnibus/nominee structures.
Encumbered by standardized collateral, rehypothecation, and resolution regimes.
In a crisis, senior claims (sovereign, systemically important institutions) are legally positioned to:
Haircut or convert junior claims (deposits, securities, pensions).
Impose bail-ins and “stabilization” conversions.
Practically: ordinary people’s claims are shock absorbers.
2) Economic / business model layer
Ownership shifts to:
Institutional landlords (housing).
Platform operators (software, IP).
Infra conglomerates (grid, mobility, payments, cloud).
Individuals “subscribe” to:
Housing-as-a-service.
Mobility-as-a-service.
Work tools-as-a-service.
Entertainment/social-life-as-a-service.
3) Monetary / identity layer
CBDCs and/or regulated stablecoins become:
Primary rails for wages, welfare, and day-to-day spending.
Bound tightly to digital identity, risk scores, and compliance status.
Programmability:
Time limits on spending (UBI, targeted stimulus).
Category limits (no certain purchases).
Geo-fencing (where you can spend).
Dynamic credit/behavior scoring embedded.
4) Psychological / narrative layer
“Ownership” reframed as:
Burden (“you don’t want the hassle of owning, let us handle it”).
Risk (“markets are volatile; let professionals manage your wealth”).
Moral failing (“owning too much is selfish / unsustainable / inequitable”).
“Access” is sold as:
Freedom (“everything is just there when you need it”).
Safety (no risk of foreclosure if you never own).
Flexibility (no long-term commitment).
Happiness becomes:
A managed state: UX + dopamine loops + social scoring + frictionless consumption.
Net effect:
The median person:
Has little or no direct, unencumbered title to productive assets.
Is deeply locked into identity + CBDC + platform rails.
Experiences “life” as a bundle of subscriptions, allowances, and ratings.
But feels:
Relatively “ok”: entertainment, climate, safety, convenience.
Afraid of falling below the floor (benefits withdrawn, access throttled).
That’s “own nothing and be (relatively) happy” in practice.
Pathway: Step-by-Step how we get there
Phase 0 (now–5y): Soft pre-conditioning
Continued dematerialization and platformization:
More assets on custodial platforms.
More SaaS, more Digital Rights Management.
Less local ownership of tools/data.
State/Controllers objectives:
Keep housing/pensions/indices superficially stable.
Push financial literacy as “delegate to index funds and model portfolios”.
Normalize:
KYC for everything.
Account freezes as routine compliance.
De-banking as acceptable risk control.
People get used to:
Not touching cash.
Not owning devices outright (financing, locks).
Living inside a handful of mega-platforms.
Phase 1 (5–10y): CBDC + ID + “stability” narrative
Triggers:
Another systemic wobble (bank failures / market seizure / sovereign wobble).
Cyber panic or payments outage.
Policy response — “Crisis” justification for:
National digital ID rollout (“to fight fraud, terrorism, disinfo”).
Retail/wholesale CBDC pilots (starting with UBI, benefits, tax refunds).
Tightened AML/KYC; cash further stigmatized and restricted.
Stablecoin regulation:
Some approved as narrow-bank CBDCs proxies.
Others squeezed or banned.
Narrative:
“We must modernize money.”
“We must protect you from bank failures and fraud.”
“Programmable money lets us target relief more fairly.”
For context: as of now, 137 countries and currency unions are exploring Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), representing about 98% of global GDP.
Result:
A growing share of:
Wages (public sector first),
Benefits,
Small business payments
starts flowing over state-controlled digital rails.
Early adopters:
Attracted by subsidies, fee waivers, tax perks, convenience.
Non-adopters:
Gradually framed as risky, suspicious, or “behind”.
Phase 2 (10–20y): Asset seizure / conversion as “stability”
Trigger:
Major sovereign or banking crisis (Great Taking-type stress).
FX or bond market revolt, or large-scale housing bust.
Legal plumbing (already built):
Bail-in regimes.
Resolution authority powers.
Priority of secured creditors.
Dematerialized asset custody, omnibus accounts.
Resolution event — some combination of:
Pension “reforms” (haircuts, forced annuitization).
Bank deposit bail-ins (above “insured” level).
“Temporary” wealth levies and bond conversions.
