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Paying 70 plus dollars a month for wireless? That doesn't make any sense. It's overpriced. It's unnecessary. Here is the reality. My wireless company, PureTalk, offers unlimited high speed data for just $34.99 a month. That is a gigantic difference. You're getting the same core service without the bloated price tag and the same plan used to cost more, 55 bucks. But PureTalk keeps pushing to give you more for less. We love PureTalk over here. I use it, My family uses it. Try it for 30 days. No contract, no cancellation fees. Switching only takes about 10 minutes. Head on over to Pure Talk.com Shapiro make that switch, Save money, keep your service. It's that simple. PureTalk.com Shapiro we're all aware of the
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WTF's now infamous threat. You'll own nothing and be happy. Globalists have been using that phrase for a decade now. Understandably, it's led to a lot of backlash. If you manage to survey 100 normal, non schizophrenic people on the street, all 100 of them would tell you that owning property is preferable to borrowing everything. Just from a PR perspective, it's even remarkable that they even attempted to push this messaging. It's obviously appalling, 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. You can tell customers that they're buying something and you can clarify explicitly that they're purchasing it and not renting it. 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. 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. Tens of thousands of people in the UK and Europe who purchase digital content on Sony PlayStation. Sony's PlayStation Store, which sells games, movies and television shows, recently received the following notification in their inbox and here it is. Quote from September 1, 2026 Due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content with from Studio Canal and it will be removed from your video Library. Thank you PlayStation Store. That's it. They don't even get a refund. Not an apology. They're simply informed that although they thought they were purchasing this content, it was actually an extended rental and now it's gone. To be clear, customers navigated to the store page for various movies and television shows and they had an option. They could rent a movie which they have to view within a month, or they could spend more money and, quote, purchase it. 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. Several television shows will also be removed, including American God Season one and Below the Surface Season one. A couple of years ago, a similar purge nearly took place. This is from Business Insider back in 2023 quote Sony is removing hundreds of discovery titles from users video libraries that they already purchased. Users who bought any of the hundreds of listed programs will no longer be able to access the content as of Dec. 31, according to a legal notice posted by the company. Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library, according to the note. Now, in that case, Sony eventually signed new license arrangements that restored access to this content. But the point was made. You know, even when you purchase something online, you don't actually own it. You're at the mercy of whatever license you're agreeing to, which is 5,000 pages long and which no one will ever read. And indeed, just a few years later, Sony has said that it will begin removing digital purchases from everybody's account. Now, for now, these purges are unique to Sony, but every single online service that sells movies and television shows works the exact same way. I looked up the terms of service on Amazon Prime Video, for example. This is another service that says you can buy movies instead of just renting them. But when you read the fine print on the website, here's what you find Availability of Purchased Digital Content Purchased digital content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the service as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons. And Amazon will not be liable to you if purchased digital content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming. This should obviously be disclosed to everybody on the actual store page. Instead, it's buried in the fine print. So they're lying about what they're selling you. They're lying about what you actually own. In response, maybe you're thinking, well, it's just movies and television shows, they're not that important. But which is true. But this general philosophy, the idea that you don't own something even after you've paid for it obviously is not restricted to entertainment. This is just A symptom of a larger problem. As you've probably noticed, it's infecting pretty much every industry. For example, even if you generally tune out stories about corporate greed and the rising cost of living. This was a pretty unbelievable development that you probably remember. The automaker BMW announced a few years ago that it would begin charging customers a monthly subscription fee to use the heated seats that were already installed in their cars. The idea was that BMW's production lines would be simplified rather than having to make one batch of cars with heated seats and another without for every available paint color. And while you can make the argument this arrangement was more economical for BMW, the problem is that customers never saw any cost savings as a result of the change. BMW didn't lower the prices on all their new cars by a thousand dollars or something because of their new streamlined production lines. And therefore the subscription fee went over about as well as you'd expect. There were endless news reports about it, like this one, which led to a lot of outrage.
