The Secret of Social Operation: Survival as Service
The discussion about the "kill zone" brings to mind how subscription models have taken over nearly every product in our lives:
Mortgages, property taxes, car loans, student loans, and various memberships all consume personal cash flow. When an individual's cash flow can no longer support the cost of basic living services, they gradually fall into the kill zone and get swept away.
On a societal level, people have become disposable batteries—once they can no longer generate power, they are abandoned by society.
The brilliance of the subscription model lies in:
Take medication, for example. The medicine itself is inexpensive; what's valuable is the subscription access that grants you legal right to it—the prescription and medical guidance. You have to pay exorbitant consultation fees just to obtain a prescription before you can even buy the drug.
Consider a home printer that received an automatic firmware update, which remotely locked it down and rendered all cheap third-party ink cartridges useless—while official ink cartridges are sold for more than the printer itself.
It is crucial to own core assets that generate consistent cash flow.