The Matt Walsh Show - The Subscription Economy Is Killing the American Dream

00:00:00.000 We're all aware of the WEF's now infamous threat, you'll own nothing and be happy.

00:00:05.460 Globalists have been using that phrase for a decade.

00:00:07.860 Now, understandably, it's led to a lot of backlash.

00:00:10.680 If you manage to survey 100 normal, non-schizophrenic people on the street, 0.57

00:00:16.080 all 100 of them would tell you that owning property is preferable to borrowing everything. 0.65

00:00:21.220 Just from a PR perspective, it's even remarkable that they even attempted to push this messaging.

00:00:25.500 It's obviously appalling.

00:00:26.440 But as it turns out, you don't really need any buy-in from the public in order to force this plan down their throats.

00:00:34.020 You can tell customers that they're buying something, and you can clarify explicitly that they're purchasing it and not renting it.

00:00:42.400 And then one day, you can simply remove the product from their homes, and you don't even have to offer them a refund or anything.

00:00:49.080 This is one of the more important stories that isn't getting a lot of mainstream attention, but it's a very important sign of where things are going.

00:00:55.480 Tens of thousands of people in the UK and Europe who purchased digital content on Sony's PlayStation Store, which sells games, movies and television shows, recently received the following notification in their inbox.

00:01:09.260 And here it is, quote, from September 1st, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal and it will be removed from your video library.

00:01:22.560 Thank you, PlayStation Store.

00:01:24.960 That's it. They don't even get a refund. Not an apology.

00:01:28.900 They're simply informed that although they thought they were purchasing this content, it was actually an extended rental.

00:01:35.820 And now it's gone.

00:01:37.420 To be clear, customers navigated to the store page for various movies and television shows, and they had an option.

00:01:44.180 They could rent a movie, which they'd have to view within a month, or they could spend more money and, quote, purchase it.

00:01:51.180 What's being deleted from their accounts are the purchases, including films like Apocalypse Now, Evil Dead, Highlander, Hot Fuzz, Paddington, Rambo, First Blood, as well as First Blood Part 2, RoboCop, Sharknado, Terminator 2, Judgment Day.

00:02:07.240 Several television shows will also be removed, including American God Season 1 and Below the Surface Season 1.

00:02:13.440 A couple of years ago, a similar purge nearly took place.

00:02:16.060 This is from Business Insider back in 2023.

00:02:18.740 quote, Sony is removing hundreds of Discovery titles from users' video libraries that they

00:02:25.340 already purchased. Users who bought any of the hundreds of listed programs will no longer be

00:02:31.000 able to access the content as of December 31st, according to a legal notice posted by the company.

00:02:36.460 Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able

00:02:40.960 to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content, and the content will be

00:02:45.240 removed from your video library, according to the note. In that case, Sony eventually signed

00:02:50.820 new license arrangements that restored access to this content, but the point was made. Even when

00:02:57.220 you purchase something online, you don't actually own it. You're at the mercy of whatever license

00:03:02.760 you're agreeing to, which is 5,000 pages long and which no one will ever read. Indeed, just a few

00:03:09.320 years later, Sony has said that it will begin removing digital purchases from everybody's

00:03:13.580 account. Now, for now, these purges are unique to Sony, but every single online service that

00:03:19.740 sells movies and television shows works the exact same way. I looked up the terms of service on

00:03:25.580 Amazon Prime Video, for example. This is another service that says you can buy movies instead of

00:03:30.800 just renting them. But when you read the fine print on the website, here's what you find.

00:03:36.520 Quote, availability of purchased digital content. Purchased digital content will generally continue

00:03:41.980 to be available to you for download or streaming from the service as applicable, but may become

00:03:47.380 unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons,

00:03:52.420 and Amazon will not be liable to you if purchased digital content becomes unavailable for further

00:03:57.460 download or streaming. This should obviously be disclosed to everybody on the actual store page.