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Watch. If you buy a car that has heated seats, you'd expect to be able to use them on a cold morning, right? Well, some BMW owners now have to pay more for that option. BMW recently rolled out subscription plans to overseas that require owners to pay a monthly fee for heated front seats. The seats are already installed in the cars, yet owners still have to pay $18 a month to use them. Or they can shell out $450 for a lifetime subscription.
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Now, it might seem easy to understand why people rebelled against this, but if you think about it, there's some nuance to the reaction. There's a very popular commentator in the do it Yourself community named Louis Rossman, who did good job summarizing the reason for the outrage here. Rossman's point was, you know, it's one thing if the subscription fee unlocks some kind of advanced technology like self driving or auto parking that the customers couldn't realistically implement on their own. People can tolerate that, and people, people do tolerate it all the time. Tesla is the prime example. But BMW is doing something very different and much more rudimentary. They were charging customers to send voltage to a transistor, which is the most basic thing imaginable. It's something that a customer could hardwire on their own in about 10 minutes, assuming the car didn't use software to lock them out, which it probably would. And that's why BMW's decision really infuriated people. You know, with cable or Netflix, your subscription fee at least unlocks content that you couldn't easily create on your own. But BMW subscription heated seats didn't feel any different from say, a subscription to lower your car windows or a subscription to spin your wheels really fast. So very quickly, the outrage forced BMW to backtrack. They announced that they would stop charging a fee for heated seats. But executives at BMW made it clear that they didn't fully understand the reason that they had angered so many people. This is from Edmonds Quote BMW Board Members Board Member for Sales and Marketing P. Noda said what we won't do anymore is offer seat heating by a monthly subscription. The heated seat subscription was reportedly going to cost buyers $18 a month, but Noda said BMW buyers feel that they paid double for the feature. Before insisting that isn't true, however, he acknowledged that perception is reality. While heated seats are out, other aspects of the brand's relatively new subscription model are not. Well, it's just about the worst possible response BMW could have given. He's accusing customers of being stupid because they thought they were paying double. And then he says that, well, even though they're stupid, they're still our customers and you know, we got to make them happy. Therefore we're going to keep charging them subscriptions for basic built in features of their cars. Just not the heated seats anymore. And indeed, he wasn't kidding. This is a quote from a BMW spokesperson from the outlet Motor1 Several years after the drama over the heated seats. Quote Adaptive suspension is available through the Connected Drive store in the US but a subscription isn't required. It's still available as a factory option, but through the store it can be added to certain cars that weren't optioned that way originally. Customers can try it out for a month at no charge. And if they like it, they can opt for a monthly or yearly subscription if they wish, or simply buy it outright for a one time $500 charge. To be clear, a monthly subscription isn't required to use the feature. So you're going to be charged $27 a month or a $500 one time fee if you want to use your adaptive suspension. But whatever you do, don't call it a subscription. They say it's, it's not a subscription because you can pay, you know, a bunch of money up front to own the feature indefinitely. First of all, this is exactly what they were doing with the heated seats. It's the exact same policy, complete with the buyout option. Only this time they're being more careful to avoid bad PR by saying again and again that no subscription is required, but more importantly, no you don't actually own that feature at all in any meaningful sense. Even once you complete the purchase, 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. For centuries, John Milton's Paradise Lost has been considered one of the great works of literature, a Christian epic that wrestles with timeless questions about temptation, freedom, pride, and God's relationship with mankind. In one of its most famous lines, Satan declares, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. It's a line that cuts to the heart of rebellion and Milton's response to it. It's one of the most powerful in all of Western literature. That's why Hillsdale College offers a free online course on Paradise Lost, taught by real Hillsdale professors. Paradise Lost gets at something true about human nature that most modern writing won't even touch. Milton understood that the root of every rebellion, every act of pride, every rejection of God traces back to the same lie Satan tells himself in that line poem carries 1500 years of Western and Christian thought, and most people have never read it. In this course, Professor Stephen Smith guides you through Milton's masterpiece. From the depths of hell to the heights of heaven. You'll examine Satan's rhetoric, discover the contrast between his lies and God's truth, and explore one of the greatest Christian responses to the epic tradition that began with Homer. Go to Hillsdale. Edu Walsh to enroll. It's totally free. Start reading, learn the classics, rediscover the West. Start right now at Hillsdale. Edu Walsh. I sometimes get asked how I keep up with everything, and the answer is pretty simple. I'm very clear about what deserves my time and what does not. Most things don't, but I've gotten ruthless about cutting out anything that's just noise, unnecessary errands, pointless obligation tasks I can hand off or automate. Protect your time or you lose it. Those are really the only two options. We all have our own time saving hacks for everyday life. But if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring ZipRecruiter? That's how you do it. