Why I think it's better to live a mobile friendly lifestyle and why I don't want to buy a house
The more understanding I have about how personality forms, about how behaviors emerge, about how consequences are distributed differently in different environments, the more I learn the critical importance of being able to avoid toxic environments in favor of healthy environments.
A toxic environment is an environment where the incentives in the environment reward the kinds of behaviors which you don't agree with. Behaviors in my opinion based on my current understanding of behaviorism, exist on what I call a behavioral spectrum. Every individual is born with a potential to do any of the behaviors on their personal behavioral spectrum. Their genes determine the behavioral spectrum to a large extent but the environment is what narrows down the possible behaviors into the likely behaviors.
The problem of being stuck in a toxic environment
People who buy homes are not really just buying the land, or the building, or the shelter, but they are buying much much more. The home owner is buying everything in the environment around the home including the cultural influences, the laws, their neighbors, and all the behaviors associated with that environment.
Many people buy homes thinking that home ownership by itself is the path to a better life. We can in some ways try to predict the value of a home but we really cannot. We cannot predict how the social environment around the home will evolve over 5 or 10 or 20 years. We cannot predict whether or not the environment will become a dystopian wasteland or a utopia. The home owner is making a bet by buying the home that the environment around their home will remain healthy. There could be storms that damage homes, there could be social unrest, there could be gang violence around the home, drug epidemics, or there could just be a rat infestation which appears.
Because there is so much uncertainty in the environment it means the home owner has to rely on insurance, maintenance, become politically active, and truly put their metaphorical foot in the sand. On the other hand the property owner who owns for example REITs in a stock portfolio doesn't have to defend their home from a toxic environment.
The freedom to leave a bad environment is a very much overlooked freedom
People who have never been in a bad environment might not understand why some people would value mobility so much. An environment which was good 10 years ago can turn bad overnight. Property values might stay high or go down. The point is that the environment a person lives in, is what influences how that person can grow. A person who seeks to always grow into a better person must have a means of leaving any environment which is turning them into a monster. If the ability does not exist or if the person is spending years trying to sell a house so they can move? Well the advantage now goes to the person with the stock portfolio who can move out that same day.
Renting vs owning
When you rent you can choose to live in only the environments which meet your quality standard for the rest of your life. In essence you get to determine what kind of environment you want to be in. When you buy a house you now are at the mercy of whatever environment your neighbors create. They could create a living hell and now you're stuck dealing with that. In a hotel environment if you live in a hotel which is sub-par you can leave even that same day if you like. You can leave the state entirely and move to a better state.
When you rent, you have quality control. When you own you don't. When you rent you can leave a toxic environment a lot easier than when you own. When behaviors of people in the environment you are renting at, are beginning to change in ways you don't want to influence you, then you can leave.