What about the very unlikely event that someone loses access to their private key or gets hacked? Does that mean their house now belongs to someone else? I suppose this speeds up the ability to lose one's home through cryptocurrency scams.

Author here; I agree, and this is something I've been wrestling for years. The lack of centralization means it's impossible to reverse hacks or scenarios you mentioned--I personally think _some_ centralization is crucial, but not sure to what extend (and if that basically just means we should just have private companies like we do today).