Minimalism and Poverty

Once upon a time, the police were called to deal with a jumper on a bridge who was clearly contemplating suicide. One of the cops went out on the bridge to ask the man his story.

"I have it all," the suicidal man said. "I have a really large home in a gated community. I drive a Mercedes. My wife wears jewelry and furs. I have a Rolex on my wrist here. My kids go to the finest schools. All my neighbors think I am a successful person."

"So, what's the problem?" the cop asks.

"I only make $37,000 a year," the man says.

"You should go ahead and jump," the cop says.

This story is actually a joke my old man told me many years ago. I always remember the story because it taught me something about wealth. Wealth is not having nice things. If you can't afford those nice things, having them does not make your life better but worse. But I realize that not all people think like I do.

Minimalism is not praised as thrift and modesty but derided as voluntary poverty. Nevermind that the wealth the minimalist accumulates as a consequence of thrift sits in accounts and investments. Forget the few but elegant things the minimalist owns. Minimalism is seen as some sort of sickness by a mass consumer culture that believes that all income should be spent and supplemented by credit cards. Naturally, merchants and banks are all too happy to comply and abet these materialist impulses. This massive consumption becomes "wealth." It truly boggles the mind.

True wealth comes from productivity and thrift. It always has and always will. When production exceeds consumption, wealth accumulates. When consumption exceeds production, the result is poverty. Borrowing merely creates a false sense of wealth. This accumulation of debt is not sustainable. On a national level, it results in diminished standards of living and debt. On a personal level, it results in personal ruin and the desperation that drives a man to consider jumping from a bridge.

I can only speak for myself, but there is nothing I want to do at the present time that a lack of funds keeps me from doing. Now, if I was keenly interested in yachting or golf, that would not be the case. But my leisure interests are almost purely without material needs beyond a computer and a good pair of shoes. My limiting factors these days are time and energy. Money stopped being an issue for me when I became a minimalist. Time and energy wouldn't be issues either, but I'm not a very good minimalist. I'm good at not buying shit but not so good at saying no to Facebook.

The ironic thing I have discovered about large consumers and poor people is how much stuff they own. Both have an insatiable need to hoard stuff. I think everyone of my readers is familiar with at least one destitute person living in squalor. That person is noted for having tons of trash, detritus, and clutter. Even homeless people are identified with shopping carts filled with stuff they have collected. The fact that the shopping cart is both a symbol of wealth and poverty is not lost on me.



When you accumulate possessions, it gives you an easy way to quantify your life. Am I living the good life? Just count my stuff. Look at the size of my home. Look at all the cars I own. Check out the rack on my trophy wife. But this is stupid. We don't say someone is a great artist simply because they painted a lot of pictures. Similarly, a quantified life is not the same as a quality life.

The reason the minimalist lifestyle seems so impoverished is because there is not much to count. Because we can't see it, we assume there is nothing there. It must be an empty life. One look at my apartment would tell you that my life is stark and boring. Yet, the people that read my blog would draw a very different conclusion. My life is very full and rich. When I am with my non-minimalist friends, I always hear the same refrain. "I am bored." For me, I only have the memory of boredom.

This is the irony of minimalism. This is the "less is more" principle in practice. I like reading about Leo Babauta and his minimalist lifestyle. You hear about all of these people who wish they did this and that and had their shit together. Leo actually does all that stuff. His life looks pretty rich to me. Then there is Colin Wright who uses minimalism to travel the world and see places the rest of us will never visit.

A rich life will look different for each person, but it certainly can't be quantified in purely material terms. Material things are merely tools and aids to a truly rich life. Unfortunately, material things can also be anchors and barriers to the sort of lives we want to live. This usually happens when people go into debt to buy things they don't need. Then, they spend their time trying to tell people that the debt slavery is worth it. This usually takes the form of silly tropes like "it takes money to make money" and "you can't take it with you."

If spending that dough really made your life richer, I would envy those people. For some odd reason, I don't. It is the reason why we don't go to concerts to see the shiny instruments but to hear what the musicians have to play. The people I envy actually do something with their lives instead of just being the buyers of stuff.

If minimalists really did practice a version of voluntary poverty, they should have miserable lives to show for it. I don't know of any that do. The only negative I have noted among minimalist bloggers is that they run out of stuff to blog about. Otherwise, they all report how much better their lives are as a consequence of decluttering and simplifying.

Minimalism is also almost always a reaction to the excesses that came before it. Poor people don't become minimalists. It is usually people who either earned a lot or spent a lot or both. They got tired of the excess for whatever reasons they had. Maybe they didn't have the money. Maybe they didn't have the time. Maybe they were just dissatisfied. But for every minimalist I know, it was a conscious and deliberate choice. Minimalism is not like the court mandated attendance at AA meetings that drunk drivers get. There is no compulsion with minimalism. In fact, the compulsion from society is to not be minimalist.

Finally, I must add that minimalists actually love their stuff more than people realize. Most minimalists I know adore things like their iMac or their Goruck backpack or a Barcelona chair. For me, my favorite things are my Carhartt jacket, my Timex watch, my Georgia Giant workboots, my Gerber multitool, and my Glock. The two things I look for in a product are quality and durability. Fashion is nonexistent on my list.

I practice what I preach, and I consider my life to be very full even if I don't live in a McMansion, own a large screen plasma TV, or drive a new SUV. That is also one of the ironies of the consumerist lifestyle. No matter how much shit you have, it is never enough. You always feel deprived. I am usually so satisfied with what I have that I keep and use the things I own to the point where they become absolutely shabby from constant use. Throwing them away feels like I am killing off old friends. I had a Key-Bak for five years before it finally broke, and I thought I would cry when it happened. I was very satisfied with the product, and I went to the hardware store and bought the last two they had. I'm set for the decade now as I have the replacement already purchased and ready for service. I just don't see a rich guy finding the same level of satisfaction from his dated golf clubs.

Minimalism is not voluntary poverty. It is simply learning what is truly valuable and what is not. When someone says it is deliberate poverty, I categorically reject it. Minimalism is deliberate living. It is making the best choices with finite resources. And you aren't poor if you have money in the bank. You are poor if you don't have money in the bank and bills in the mail. Your neighbors may not see your balance sheet or those bills. But they will be surprised to find out that you jumped off a bridge or merely lost your McMansion in foreclosure. Ultimately, all of it revolves around the impressions others have about us. Minimalists don't care and sleep well for it. Good luck sleeping with the fishes. They will be impressed with that Rolex.

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