Forced rollovers of certain securities into long-dated, low-yield instruments.
Wrapped in:
“We avoided total collapse.”
“Everyone’s sharing the burden fairly.”
Post-crisis equilibrium:
Many middle-class households:
Lose equity in homes (through inflated taxes, forced sales, or “equity sharing” schemes).
Lose chunks of pensions and savings.
In exchange:
Receive “guaranteed” floors of CBDC income/credits.
Get access to subsidized housing, mobility, healthcare — through controlled channels.
You haven’t seized every asset overnight, but you’ve:
Reduced the median person’s net worth significantly.
Migrated remaining life-support flows onto programmable rails.
Made direct ownership economically unattractive or structurally hard.
Phase 3 (20–30y): Access society becomes default
Housing:
Single-family housing is mostly held by:
REITs, PE, sovereign wealth funds, state vehicles.
“Ownership” is through:
Long-term leaseholds.
Shared-ownership schemes.
Tokenized fractions with no control.
Work & tools:
Almost all productivity tools are:
Subscription-based.
Identity-locked.
Tied to professional reputation scores.
Mobility:
Private car ownership shrinks, especially in cities:
Insurance, parking, and regulation make it costly.
Mobility subscriptions (fleet vehicles, robo-fleets) cheaper & subsidized.
Money:
CBDCs or co-opted stablecoins:
Primary means for salary, UBI, taxes, rent, subscriptions.
Integrated with identity and compliance score.
Culture:
Younger generations:
Raised on subscriptions, loot boxes, in-game assets, skins.
Concept of “ownership” is virtual, revocable by ToS.
They equate access with freedom.
Phase 4 (30y+): “Own nothing & be happy” as lived norm
At this point, for a large majority:
Their “wealth” is:
A credit score,
A social graph,
A reputation rating,
And their standing in various platform ecosystems.
Their “income” is:
A mix of CBDC flows (UBI, stipends, targeted subsidies),
Gig/creative earnings via platform rails,
Loyalty program points.
Their “assets”:
Are mostly digital entitlements subject to:
Terms of service.
Policy shifts.
Algorithmic scoring.
They can be relatively “happy” because:
Their basic needs are more or less met inside the system (housing, food, entertainment).
Alternatives look terrifying:
Off-grid has been securitized and stigmatized (“extremism”, “tax evasion”, “terrorism”).
Parallel systems have limited interoperability with mainstream.
Their reference frame:
Is their peers, not history.
If nobody they know “owns” anything, the loss is invisible.
Why would the Controllers want this?
For the Controllers, “own nothing & be happy” solves multiple problems:
1) Creditor vs citizen conflict
When citizens hold lots of assets (homes, deposits, securities), crises pit:
Citizens’ wealth vs systemic solvency.
If citizens mostly hold:
Revocable claims,
Leaseholds,
Income flows,
then:
Crises can be “fixed” via inflation, haircuts, and flow adjustments without obvious expropriation events.
2) Consent and riot management
Asset crashes (housing, pensions) destabilize regimes.
Better for Controllers if:
People never accumulate large, visible stakes.
Their security is tied to continued obedience (eligibility for CBDC flows, access rights).
“You’re safe as long as you stay inside the rails” becomes the implicit bargain.
3) External balance & sovereignty
If the domestic population doesn’t own much independent capital:
Capital flight is easier to control.
FX crises are more a matter of sovereign and corporate balance sheets.
It centralizes the ability to enact rapid macro adjustments.
4) Administrative simplicity
It is simpler to:
Track a few big asset owners,
Regulate and supervise them,
And then manage citizens via flows and ratings,
than to deal with millions of small property owners making independent decisions.
5) Ideological cover
You can justify it with:
“Sustainability”: less consumption, more sharing.
“Equality”: less wealth disparity.
“Safety”: fewer people can “lose everything” if they never own it.
All of this is aligned with the Controllers’ objective function:
minimize Σ (cost_of_controlᵢ + career_riskᵢ + embarrassmentᵢ + legal_exposureᵢ) − λ · legitimacy_depletion_rate
subject to:
sovereign funding works,
collateral chains don’t snap,
banks & money markets function,
housing & pensions don’t implode visibly,
protected cohorts feel “ok”,
regime risk stays sub-critical,
external balance within tolerated bands.
