There’s a phrase going around that you should “buy experiences, not things.” People, it’s claimed, think that having a lot of stuff is what�

Buy Things, Not Experiences — harold lee

submited by

Style Pass

2022-01-15 04:00:04

There’s a phrase going around that you should “buy experiences, not things.” People, it’s claimed, think that having a lot of stuff is what’s going to make them happy. But they’re mistaken. A Lamborghini may be fun to drive for the first days or weeks, but pretty soon it fades into the background of your life. The drive to accumulate stuff is an evolutionary relic that no longer fits our modern situation. Better to embrace minimalism and focus on immaterial things like experiences, whose memories you can treasure forever.

While I appreciate the Stoic-style appraisal of what really brings happiness, economically, this analysis seems precisely backward. It amounts to saying that in an age of industrialization and globalism, when material goods are cheaper than ever, we should avoid partaking of this abundance. Instead, we should consume services afflicted by Baumol’s cost disease, taking long vacations and getting expensive haircuts which are just as hard to produce as ever.

Put that way, the focus on minimalism sounds like a new form of conspicuous consumption. Now that even the poor can afford material goods, let’s denigrate goods while highlighting the remaining luxuries that only the affluent can enjoy and show off to their friends.