00:04:03.440 Instead, it's buried in the fine print. So they're lying about what they're selling you. They're

00:04:08.880 lying about what you actually own. In response, maybe you're thinking, well, it's just movies

00:04:13.900 and television shows. They're not that important, which is true. But this general philosophy,

00:04:19.740 the idea that you don't own something even after you've paid for it, obviously is not

00:04:26.160 restricted to entertainment. This is just a symptom of a larger problem. As you've probably

00:04:31.440 noticed, it's infecting pretty much every industry. For example, even if you generally

00:04:37.340 tune-out stories about corporate greed and the rising cost of living, this was a pretty

00:04:43.460 unbelievable development that you probably remember. The automaker BMW announced a few

00:04:48.400 years ago that it would begin charging customers a monthly subscription fee to use the heated seats

00:04:54.080 that were already installed in their cars. The idea was that BMW's production lines

00:05:00.140 would be simplified rather than having to make one batch of cars with heated seats and another

00:05:05.320 without for every available paint color. And while you can make the argument this arrangement

00:05:10.420 was more economical for BMW, the problem is that customers never saw any cost savings as a result

00:05:15.300 of the change. BMW didn't lower the prices on all of their new cars by $1,000 or something

00:05:20.060 because of their new streamlined production lines. And therefore, the subscription fee

00:05:24.660 went over about as well as you'd expect. There were endless news reports about it,

00:05:30.060 uh like this one which led to a lot of outrage watch if you buy a car that has heated seats

00:05:36.620 you'd expect to be able to use them on a cold morning right well some bmw owners

00:05:41.500 now have to pay more for that option bmw recently rolled out subscription plans to overseas

00:05:49.740 that require owners to pay a monthly fee for heated front seats the seats are already installed

00:05:55.740 in the cars, yet owners still have to pay $18 a month to use them, or they can shell out $450

00:06:01.980 for a lifetime subscription. Now, it might seem easy to understand why people rebelled against

00:06:07.900 this, but if you think about it, there's some nuance to the reaction. There's a very popular

00:06:13.700 commentator in the do-it-yourself community named Louis Rossman, who did a good job summarizing the

00:06:19.860 reason for the outrage here. Rossman's point was, you know, it's one thing if the subscription fee

00:06:24.680 unlock some kind of advanced technology like self-driving or auto parking that the customers

00:06:31.300 couldn't realistically implement on their own. People can tolerate that, and people do tolerate

00:06:37.000 it all the time. Tesla is the prime example, but BMW is doing something very different

00:06:42.140 and much more rudimentary. They were charging customers to send voltage to a transistor,

00:06:48.720 which is the most basic thing imaginable. It's something that a customer could hardwire on

00:06:53.820 their own in about 10 minutes, assuming the car didn't use software to lock them out, which it

00:06:58.180 probably would. And that's why BMW's decision really infuriated people. You know, with cable

00:07:04.400 or Netflix, your subscription fee at least unlocks content that you couldn't easily create on your

00:07:09.340 own. But BMW subscription for heated seats didn't feel any different from, say, a subscription to

00:07:15.040 lower your car windows or a subscription to spin your wheels really fast. So very quickly, the

00:07:21.880 outrage forced BMW to backtrack. They announced that they would stop charging a fee for heated

00:07:26.480 seats, but executives at BMW made it clear that they didn't fully understand the reason that they

00:07:32.860 had angered so many people. This is from Edmunds, quote, BMW board members, board member for sales

00:07:38.780 and marketing, Pieter Noda, said, what we won't do anymore is offer seat heating by a monthly

00:07:45.820 subscription. The heated seat subscription was reportedly going to cost buyers $18 a month,

00:07:50.640 but Noda said BMW buyers feel that they paid double for the feature before insisting that

00:07:55.820 isn't true. However, he acknowledged that perception is reality. While heated seats are

00:08:00.140 out, other aspects of the brand's relatively new subscription model are not.

00:08:05.660 Well, it's just about the worst possible response BMW could have given. He's accusing customers of

00:08:10.460 being stupid because they thought they were paying double. And then he says that, well, 1.00

00:08:15.320 even though they're stupid, they're still our customers and, you know, we got to make them 1.00

00:08:18.780 happy. Therefore, we're going to keep charging them subscriptions for basic built-in features 0.99

00:08:23.400 of their cars, just not the heated seats anymore. And indeed, he wasn't kidding. This is a quote

00:08:29.640 from a BMW spokesperson from the outlet Motor One, several years after the drama over the heated

00:08:36.100 seats. Quote, adaptive suspension is available through the Connected Drive store in the U.S.,

