The original poster's "elites" in this case are bribing for macroeconomic policy that encourages subscriptions. Buying your Whatever on credit didn't make sense until they started punishing us for saving money to buy the Whatever. Consumers or retailers don't just want to replace sales with rentals - they're responding to an incentive.
You do have something to lose. Your car, your home, your supper. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. This is bad because we're more vulnerable than if we had savings. This is so it will be harder for us to successfully strike.

This is how I feel whenever someone says "we ought to have a UBI... below the poverty level." The entire world has been stolen from us and we deserve 100% of that surplus back.
Money has diminishing marginal utility, and we live in a profoundly unequal economy. That means the overwhelming majority of our resources are being wasted. With today's technology we should be living large.