The furnished apartments I looked at in Asia were pretty sparsely furnished. You still had to have your own bedding, towels, more kitchen stuff if you cook, not to mention your own clothes, papers, etc.
So yes, you can avoid moving furniture, but you still have “stuff”.
What sjf said. Your non-furniture possessions are easy to move. The difficult part of moving is moving or buying furniture, and it's also totally unnecessary.
It's frustrating for sure. It seems to be part of our hyper consumerist culture. We always must have "our" treasures and moving always seems to involve a lot of buying stuff for that particular space that then doesn't seem to fit in the next one. The while thing makes moving a huge ordeal. To opt-out of the whole thing, I have had good luck finding medium term furnished rentals meant for vacation or Airbnb.
I was in Europe moving from one house to another and I asked if we would take some small thing we bought with us and was told by my friend, "It belongs to the house." That really helped change my thinking on this, that things belong to the spaces they were purchased for, not to us specifically.
It’s not a Europe vs US thing. For example in Germany it’s still somewhat common for an apartment rental to come with no kitchen and barely any fixtures and you have to supply your own. That would be considered a step too far in the US.
The one doesn't follow from the other. The market norm in Hawai'i (part of America last I checked) is that houses are bought and sold with their contents included.
Most of the Asian apartments are furnished, at least it held true in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. There are unfurnished ones of course, but for most properties open for foreigners, they come furnished.
