Sacramento Sentinel Special Issue: From Citizen to Subject

Ownership is the material form of sovereignty. When ownership disappears, so does agency.

📌 TL;DR

This issue places the bills from our last two editions into a broader context: the replacement of true ownership with conditional access.

What’s at stake is more than housing policy, it's the slow erosion of individual sovereignty over the material world.

We are trading the formation of free citizens for the management of dependent users.

Let the people see the game.

I. The New Housing Regime

Over the course of the last two issues we covered three bills:

AB 736 a proposal to put a 10 billion dollar affordable housing building fund on the ballot for 2026

AB 609 which allows for the bypassing of certain CEQA (environmental) review and carved out the ability for builders to potentially circumvent either city building plans or zoning.

AB 712 which provides strong armed protection to builders and which levies punishments towards cities that reject project proposals that align with state law.

Together, these bills form a new architecture:

🏗️ The money (AB 736)
⚖️ The bypass (AB 609)
🪓 The enforcement (AB 712)

It’s a developer-aligned regime, funded by the public, shielded by state law, and enforced against cities that try to say no.

To understand what is at stake here we need to zero in on what kind of funding AB 736 is interested in securing:

$5 billion → Multifamily Housing Program (low-income rentals)

$1.7 billion → Supportive housing (permanent housing for formerly unhoused)

$1 billion → First-time homebuyer assistance + CalHome

$800 million → Portfolio Reinvestment (rehab of older subsidized housing)

$500 million → Acquisition of market-rate housing to convert to affordable

$400 million → Infill Infrastructure Grants

$350 million → Farmworker Housing

$250 million → Tribal Housing Program

$200 million → Low-Income Weatherization Programming in order to solve the housing crisis

Notice only about 10 percent of the funds, the 1 billion for first time homebuyer assistance + CalHome is dedicated to helping Californians actually purchase housing. The requirements for CalHome also exclude many of the average Californians struggling to purchase homes.

CalHome assistance eligibility is defined as being part of a low income or very low income household. Low income means a household income that is 80% of the area median income and very low income means a household income that is 50% of the area median income. This means that if the area median income is 100,000 a low income is 80,000 and very low income is 50,000 dollars.

The issue with this is that in California the average home cost is 8.4 times greater than the area median income, with some cities and regions with average home costs that are 20 times greater than the area median income. If the median income is $100,000, homes in your area might still cost $840,000 to $2 million.

AB 736 secures money to help some low income Californians to potentially buy homes but it does almost nothing to redress this growing gap between incomes and home prices. The bill does next to nothing for average middle class Californians' pathway to home ownership. CalHome grants are typically only for first time buyers and they usually provide grants from the 40-80,000 dollar range. So if you are making 80,000 a year, and CalHomes provides you 40,000 dollars in assistance but a starter home is still 600,000-850,000 dollars that is less than 10% of the home cost.

II. The Philosophy of Enclosure

This is the inch by inch transition from Citizen owners to dependent subjects, the rise of a new kind of feudalistic serfdom. In 2016 the World Economic Forum published the phrase “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” in relation to the vision of a future “shared economy” model where individuals opt-out of exclusive ownership for greater short-term access to more expensive goods.

So now instead of owning your own home where you have sovereign control over your own property and material possessions instead you may opt into living an apartment complex built out by developers, maybe even “nonprofits,” funded by your own taxes, where you are subject to apartment rules, rent hikes, and inability to repair, modify, nor pour oneself into your home. Now, with the enforcement mechanism of AB 609 and AB 712 life in the future could look like:

You’ll rent from a nonprofit, funded by bonds you approved,

in a project your city couldn’t say no to,

interpreted under rules you didn’t write,

and you’ll be told this is justice.

You are not in control, you do not govern, you do not own, you are not a shaper of your own life, you have no autonomy or agency. You have goods provided to you on loan by your benevolent leader.

Ownership is the material form of sovereignty.

When ownership disappears, so does agency.

The American Revolution was facilitated by landowners who had a stake in their country's future. Banda Singh Bahadur liberated land from zamindars and gave it over to average people. Bahadur essentially enacted the exact opposite logic of communism. Take from the empire and give to individuals.

Ownership is the material form of sovereignty.

When ownership disappears, so does agency.

III. Parallel Sectors: Streaming, Cars, and the End of Ownership

We see this in relation to the entertainment sector notably because of streaming, and with the automotive industry.

Apple regularly deletes or removes films or TV shows from users' purchased libraries. A user may pay to own a film but as soon as Apple’s distributions rights for a certain piece of property expire, so does the piece of media's presence in one’s library. That is not ownership, that is something given on loan with the appearance of ownership. You bought, downloaded it, but it's removed with no warning, refund, and no physical copy to lean on. This is not ownership, it is dependency masked as access, and conditional access is not sovereignty.

Ownership is the material form of sovereignty.

When ownership disappears, so does agency.

The automotive industry likewise is stripping away sovereignty from owners, to the rise of mechanical-computer systems integration which makes it near impossible to work on one’s car at home. Manufacturers are also creating access panels that require special tools (usually only in the possession of dealerships) to open. BMW is also experimenting with subscription models. Their heated seats are only available to “owners” who pay a monthly subscription fee. None of this even acknowledges the reality that many computer heavy cars can be accessed, and controlled remotely by manufacturers. Just like Apple can take your movies away from you, in some vehicles, manufacturers retain the ability to disable features—or the entire car—remotely. That is not ownership, it is conditional access.

IV. Sovereignty, Revolution, and the Way Forward

Now this logic is being applied to home ownership.
Ownership is the material form of sovereignty.

When ownership disappears, so does agency.

Increasingly the State is sending a clear message, we are in charge, we make the rules, you will fall in line, you will comply, you will obey.

This is not the vision the Founding Fathers had for America.

This is not why Guru Gobind Singh taught sparrows to hunt hawks.

Let the people see the game.

Stay Sharp

Stay Sovereign