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested qualified candidates first. So you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now you can try for free@ziprecruiter.com Walsh ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter four to five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get quality candidate within the first day. Try for free at ZipRecruiter.com Walsh that's ZipRecruiter.com Walsh meet your match on ZipRecruiter what Sony and BMW are doing or attempting to do is not unique. They're just a couple of prominent examples of a phenomenon that we're all familiar with at this point. 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. 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. 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. 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. But for the privilege of updating this calendar, you can expect to pay an annual fee of around $95 a year. Yes, calendars now cost $200 plus 100 bucks a year, and people are buying this. You can get a Whoop fitness tracker to track your sleep if you're a, you know, crazy person. But some people think it's worthwhile, and regardless, it's the kind of thing that obviously shouldn't require a monthly fee. But if you want to use the device, then you need to shell out at least $25 a month, or realistically closer to $40 a month for all the features. Otherwise, your device is nothing more than a paperweight. You could pay $100 for a ring doorbell camera, but if you don't pay the subscription fee, which runs from 50 to $100 per year, then you'll probably end up like Savannah Guthrie's mom. Your ring won't save any footage at all, so if somebody comes to your house in the middle of the night and drags you away, well, good luck. Nobody will ever hear from you again. 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. 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Volkswagen just did something that should make every car owner furious. They're selling their electric ID3 with its full horsepower locked behind a paid subscription. 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. 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.
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You could buy an iPhone, but without a $5 a month iCloud subscription, you'll run out of space for your photos and movies. Of course, you need to pay for the cell phone service monthly as well. You could buy a smart home device, but without paying for Alexa, none of your devices will communicate with each other. You can buy food on UberEats or DoorDash, but if you don't pay for an annual membership, you'll pay extra fees on every order. You also get worse drivers. You can buy an Xbox or PlayStation, but if you want to play online with your friends, you'll need to pay something like 50 to 100 a year for the privilege of doing that. You used to be able to go to the store and buy Microsoft Word. You know old people will remember this. It came with a big box and everything. Well, now Microsoft pressures you to sign up for an Office 365 monthly subscription. And meanwhile, Ford locks down basic features like built in navigation with live traffic as well as in dash streaming apps behind a paywall. You could pay 15amonth, $150 a year or a $751 time fee. Then there's even more egregious Ford Security Package, which is available on new F150s Mustangs and Expeditions for the low price of $8 a month or $80 a year. 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. But one of the most important features in this monthly subscription plan is called Start inhibits. 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 if an author key is detected nearby. 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. And in a relay attack, a thief walks up to your front door or the side of your house with a large signal booster. And normally your key fob only unlocks your car if you're within a couple of feet of the vehicle. But the signal booster tricks your car into thinking that the key fob is right Next to the door. The thieves then unlock the car, start the push button ignition, and they drive off before you realize what's happened. Now, with the Ford security plan, the Start Inhibit will stop this kind of attack. It will prevent anyone from starting the car with the fob unless the Start Inhibit option is disabled in your Ford app. So, in other words, Ford wants to charge you a monthly fee in order to correct a security vulnerability that they have built into every single one of their vehicles. So instead of allowing you to, say, require a pin to be entered before your truck will start, Ford demands that you pay them $80 a year to enable this feature within the app. And you have to select Start Inhibit every time you park the car, which is, you know, obviously very convenient as well. Now, the upshot is that when you buy a new Ford, given a major incentive to subscribe to at least two different monthly plans in order to make the car function as it should, and that's not to pick on Ford necessarily. Again, this is an epidemic. Everyone's doing it. You could buy a $200 printer from HP only to discover that your ink cartridges have been remotely disabled because you canceled your HP Instant Ink subscription. That's something that actually happens to people, for the record, and HP is proud of this program.
