"Poor people don’t have clutter because they’re too dumb to see the virtue of living simply; they have it to reduce risk."
Close but not quite. In my case at least it's true that when I was poor I accumulated stuff largely out of fear of scarcity, but the various "perfectly good" bits of junk I accumulated didn't actually reduce my risk in any way. If you replaced "to reduce risk" with "because they unconsciously and mistakenly believe it will reduce risk" you'd be close to the truth.
And while it would be harsh to call people still living in the grip of that illusion "dumb" on account of it, it is in fact an illusion.
Learning how to predict what stuff will and will not reduce risk is a learned skill. One should not be too hard on oneself while learning it. (The laptop hinges sitting in a box under my bed right now--perfectly good laptop hinges!--are probably going to be one of those learning experiences.)
The point of both pg's and NYT's stuff article is that this prediction is a learned skill. Our instincts suck.
Whereas this article's point is that the opportunity cost of hanging on to stuff is different for rich and poor.
True. But the rich and poor are united in one thing: their stuff instincts suck.
Especially since things like Amazon and Ebay have changed the relationship to stuff. With no real effort, I have sold 57 things on Amazon since 1/1/2012. The fact that I can readily convert almost anything I own to cash, usually with only 15 minutes of actual work (listing and shipping), changes the game.
The cost of each market transaction used to be the big drag. 50% commission plus the work of finding an agent, transporting the stuff to your agent, and receiving payment from the agent when it finally sold. And then if you needed to repurchase that same item down the road, the work of finding and transporting the repurchased stuff.
Amazon and Ebay have reduced that whole process (cost of sale transaction + (cost of repurchase transaction * probability of repurchase)) to what, 25% of the price of any individual item? Depending on how much it costs to ship.
Sold a 2GB stick of DDR2 RAM today.
Received: $16.49
Amazon fee: 2.31
Shipping: 1.76
Cost of transaction: 4.07
Cost of transaction as percentage of market value of stuff: 24.7%
>I have to think that's within almost everyone's budget, amortized over a long timeframe and with a payoff of much less clutter.
Regardless of your level of wealth some things are just not easy or quick to acquire [1]. I have saved myself some money, but more importantly, weeks' worth of waiting time (or at best days if I paid extra for speedy delivery) while the components I want ship from abroad, by keeping a two large drawers full of weird hardware. I'd like to get rid of most of it but it's hard to predict not just which parts are I'm going to need in the future but also which I will have trouble getting at all.
[1] If you deal with computers and electronics it can be things like unique power supplies, PS/2-to-AT keyboard adapters (I had to use one at work just last year to do some data archaeology) and USB-to-serial adapters, spare parts for that one ageing ThinkPad you consider to have the best keyboard of any laptop ever, quality PC trackballs, etc.
Yeah, I keep hard to replace things lying around too. I haven't gone full blown minimalist, just more minimal than I used to be, and more minimal than average.
If it goes too far I feel it can be more trouble than it's worth, though there might be some benefits I'm ignoring.
I don't think the author meant to call poor people "dumb", although he could have phrased the sentence better: "Poor people have clutter not because they're too dumb to ...."
I think that the examples the author highlights are not examples of that illusion. Instead, I think they are straightforward examples of how someone without the means to afford more expensive luxuries (such as a laptop with a working battery, or the wealth to pay retail prices for car parts) can end-up with more "stuff" to reduce risks (their laptop running of our juice while they are on the road, or not being able to use their car due to a lack of parts).
Close but not quite. In my case at least it's true that when I was poor I accumulated stuff largely out of fear of scarcity, but the various "perfectly good" bits of junk I accumulated didn't actually reduce my risk in any way. If you replaced "to reduce risk" with "because they unconsciously and mistakenly believe it will reduce risk" you'd be close to the truth.
And while it would be harsh to call people still living in the grip of that illusion "dumb" on account of it, it is in fact an illusion.