00:08:41.180 but a subscription isn't required. It's still available as a factory option, but through the

00:08:46.220 store, it can be added to certain cars that weren't optioned that way originally. Customers can try it

00:08:51.640 out for a month at no charge, and if they like it, they can opt for a monthly or yearly subscription

00:08:57.020 if they wish, or simply buy it outright for a one-time $500 charge. To be clear, a monthly

00:09:02.920 subscription isn't required to use the feature. So you're going to be charged $27 a month or a $500

00:09:10.020 one-time fee if you want to use your adaptive suspension, but whatever you do, don't call it

00:09:17.580 a subscription. They say it's not a subscription because you can pay a bunch of money up front

00:09:22.900 to own the feature indefinitely. First of all, this is exactly what they were doing with the

00:09:29.360 heated seats. It's the exact same policy complete with the buyout option, only this time they're

00:09:34.520 being more careful to avoid bad PR by saying again and again that no subscription is required.

00:09:40.020 But more importantly, no, you don't actually own that feature at all in any meaningful sense, even once you complete the purchase.

00:09:46.600 If your car is totaled, the feature won't transfer to a new BMW, and your insurance company isn't going to pay you $500 for it, in all likelihood.

00:09:56.440 For centuries, John Milton's Paradise Lost has been considered one of the great works of literature,

00:10:01.260 a Christian epic that wrestles with timeless questions about temptation, freedom, pride, and God's relationship with mankind.

00:10:08.080 In one of its most famous lines, Satan declares,

00:10:10.780 better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

00:10:12.700 It's a line that cuts to the heart of rebellion,

00:10:14.800 and Milton's response to it is one of the most powerful in all of Western literature.

00:10:18.740 That's why Hillsdale College offers a free online course on Paradise Lost,

00:10:22.200 taught by real Hillsdale professors.

00:10:24.320 Paradise Lost gets at something true about human nature that most modern writing won't even touch.

00:10:28.820 Milton understood that the root of every rebellion,

00:10:31.620 every act of pride, every rejection of God,

00:10:34.400 traces back to the same lie Satan tells himself in that line. The poem carries 1,500 years of

00:10:40.920 Western and Christian thought, and most people have never read it. In this course, Professor

00:10:45.620 Stephen Smith guides you through Milton's masterpiece, From the Depths of Hell to the

00:10:49.780 Heights of Heaven. You'll examine Satan's rhetoric, discover the contrast between his lies and God's

00:10:54.620 truth, and explore one of the greatest Christian responses to the epic tradition that began with

00:10:59.820 Homer. Go to hillsdale.edu slash Walsh to enroll. It's totally free. Start reading, learn the

00:11:05.580 classics, rediscover the West. Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash Walsh. I sometimes get asked

00:11:11.360 how I keep up with everything, and the answer is pretty simple. I'm very clear about what deserves

00:11:15.520 my time and what does not. Most things don't. I've gotten ruthless about cutting out anything

00:11:20.820 that's just noise, unnecessary errands, pointless obligation, tasks I can hand off or automate.

00:11:25.340 to protect your time or you lose it.

00:11:27.600 Those are really the only two options.

00:11:29.340 We all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life,

00:11:32.380 but if you're a business owner,

00:11:34.180 how can you save time hiring?

00:11:36.740 ZipRecruiter, that's how you do it.

00:11:37.780 ZipRecruiter has a new feature

00:11:38.960 that quickly lets you see the most interested

00:11:41.040 qualified candidates first,

00:11:42.880 so you save time by meeting the right people faster.

00:11:45.500 And right now, you can try it for free

00:11:46.900 at ziprecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:11:49.280 ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology

00:11:50.760 finds qualified candidates quickly.

00:11:53.280 Candidates can tell you in their own words,

00:11:55.140 why they're interested in your job.

00:11:57.480 Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter.

00:12:00.840 Four to five employers who post on ZipRecruiter.

00:12:02.960 Get quality candidate within the first day.

00:12:04.640 Try for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:12:06.920 That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:12:09.200 Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

00:12:11.580 What Sony and BMW are doing or attempting to do is not unique.

00:12:15.960 They're just a couple of prominent examples of a phenomenon

00:12:19.120 that we're all familiar with at this point.