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Watch HP Instant Ink is a smart print subscription service that delivers ink the moment you need it. You get ink or toner plus hassle free deliveries. How does it work? Step one, pick a plan based on the number of pages you print in a month. Step two, print whatever you want. Every page costs the same no matter how much ink you use. Step three, when you run low, your smart printer lets us know and we ship your ink or toner at no extra extra cost. Print more or less. Unused pages roll over and extra pages cost just pennies. Plus you can change plans or cancel anytime.
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They say you can cancel anytime, but they don't tell you that if you cancel, they'll remotely disable the ink in your printer. Nor do they warn you about any of the other problems that customers are experiencing. And. And there are quite a few of them. Here's one quote. I sent my printer up and ran the alignment and cleaning functions. They were some pretty bad streaky prints, but it was working. The black cartridge only printed exactly 50 pages. That, coincidentally, was the same as the plan I signed up for. And then it stopped printing black altogether, which I found odd. It didn't fade. It was like the ink was getting low. The black ink just stopped. I assume this instant ink plan was where they would Send you more ink when you needed it. They shut off ink cartridges that still have ink. That's some wasteful and fishy tactics, hp. On top of that, I learned there's an overage fee if I somehow print more from a shut off ink cartridge. This is going back into the box and will be sent back. Here's another glowing review quote. The worst program ever. I lost a credit card and the monthly subscription failed the process. So HP turned off my printer. I had to resubscribe to continue printing, then cancel the service. Shortly after that, my printer stopped printing. Again with the error code you must subscribe to HP Instant Ink. So now my printer will not print. In response to these complaints, you might say, well these people need to read the fine print. It's not HP's fault if the customer's don't understand the license terms they agree to. And in a court of law, maybe you'd have a point. Now, I have no doubt that HP's lawyers would successfully defeat any class action lawsuit over this subscription plan. Actually, when I looked this up, I discovered that indeed HP has been sued several times over this practice. Lawsuits alleged that HP didn't deliver ink on time, the ink was prone to errors, etc. And they avoided any significant consequences because the terms of service basically prevent large scale nationwide class actions. But the legal maneuvering isn't the point. Neither is the abstract theoretical economic argument, the idea that somehow all of these subscriptions are saving the consumer money or providing more consumer choice or whatever. The issue is that 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. It gives people a very real reason to hate capitalism. I mean, for one thing, just at a practical level, all these subscriptions make things more expensive. There are hidden costs that stack up over time, particularly if you forget you have an active subscription. All these monthly payments also mean that consumers have much less control than they used to. One of my producers just bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee which apparently comes with a complicated uconnect system that caused some kind of glitch which prevented the ignition from turning on when the button was pressed. This bug kept coming back and ultimately the dealership wanted 200 just to diagnose the problem. Not even to solve it, just to diagnose it. Thirty years ago, our parents would have just swapped carburetors in the driveway. People were comfortable with the products they owned. They were easier and less expensive to fix. Now all that's gone now, you know, we have less control than ever before. 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, the odds are very good that when you log into Ford Security Service or Jeeps uconnect, they're sharing your driving habits with their advertising partners. In fact, it's written into Ford's privacy agreement. In other words, apps that claim to make you safer are in fact Trojan horses for advertisers. That's what they're actually designed to do. The other problem here, of course, is that the prices of these services keeps increasing. That makes the cost of living much more unpredictable. For Ring cameras, the subscription fee to save your videos went from $30 a year in 2022 to 50 in 24. That's an increase of 60% in two years for the same exact functionality. 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. After all, you have a major sunk cost in terms of your finances and in terms of convenience. And these corporations are constantly taking advantage of that. In the meantime, the corporations are completely blind to the risks of what they're doing or they don't care. I mean, 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. 