So many dystopian novel authors predicted this. P K Dick and Gibson among others. Forced to pay for life critical necessities like air and water, as well as fees to enter your apartment or take a shower.

Companies have given up making anything new. It takes too long, requires a large R&D investment, and expensive tooling to manufacture new things. So they just start making up ways to claim ownership over everything they can and the delivery method to get it there. Robber barons and bridge trolls profiteering as middlemen that actually produce nothing. Want a concert ticket? Buy it through a service that bought it from the venue and pay fees on top of that if you can get them at all on release, if not pay again to the same company that lets scalpers resell and they get fees a second time. Want music? Pay for the data service, pay for the music service, pay again for the album if you actually want to keep it, pay for the cloud you store it in.

It‘s only getting worse.