Curious how long have you lived in 4 countries beyond college? No kids, marriage, social life?
I never even thought of buying a house or "build a permanent life" in a country before I was given permanent residency with no condition. And even then, I worked as fast as possible to get citizenship. When you are a guest in a country you don't assume they'll keep you around forever.
Whole point of this thread is that it isn't unreasonable to have kids and family and a house and social life when you've lived somewhere for 10+ years. So any action on part of the government should at least give the space to get things in order or find alternatives. This is a fair and humane expectation.
If someone gets permanent residency in a country I see no problem if they want to buy a house after 6 months, more power to them.
The abnormality is this idiotic 10+ years time that people are allowed to stay on a temporary visa. This is what needs to end. This is what makes people entitled - understandably I would even say. People are foolish, but I still blame the game, not the players.
An example might be someone who is renting your house. If you allowed them to live in your house for 10 years, would you ask them to leave without notice or with just the minimum 1 month notice? Yes they are not entitled to anything more than what was in the contract but would you do that? I wouldn't. Most people I know would work with the tenant and give them more time to figure things out. And if all of this was done with that decency, I am fine with it.