Security for Sale

Part 4

August 21, 2025

When was the last time you felt truly secure?

Not just covered. Not just “protected.”

But actually safe.

If you’re struggling to remember, that’s by design. Security isn’t provided anymore — it’s packaged, sold, and rented back to you.

Instability is the subscription model of modern life and this is what it looks like.

Retirement

In 1980, pensions covered 60% of workers. Today, fewer than 15%.

Your “golden years” got securitized into mutual funds, with you carrying the volatility. Instead of peace, you inherit the job of portfolio manager — unpaid and responsible for all the downside.

Housing

Once a place to live. Now an interest-rate trade.

Since 2010, institutional investors bought up millions of homes, making your roof Wall Street’s collateral.

Renter? You don’t just “pay rent” — you subsidize someone else’s balance sheet.

Healthcare

Premiums have tripled since 1999. Deductibles doubled in the last decade. “Coverage” feels more like code than care.

And these days? You don’t really know what’s covered until you need it — only to get rejected through some fine print loop hole.

Employment

40% of U.S. workers are now in “non-traditional” jobs — contract, gig, freelance. Easy and optional for employers, absolutely fragile for workers.

Every job is a now one-year lease, renewed at someone else’s discretion. Bargaining power reduced to zilch.

See the pattern?

Instability isn’t a bug. It’s a profit center. Every “solution” is a product, priced monthly, margin built in.

But the antidote is not to panic — it’s building your own non-billable stability:

  • Redundancy (income streams).

  • Slack (time buffers).

  • Locality (neighbors > networks).

  • Simplicity (fewer moving parts = fewer fees).

  • Resilience (systems that bend without breaking).

🟨 List the “security products” you rent today (insurance, rent, subscriptions). Star the ones you could still function without if the price doubled tomorrow.

Tomorow: If security is leased, what remains that can’t be repossessed?

—DOTD

P.S. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.