00:12:21.940 We're living in an era where increasingly we don't own anything and we have no real legal rights to products that we're paying for.

00:12:31.040 You can buy a $2,500 bike from Peloton, but it's basically useless unless you pay for an all access membership, which costs $50 a month.

00:12:39.000 You don't get your live classes or your workout library or your fitness progress or any of the interactive features that supposedly make the bike worthwhile.

00:12:46.560 You can buy a $200 digital wall calendar off Amazon, complete with smartphone integration so that all of your family's events are prominently displayed in real time on the refrigerator.

00:12:56.620 But for the privilege of updating this calendar, you can expect to pay an annual fee of around $95 a year.

00:13:03.280 Yes, calendars now cost $200 plus $100 a year.

00:13:08.440 And people are buying this.

00:13:10.600 You can get a Whoop fitness tracker to track your sleep if you're a crazy person.

00:13:16.560 but some people think it's worthwhile.

00:13:18.820 And regardless, it's the kind of thing

00:13:19.900 that obviously shouldn't require a monthly fee,

00:13:22.440 but if you want to use the device,

00:13:24.060 then you need to shell out at least $25 a month

00:13:26.280 or realistically closer to $40 a month

00:13:28.420 for all the features.

00:13:30.200 Otherwise, your device is nothing more than a paperweight.

00:13:33.380 You can pay $100 for a Ring doorbell camera,

00:13:36.420 but if you don't pay the subscription fee,

00:13:38.300 which runs from $50 to $100 per year,

00:13:40.980 then you'll probably end up like Savannah Guthrie's mom.

00:13:44.620 Your ring won't save any footage at all.

00:13:46.800 So if somebody comes to your house in the middle of the night and drags you away, well, good luck.

00:13:51.740 Nobody will ever hear from you again.

00:13:53.700 You could buy a Volkswagen, but if you want to use the full horsepower the car is capable of, you'll need to pony up some more cash.

00:14:00.620 Watch.

00:14:01.800 Volkswagen just did something that should make every car owner furious.

00:14:04.700 They're selling their electric ID.3 with its full horsepower locked behind a paid subscription.

00:14:09.100 The car comes from the factory with 228 horsepower, but if you don't pay a monthly fee, it's software limited to just 201.

00:14:15.160 For about $22 a month, they'll flip a digital switch and unlock the power that was already inside the car that you paid for.

00:14:21.260 You could buy an iPhone, but without a $5 a month iCloud subscription, you'll run out of space for your photos and movies.

00:14:29.320 Of course, you need to pay for the cell phone service monthly as well.

00:14:33.020 You could buy a smart home device, but without paying for Alexa, none of your devices will communicate with each other.

00:14:39.300 You can buy food on Uber Eats or DoorDash,

00:14:42.700 but if you don't pay for an annual membership,

00:14:45.180 you'll pay extra fees on every order.

00:14:47.920 You'll also get worse drivers.

00:14:49.740 You can buy an Xbox or PlayStation,

00:14:51.520 but if you want to play online with your friends,

00:14:53.200 you'll need to pay something like $50 to $100 a year

00:14:55.480 for the privilege of doing that.

00:14:57.500 You used to be able to go to the store

00:14:58.940 and buy Microsoft Word. 1.00

00:15:01.840 You know, old people will remember this. 1.00

00:15:03.860 It came with a big box and everything.

00:15:06.180 Well, now Microsoft pressures you to sign up

00:15:07.840 for an Office 365 monthly subscription.

00:15:11.960 And meanwhile, Ford locks down basic features

00:15:14.000 like built-in navigation with live traffic

00:15:16.740 as well as in-dash streaming apps behind a paywall.

00:15:19.260 You can pay $15 a month, $150 a year,

00:15:22.520 or a $750 one-time fee.

00:15:25.860 Then there's an even more egregious Ford security package,

00:15:29.020 which is available on new F-150s, Mustangs, and Expeditions.

00:15:32.300 For the low price of $8 a month or $80 a year,

00:15:36.220 You'll get push notifications on your phone if somebody tries to force your door open or if the car's GPS location changes when the engine is off, meaning your truck is getting towed or maybe dismantled on the side of the road.

00:15:47.920 But one of the most important features in this monthly subscription plan is called Start Inhibit.

