The Hardware Ownership Paradox: When Sovereignty Gets Expensive
In my previous post about self-hosting for everyone I painted a hopeful picture: managed self-hosting where anyone can own their data. I glossed over something that bugs me. Hardware costs money, and the maths works out very differently depending on whether you’re a business or a person. So let me lay out two rules that both sound completely reasonable. Then watch them collide. Rule One: Own Your Hardware This is the whole point of sovereignty. You buy the box, you run the box, nobody can pull your data out from under you. As I argued in Sovereign Infrastructure, I want to understand and control what I run. Renting that from someone else reintroduces exactly the dependency I’m trying to escape. ...