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. Ownership is one of the most fundamental components of living a fruitful, real human life. I mean, it's the literal American dream. The. The house with the white picket fence and all that. And the assumption is that you would own the house and the fence. The trade off used to be that, you know, you would, you would have less stuff, but the stuff you did have would be yours. And now we have the inverse of that, where we have a ton of stuff, but we don't own any of it. But the thing is, all this stuff is owned by someone specifically the corporations that rent it out. So we own less. They own everything. It's anti human, it's bad for our wallets and it's bad for our souls. And it makes us much easier for the powers that be to surveil and monitor every single one of us, which they are the moment a political candidate comes along and promises to wage war on the corporations that are depriving Americans of the ability to own anything. That candidate will win in a landslide. And if that candidate is aoc, let's say, then we have much bigger problems. I mean, certainly every major corporation will be targeted for destruction as a result. As a country, we'll probably experience an economic crisis on par with the Great Depression. So it's very important to understand what's going on here and how it happened. The root of the problem is that Wall street and private equity have become enamored with a concept known as SaaS or software as a service. You maybe heard this term before. What you may not have heard about is that a little over a decade ago, lenders developed something called annual recurring revenue loans, or ARR loans. And these are loans in which lenders would hand out money equal to multiples of top line revenue, as opposed to profits. And private equity firms could use these loans to acquire very unprofitable companies as long as these companies had a subscription based model that provided a lot of top line revenue. The private equity companies then have about three years to make the company profitable by traditional metrics. So, for example, imagine you run a widget company that has operating expenses of $18 million, but you collect $15 million in subscription fees a year. So you're losing millions of dollars every year. You have a negative cash flow. Now, in the normal scenario, the bank wouldn't give the private equity company any money to acquire your business because you're too risky. But with an ARR, the bank might loan the private equity company some multiple of your annual recurring revenue. So, for example, they might give the private equity firm $40 million, which is roughly three times your annual subscription revenue. And now the private equity firm can purchase your widget company, fire half of the employees, increase margins, and sell it off in three years. The ARR only became popular in the United States within the last 20 years, and it's completely changed how the entire economy works. Every company now wants recurring revenue in order to allow private equity companies or anyone else to have an easier time acquiring them, which obviously means a big payday for the owners of the company. Now, to be clear, this isn't some nefarious conspiracy to fix the markets or anything like that. The reason ARR loans have become popular is that they tend to make everybody involved much wealthier. It's the same reason why every major restaurant is reheating food from the back of a Cisco truck. If people are willing to pay more money for inferior products. If people are willing to pay increasingly insane subscription fees for the rest of their lives, then major corporations and private equity firms will happily oblige. In our world today, people have been trained to believe there's always a catch. If something costs less, it must be worse. If customer service is good, you'll sacrifice coverage. If coverage is great, you'll pay twice as much. Seems there's always has to be, always has to be some kind of trade off like that. But not with Pure Talk. Consumer Reports just did a massive survey of wireless providers across the country, and PureTalk was the only one to earn five out of five stars and in every category, including coverage, support, value and data. So you're getting better service without paying inflated prices. That's how it should work. Imperit Talk is doing more than offering a better wireless plan. Right now, they're matching donations dollar for dollar until they hit $250,000 for America's Warrior Partnership, an organization that's helping support veterans where it matters Most. Go to PureTalk.com Walls to switch to the only wireless company awarded 5 stars in every category by Consumer Reports. No service contract, no cancellation fee. Just phenomenal US customer service on