For much of history, we lived in a world defined by scarcity, the type of scarcity that killed most of our ancestors. Food, clean water, shelter, social stability, were all rare. Because of this, individuals got hard-wired to indulge in abundance when it came our way. You never knew when the next meal was coming so you were incentivized to binge all you could while it was available. The genes that encouraged hoarding and overconsumption tended to be the ones that passed through the evolutionary filter.
But the modern world is different. It is a world of abundance. Scarcity remains in an artificial form, created as a result of legal frameworks and coordination problems. Diamonds are marketed as rare, but De Beers artificially constrains their supply. In many countries, children starve, but globally we waste 30% of the food we produce. Analyze almost any category and you will quickly find that its alleged scarcity is artificial.
Biological systems tend to function optimally when they are in homeostatic equilibrium. Malnutrition creates starvation, overeating creates obesity and chronic disease. And outside of biology, a similar pattern holds. Too little or too much work, money, time, possessions, friends, hobbies – all lead to distinct downsides.
For example, it’s easy to imagine enjoying a five-car collection. You can drive each car 20% of the time and the cost and maintenance remains manageable. Now imagine expanding that collection to 5,000 cars. Assuming you drive each car for one day, it would take you more than 13 years to drive each car. The maintenance for that collection would run in the millions, and you would need to hire and manage a full-time staff to keep everything in working order. That’s 5,000 oil changes, 10,000 windshield wiper replacements and 20,000 tire rotations.
What comes along with ownership is the responsibility to maintain what you own, and that is a direct claim on your time. And sure, you can outsource that work to hired hands, but now you’ve just become a manager of people rather than things. And the more you own, the more people you’ll need to manage to maintain that abundance. And the more you’ll need to worry about those assets depreciating, and the tax implications, and finding the right insurance, and hiring the right lawyers and wealth managers, and auditing them to make sure they’re not embezzling your money, and….
I think the problem is clear, and Chuck Palahniuk said it best: “The things you own end up owning you.” So if you value your time and attention, two things that are actually scarce in our modern world, maybe the material game is the wrong game to play. And maybe if you could do more with less, maybe you should. It will leave you with enough time to think about what pointless indulgence to buy next.