00:15:54.160 So this is a feature that, according to Ford, quote, lets you respond quickly by remotely locking down your vehicle from being started, even if an authorized key is detected nearby.

00:16:07.020 And the point of this feature is to prevent so-called relay attacks, like the one that you're seeing on your screen right now.

00:16:14.860 And in a relay attack, a thief walks up to your front door or the side of your house with a large signal booster.

00:16:22.620 And normally, your key fob only unlocks your car if you're within a couple of feet of the vehicle.

00:16:27.000 But the signal booster tricks your car into thinking that the key fob is right next to the door.

00:16:32.420 The thieves then unlock the car, start the push-button ignition, and they drive off before you realize what's happened.

00:16:38.780 Now, with the Ford security plan, the start inhibit will stop this kind of attack.

00:16:44.560 it will prevent anyone from starting the car with the fob unless the start inhibit option is disabled

00:16:51.120 in your Ford app. So in other words, Ford wants to charge you a monthly fee in order to correct

00:16:58.040 a security vulnerability that they have built into every single one of their vehicles.

00:17:04.260 So instead of allowing you to, say, require a pin to be entered before your truck will start,

00:17:09.240 for demands that you pay them $80 a year to enable this feature within the app.

00:17:15.360 Oh, you have to select start inhibit every time you park the car, which is, you know,

00:17:19.840 obviously very convenient as well. Now, the upshot is that when you buy a new Ford,

00:17:25.280 you're given a major incentive to subscribe to at least two different monthly plans in order to

00:17:31.220 make the car function as it should. And that's not to pick on Ford necessarily. Again, this is

00:17:37.100 an epidemic. Everyone's doing it. You could buy a $200 printer from HP only to discover that your

00:17:42.460 ink cartridges have been remotely disabled because you canceled your HP Instant Ink subscription.

00:17:49.200 That's something that actually happens to people, for the record. And HP is proud of this program.

00:17:54.800 Watch. HP Instant Ink is a smart print subscription service that delivers ink the moment you need it.

00:18:00.920 You get ink or toner, plus hassle-free deliveries. How does it work? Step one, pick a plan based on

00:18:06.160 number of pages you print in a month. Step two, print whatever you want. Every page costs the

00:18:11.180 same no matter how much ink you use. Step three, when you run low, your smart printer lets us know

00:18:15.820 and we ship your ink or toner at no extra cost. Print more or less. Unused pages roll over and

00:18:21.300 extra pages cost just pennies. Plus, you can change plans or cancel anytime. They say you

00:18:26.800 can cancel anytime, but they don't tell you that if you cancel, they'll remotely disable the ink

00:18:31.400 in your printer. Nor do they warn you about any of the other problems that customers are experiencing.

00:18:36.160 and um and there are quite a few of them uh here's one quote i sent my printer up and ran the

00:18:43.260 alignment and cleaning functions they were some pretty bad streaky prints but it was working the

00:18:48.500 black cartridge only printed exactly 50 pages that coincidentally was the same as the plan i signed

00:18:53.080 up for and then it stopped printing black altogether which i found odd it didn't fade it

00:18:57.960 was like the ink was getting low the black ink just stopped um i assume this instant ink plan

00:19:03.420 was where they would send you more ink when you needed it. They shut off ink cartridges that

00:19:08.120 still have ink. That's some wasteful and fishy tactics, HP. On top of that, I'll learn there's

00:19:12.860 an overage fee if I somehow print more from a shut-off ink cartridge. This is going back into

00:19:18.440 the box and will be sent back. Here's another glowing review. Quote,

00:19:23.040 The worst program ever. I lost a credit card and the monthly subscription failed the process,

00:19:27.760 so HP turned off my printer. I had to resubscribe to continue printing, then cancel the service.

00:19:33.420 Shortly after that, my printer stopped printing.

00:19:35.120 Again, with the error code, you must subscribe to HP Instant Ink.

00:19:39.120 So now my printer will not print.

00:19:41.760 And in response to these complaints, you might say, well, these people need to read the fine print.

00:19:45.060 It's not HP's fault if the customers don't understand the license terms they agreed to.

00:19:50.700 And in a court of law, maybe you'd have a point.

00:19:52.620 Now, I have no doubt that HP's lawyers would successfully defeat any class action lawsuit over this subscription plan.