the 5G network that powers America. Again, it's PureTalk.com Walsh to make the switch to Pure Talk. A wireless company actually lives up to your expectations. For two and a half centuries, we've talked about the ideals this country was founded on. Among them, one of the most important is the idea that every person is endowed by their creator with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Everything else depends on that first right, the right to life. And yet every day, unborn children are denied it. That's why the work of preborn really matters. At Preborn Network clinics, mothers facing unexpected pregnancies are met with compassion, practical support, and a free ultrasound. The ultrasound changes everything. When a mother sees her baby and hears that tiny heartbeat for the first time, her baby is twice as likely to be given the gift of life. These babies aren't statistics. They're future mothers and fathers, teachers, church members, entrepreneurs, first responders, the people who will shape the next generation of this country. Consider helping. Just $28 provides one life saving ultrasound. And in honor of America's 250th birthday, we're asking friends to prayerfully consider a special gift of $250 to multiply their impact and help save even more lives. To donate, dial £250 and say the keyword baby. That's £250, baby. Or give securely at preborn.comwalsh that's preborn.comwalsh Every gift is tax deductible. The only way out of this downward spiral, short of electing President AOC and destroying the entire country, making all these problems much worse, is to reward businesses that sell finished products, not just subscriptions. There's a massive market opportunity here, and already some companies are capitalizing on it. Vinyl records are having a comeback for exactly this reason. Go to the top floor of your local Barnes and Noble and it's like going back in time. They have vinyls all over the place. They're selling record players. You know, Even in the 1990s, that would have been retro. But people are paying a lot of money for vinyls because they're tired of borrowing everything and owning nothing. Look at the popularity of steelbooks as another example. If you're not familiar, various studios are releasing films on blu rays and 4k disks, and they're packaging them in steel cases. And the cost for these steelbooks usually ranges from 30 to 50 bucks. The profit margins are substantial. That's very expensive for one film, obviously. But here's the thing. Spending on Steelbooks has been growing dramatically over the past few years, even as sales of other forms of physical media have declined. Steelbooks routinely sell out within minutes of going online. There are entire online communities dedicated to hunting down the steelbooks, so it's not hard to see what's going on here. People are tired of a status quo where they don't own anything, where everything they license can be deleted from the Internet at a moment's notice. And in response, people are shelling out more money in order to lock down something tangible, something physical they can hold in their hands. Even if it's just a Blu Ray movie or. Or a vinyl record. This is a signal, albeit a small one, that's easy to miss. Now, put simply, it's not possible for people to be happy without owning anything. The more we borrow everything we use in our lives, the more we careen towards the same fate as every other civilization that didn't respect the right of private property. And that fate ultimately is total collapse. That's what the WEF wants. It's what AOC wants. And unless we recognize what's happening and reward the few businesses that still allow us to purchase actual products instead of licenses, we will give the WEF and AOC and every demented politician like her exactly what they want. Once upon a time, there was a country. Not just a country, but a big one. An empire. In that empire, there was an upper middle class family where two boys were raised by their mother, loved books, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Bible. Their father admired the country's leaders, were patriotic and happy. Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized. One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader. He was hanged. The other brother read the same books but decided to lead a movement. First they came from the universities and no one seemed to care. Then they took over the unions and again no one seemed to care. Then they created their own media organizations and took over the cities and again most people just ignored it. Change, after all, was something they could believe in until it was too late. Sound familiar? This is the real history of communism. The Russian Revolution.
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My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop. From the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you, it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com.