“Own nothing & be happy” is a low Gross Consent Product solution to those constraints.
Why would people accept it (and call it happy)?
Mechanisms:
Hedonic adaptation
People normalize whatever environment they grow up in.
If:
Their parents also didn’t “own” much,
Their peers all live in access bundles,
then:They don’t experience loss.
They might even feel:
“I’m lucky: no mortgage, no repair costs, no maintenance.”
Reframing ownership as pain
Highlight:
Past housing crashes,
Foreclosures,
Debt slavery,
Volatility of markets.
Result:
“Why would I risk my mental health on markets? I just want stability.”
Attention hijack
If your day is:
Immersive entertainment,
Social feeds,
Personalized content,
Short dopamine loops,
you have less bandwidth to compare life paths or notice structural theft.
Conditional comfort
As long as:
Food is cheap,
Entertainment rich,
“Healthcare” accessible (if you comply),
then:The cost of rebelling is huge.
The benefits of owning something independent are unclear, far away.
Fear of exclusion
If losing access means:
No transport,
No “healthcare”,
No social life,
No ability to transact,
then:People self-police.
Combine all:
Emotional state: “I have less stress than my parents; I have more entertainment; I don’t worry about bills as long as I don’t rock the boat.”
Political attitude: “The system is flawed, but alternatives look worse or impossible.”
That’s “happy enough”.
I don’t see “own nothing & be happy” as guaranteed.
But I see a high probability that:
The median person’s effective control over property shrinks materially.
Access/subscription models dominate.
Happiness is managed via flows + UX, not property.
Where the “Great Taking” fits in
David Webb’s book “The Great Taking“ correctly points out:
Dematerialized securities + omnibus custody + collateral chains = structurally fragile.
Resolution/bail-in regimes + secured creditor hierarchy = legal tools to impose losses on ordinary holders.
In a severe crisis:
It is legally possible to:
Wipe out equity holders,
Haircut certain creditors,
Convert depositor and pension claims,
While preserving “system” solvency.
That doesn’t require a secret committee; it’s baked into:
Banking union laws,
Resolution frameworks,
Custody arrangements,
Priority rules.
Thus, as a tail risk:
Full-blown global, synchronized seizure of collateralized assets:
Very low probability as a deliberate, one-shot event.
More likely:
Waves of selective expropriation:
Repeated bail-ins,
Resolution events,
Forced conversions,
Wealth levies,
All framed as:
“Stabilization”,
“Fair burden sharing”,
“Once-in-a-century emergency”.
Every such wave:
Reduces the asset base of the middle class.
Pushes more people onto:
CBDC support flows,
Subsidized access schemes.
Cumulatively, over decades:
You get something very close to:
“You own almost nothing directly, but you are on the grid, and as long as you behave, the grid takes care of you.”
Use this lens
incentives > ideals:
It is cheaper and more robust for the Controllers to manage flows and access than to manage millions of small owners.
control > fairness:
Asset seizures and rail lock-in favor control first; fairness is narrative packaging.
stability > truth:
Crises will be used to justify conversions and bail-ins.
The narrative will be “saving the system”, not “we are expropriating you”.
revealed preference > stated narrative:
Track what’s actually happening:
Continued dematerialization,
Expanded emergency powers,
Identity & compliance requirements,
Subscription models,
Consolidation of asset ownership.
Not what is said:
“Financial inclusion”,
“Modernization”,
“Green transition”,
“Resilience”.
Given that pattern, “own nothing & be relatively happy” is not sci-fi; it’s one logical extrapolation of already-revealed preferences.
Great Taking hedges is a topic I might explore in another article. It is a very complex subject and it is not as simple as “own Bitcoin in self-custody”.
In my opinion, the #1 Great Taking hedge is your own human capital & health.
Exceptional framework for understanding how dematerialization isn't sudden expropriation but gradual erosion. The custody law breakdown showing claim-on-claim structures versus direct property really clarifies why most people already don't own what they think they own. I've worked with clients who discovered this the hard way during 2023 banking wobbles when withdrawal limits kicked in. The phased timeline feels accurate, espeically how Phase 1 normalizes CBDC rails through benefits before expanding coercion.