00:19:59.200 Actually, when I looked this up, I discovered that indeed HP has been sued several times over

00:20:03.040 this practice. Lawsuits allege that HP didn't deliver ink on time, the ink was prone to errors,

00:20:07.780 etc. And they avoided any significant consequences because the terms of service basically prevent

00:20:12.380 large-scale nationwide class actions. But the legal maneuvering isn't the point. Neither is

00:20:17.900 the abstract theoretical economic argument, the idea that somehow all of these subscriptions are

00:20:22.840 saving the consumer money or providing more consumer choice or whatever. The issue is that

00:20:29.200 The sum total of all these different subscriptions, which are extremely frustrating and confusing for millions of people, has a clear effect on the mindset of the typical consumer, if not their political views.

00:20:42.840 It gives people a very real reason to hate capitalism.

00:20:48.060 I mean, for one thing, just at a practical level, all these subscriptions make things more expensive.

00:20:52.620 There are hidden costs that stack up over time, particularly if you forget you have an active subscription.

00:20:57.720 All these monthly payments also mean that consumers have much less control than they used to.

00:21:03.420 One of my producers just bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which apparently comes with a complicated Uconnect system

00:21:08.540 that caused some kind of glitch, which prevented the ignition from turning on when the button was pressed.

00:21:13.620 This bug kept coming back, and ultimately the dealership wanted $200 just to diagnose the problem.

00:21:18.520 Not even to solve it, just to diagnose it.

00:21:21.040 30 years ago, our parents would have just swapped carburetors in the driveway.

00:21:25.260 People were comfortable with the products they owned.

00:21:27.680 They were easier and less expensive to fix.

00:21:31.140 All that's gone now.

00:21:32.720 We have less control than ever before.

00:21:35.260 On top of that, you're giving away a lot of personal data, which you probably don't even know about every single time you sign one of these license agreements.

00:21:42.620 The odds are very good that when you log into Ford Security Service or Jeep's Uconnect, they're sharing your driving habits with their advertising partners.

00:21:51.120 In fact, it's written into Ford's privacy agreement.

00:21:54.580 In other words, apps that claim to make you safer are, in fact, Trojan horses for advertisers.

00:22:00.580 That's what they're actually designed to do.

00:22:03.340 The other problem here, of course, is that the prices of these services keeps increasing.

00:22:08.160 That makes the cost of living much more unpredictable.

00:22:11.060 For Ring cameras, the subscription fee to save your videos went from $30 a year in 2022 to $50 in 2024.

00:22:18.120 That's an increase of 60% in two years for the same exact functionality.

00:22:22.840 But Amazon and Ring got away with it because once you have the Ring camera on your front door, you're much more likely to accept the increase in your monthly fee.

00:22:31.540 After all, you have a major sunk cost in terms of your finances and in terms of convenience.

00:22:36.480 And these corporations are constantly taking advantage of that.

00:22:40.680 In the meantime, the corporations are completely blind to the risks of what they're doing or they don't care.

00:22:47.760 When you're constantly billing your customers for products that they used to own outright, then sure, your bottom line might go up in the short term.

00:22:56.680 And sure, some customers may not mind the additional fees, but the fact remains, people want to own the place they live, the car they drive, the movies they watch, the doorbell on their front porch.

00:23:09.940 Ownership is one of the most fundamental components of living a fruitful, real human life.

00:23:14.220 I mean, it's the literal American dream. The house with the white picket fence and all that.

00:23:20.400 And the assumption is that you would own the house and the fence.

00:23:23.620 The trade-off used to be that, you know, you would have less stuff, but the stuff you did have would be yours.

00:23:31.660 And now we have the inverse of that where we have a ton of stuff, but we don't own any of it.

00:23:36.640 but the thing is all this stuff is owned by someone specifically the corporations that rent

00:23:43.480 it out so we own less they own everything it's anti-human it's bad for our wallets and it's bad

00:23:51.640 for our souls and it makes us much easier for the powers that be to surveil and monitor every single

00:23:57.940 one of us which they are the moment a political candidate comes along and promises to wage war

00:24:03.880 on the corporations that are depriving Americans of the ability to own anything,

00:24:08.820 that candidate will win in a landslide. And if that candidate is AOC, let's say,

00:24:14.460 then we have much bigger problems. I mean, certainly every major corporation will be

00:24:18.580 targeted for destruction. As a result, as a country, we'll probably experience an economic

00:24:22.240 crisis on par with the Great Depression. So it's very important to understand

00:24:25.120 what's going on here and how it happened. The root of the problem is that Wall Street and

00:24:31.500 private equity have become enamored with a concept known as SAAS, or software as a service.