Episode: The Subscription Economy Is Killing the American Dream
Host: Matt Walsh (The Daily Wire)
Date: July 13, 2026
In this episode, Matt Walsh delivers a direct critique of the modern “subscription economy,” arguing that the proliferation of subscription-based services across every industry is undermining Americans’ sense of ownership, autonomy, and the traditional “American Dream.” He draws on examples from digital media, automotive, technology, fitness, and everyday household products to illustrate how corporations have shifted from providing outright ownership to perpetual rentership, often under misleading promises. Walsh warns of the cultural, financial, and ultimately existential consequences of this shift and calls for a return to real ownership and consumer empowerment.
“They don't even get a refund. Not an apology. They're simply informed that although they thought they were purchasing this content, it was actually an extended rental and now it's gone.” — Matt Walsh (02:30)
“Even when you purchase something online, you don't actually own it. You're at the mercy of whatever license you're agreeing to, which is 5,000 pages long and which no one will ever read.” — Matt Walsh (04:47)
BMW Heated Seats Controversy:
“He's accusing customers of being stupid because they thought they were paying double. And then he says that, well, even though they're stupid, they're still our customers…” — Matt Walsh (08:45)
Other Automotive Examples:
“Ford wants to charge you a monthly fee in order to correct a security vulnerability they have built into every single one of their vehicles.” — Matt Walsh (15:44)
Ubiquitous Subscription Requirements:
Notable Example: HP Printers and Ink
“They say you can cancel anytime, but they don't tell you that if you cancel, they'll remotely disable the ink in your printer.” — Matt Walsh (19:00)
Hidden Costs and Lack of Control:
“People were comfortable with the products they owned. They were easier and less expensive to fix. Now all that's gone. We have less control than ever before.” — Matt Walsh (21:24)
Data Harvesting:
Corporations' View:
“Every company now wants recurring revenue to allow private equity companies or anyone else to have an easier time acquiring them, which obviously means a big payday for the owners of the company.” — Matt Walsh (29:13)
Return to Tangible Media:
Quote:
“Spending on steelbooks has been growing dramatically over the past few years... People are tired of a status quo where they don't own anything, where everything they license can be deleted from the Internet at a moment's notice.” — Matt Walsh (31:05)
On the Illusion of Ownership:
“Even when you purchase something online, you don't actually own it. You're at the mercy of whatever license you're agreeing to, which is 5,000 pages long and which no one will ever read.” (04:47)
On Corporate Gaslighting:
“BMW buyers feel that they paid double for the feature. Before insisting that isn't true, however, he acknowledged that perception is reality. While heated seats are out, other aspects of the brand's relatively new subscription model are not.” (09:08)
On Modern Life:
“The trade off used to be that you would have less stuff, but the stuff you did have would be yours. And now we have the inverse of that, where we have a ton of stuff, but we don't own any of it.” (24:37)
On the Threat to the American Dream:
“Ownership is one of the most fundamental components of living a fruitful, real human life. I mean, it's the literal American dream. The house with the white picket fence and all that. And the assumption is that you would own the house and the fence.” (23:28)
| Time | Segment | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 00:34–05:00| WEF slogan, Sony PlayStation digital content case | | 05:00–08:00| Fine print in digital purchases (Amazon, etc.) | | 08:00–14:35| Subscription features in cars (BMW, VW, Ford, etc.)| | 14:35–18:59| Subscription tech at home (Peloton, printers, etc.) | | 19:00–22:00| Consequences: cost, control, data | | 22:00–25:30| Corporate perspectives and consumer frustration | | 26:30–30:00| ARR loans, SaaS, financialization of services | | 30:00–31:45| Pushback: vinyl and steelbooks |
Matt Walsh concludes that the subscription economy is anti-human, dangerous for consumers, and sets the stage for unprecedented loss of autonomy. He urges listeners to support companies that still sell actual products, not conditional licenses, as a way to resist the rentership model and reclaim true ownership—warning that otherwise, the American Dream and freedom risk being permanently eroded.
Summary prepared for listeners seeking a comprehensive, content-rich overview of the July 13, 2026 episode of The Matt Walsh Show.