00:24:38.740 You've maybe heard this term before. What you may not have heard about is that a little over a

00:24:43.320 decade ago, lenders developed something called annual recurring revenue loans, or ARR loans.

00:24:48.980 And these are loans in which lenders would hand out money equal to multiples of top-line revenue

00:24:55.400 as opposed to profits. And private equity firms could use these loans to acquire very unprofitable

00:24:59.880 companies as long as these companies had a subscription-based model that provided a lot

00:25:04.200 of top-line revenue. The private equity companies then have about three years to make the company

00:25:09.780 profitable by traditional metrics. So for example, imagine you run a widget company that has

00:25:15.380 operating expenses of $18 million, but you collect $15 million in subscription fees a year. So you're

00:25:21.720 losing millions of dollars every year. You have a negative cash flow. Now in the normal scenario,

00:25:27.240 the bank wouldn't give the private equity company any money to acquire your business

00:25:31.120 because you're too risky. But with an ARR, the bank might loan the private equity company some

00:25:36.700 multiple of your annual recurring revenue. So for example, they might give the private equity firm

00:25:42.000 $40 million, which is roughly three times your annual subscription revenue. And now the private

00:25:47.240 equity firm can purchase your widget company, fire half of the employees, increase margins,

00:25:52.320 and sell it off in three years. The ARR only became popular in the United States within the

00:25:58.560 last 20 years, and it's completely changed how the entire economy works. Every company now wants

00:26:05.440 recurring revenue in order to allow private equity companies or anyone else to have an easier time

00:26:10.600 acquiring them, which obviously means a big payday for the owners of the company. Now, to be clear,

00:26:16.500 this isn't some nefarious conspiracy to fix the markets or anything like that. The reason ARR

00:26:22.040 loans have become popular is that they tend to make everybody involved much wealthier.

00:26:26.280 It's the same reason why every major restaurant is reheating food from the back of a Cisco truck.

00:26:30.900 If people are willing to pay more money for inferior products, if people are willing to pay

00:26:35.780 increasingly insane subscription fees for the rest of their lives,

00:26:39.160 then major corporations and private equity firms will happily oblige.

00:26:44.400 In our world today, people have been trained to believe there's always a catch. If something

00:26:48.540 costs less it must be worse if customer service is good you'll sacrifice coverage if coverage is

00:26:53.400 great you'll pay twice as much seems there's always has to be always has to be some kind of

00:26:56.900 trade-off like that but not with pure talk consumer reports just did a massive survey of

00:27:00.940 wireless providers across the country and pure talk was the only one to earn five out of five

00:27:05.160 stars in every category including coverage support value and data so you're getting better service

00:27:10.140 without paying inflated prices that's how it should work and pure talk is doing more than

00:27:14.200 offering a better wireless plan right now they're matching donations dollar for dollar until they

00:27:18.780 hit 250 000 for america's warrior partnership an organization that's helping support veterans

00:27:25.000 where it matters most go to puretalk.com slash walls to switch to the only wireless company

00:27:30.220 awarded five stars in every category by consumer reports no service contract no cancellation fee

00:27:35.260 just phenomenal u.s customer service on the 5g network that powers america again it's puretalk.com

00:27:40.980 slash Wolves to make the switch to Pure Talk a wireless company that actually lives up to your

00:27:45.460 expectations. For two and a half centuries, we've talked about the ideals this country was founded

00:27:50.100 on among them. One of the most important is the idea that every person is endowed by their creator

00:27:53.940 with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Everything else depends on

00:27:59.040 that first right, the right to life. And yet every day, unborn children are denied it. That's why

00:28:04.100 the work of pre-born really matters. At pre-born network clinics, mothers facing unexpected

00:28:08.860 pregnancies are met with compassion, practical support, and a free ultrasound. The ultrasound

00:28:13.500 changes everything. When a mother sees her baby and hears that tiny heartbeat for the first time,

00:28:18.620 her baby is twice as likely to be given the gift of life. These babies aren't statistics. They're

00:28:23.040 future mothers and fathers, teachers, church members, entrepreneurs, first responders,

00:28:27.560 people who will shape the next generation of this country. Consider helping. Just $28 provides one

00:28:33.520 life-saving ultrasound and in honor of America's 250th birthday, we're asking friends to prayerfully

00:28:38.460 consider a special gift of $250 to multiply their impact and help save even more lives. To donate,

00:28:44.980 dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250, baby. Or give securely at preborn.com

00:28:51.900 slash Walsh. That's preborn.com slash Walsh. Every gift is tax deductible. The only way out of this

00:28:57.480 downward spiral, short of electing President AOC and destroying the entire country, making all 0.79

00:29:03.080 these problems much worse, is to reward businesses that sell finished products, not just

00:29:09.480 subscriptions. There's a massive market opportunity here, and already some companies are capitalizing

00:29:15.140 on it. Vinyl records are having a comeback for exactly this reason. Go to the top floor of your

00:29:20.900 local Barnes and Noble, and it's like going back in time. They have vinyls all over the place.

00:29:25.580 They're selling record players. Even in the 1990s, that would have been retro, but people are

00:29:31.200 paying a lot of money for vinyls because they're tired of borrowing everything and owning nothing.

00:29:37.920 Look at the popularity of steelbooks as another example. If you're not familiar,

00:29:42.360 various studios are releasing films on Blu-rays and 4K discs, and they're packaging them in steel

00:29:48.320 cases. And the cost for these steelbooks usually ranges from $30 to $50. The profit margins are

00:29:54.160 substantial. That's very expensive for one film, obviously, but here's the thing. Spending on

00:30:00.180 steelbooks has been growing dramatically over the past few years, even as sales of other forms of

00:30:05.020 physical media have declined. Steelbooks routinely sell out within minutes of going online. There are

00:30:10.120 entire online communities dedicated to hunting down these steelbooks. So it's not hard to see 0.99

00:30:16.420 what's going on here. People are tired of a status quo where they don't own anything, where everything

00:30:21.620 they license can be deleted from the internet at a moment's notice. And in response, people are

00:30:28.440 shelling out more money in order to lock down something tangible, something physical they can

00:30:33.920 hold in their hands, even if it's just a Blu-ray movie or a vinyl record. This is a signal, albeit

00:30:40.400 a small one, that's easy to miss. Now, put simply, it's not possible for people to be happy

00:30:46.800 without owning anything. The more we borrow everything we use in our lives, the more we

00:30:53.800 careen towards the same fate as every other civilization that didn't respect the right

00:30:58.460 of private property. And that fate ultimately is total collapse. That's what the WEF wants.

00:31:06.280 It's what AOC wants. And unless we recognize what's happening and reward the few businesses

00:31:11.800 that still allow us to purchase actual products instead of licenses, we will give the WEF and

00:31:19.120 AOC and every demented politician like her exactly what they want. 0.83

00:31:30.760 Once upon a time, there was a country, not just a country, but a big one, an empire. 0.90

00:31:37.120 And in that empire, there was an upper middle class family where two boys were raised by

00:31:42.080 their mother, loved books, Uncle Tom's cabin, the Bible.

00:31:45.840 Their father admired the country's leaders.

00:31:48.340 They were patriotic and happy.

00:31:50.840 Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized.

00:31:53.840 One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader.

00:31:57.840 He was hanged.

00:31:58.840 The other brother read the same books, but decided to lead a movement.

00:32:03.840 First they came from the universities, and no one seemed to care.

00:32:06.840 Then they took over the unions, and again, no one seemed to care.

00:32:09.840 Then they created their own media organizations and took over the cities.

00:32:13.840 Again, most people just ignored it.

00:32:16.100 Change, after all, was something they could believe in

00:32:19.260 until it was too late.

00:32:20.780 Sound familiar?

00:32:22.160 This is the real history of communism,

00:32:24.800 the Russian Revolution.

The Matt Walsh Show - July 13, 2026

The Subscription Economy Is Killing the American Dream

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript