Economic minimalism

This is proposed as a suite of methods for doing-more-with-less.
Economic minimalism can serve numerous goals, including
"treading lightly" (conservation of natural resources)
and independence from financiers, an important consideration
for projects that require independence-in-general.
Economic minimalism is served by norm set's that
minimize outlay and periodic costs with high priority.
Economic minimalism also serves the ideal of inclusivity.
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Why economic minimalism is needful:
economic insecurity
Finitude of resources
opportunity cost
Some strategies for economic minimalism:
cheap housing
Mass transit
minimal packaging
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An interesting case study in economic minimalism
is found in Henry David Thoreau's Walden,
specifically the first chapter, appropriately
titled Economy.
The book Walden describes a one-person experiment in
economic minimalism, which included some financial record keeping.
He debunked certain (apparently) widely held beliefs of the time (c. 1849),
such as the belief that meatless diet was insufficient to
humyn nutritional needs.
It is hoped that the included quotations from Thoreau's work
fall within fair use. If it helps, try to think of this page as a book review.
Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles,
the most helpless and
diseased, which in others are luxuries merely,
and in others still are entirely unknown.
We would like, of course, seeks to shed some empirical light
on the (often false) dichotomy
between luxuries and necessities.
It would be some advantage to live a primitive and
frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only
to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have
been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of
the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the
stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest
groceries.
This really hits the nail
on the head concerning what economic minimalism is all about!
The efficient shopping list has been proposed as a sort of informational "sieve"
for identifying the "grossest of groceries."
(I love that expression.)
It's refreshing to know that the cause of transparency is nothing new.
Unfortunately, this wisdom seems to be lost on most consumers.
Thanks to loyalty cards, the merchants are looking over the day-books
(or their informational equivalent) of the millions.
The common people have become just as passive in their role
as economic producers as they have as consumers.
Examine the following (emphasis mine)...
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at
the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "do you wish to
buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply.
"What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to
starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well
off,--that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic,
wealth and standing followed,--he had said to himself: I will go into
business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do.
Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his
part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not
discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's
while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to
make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too
had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made
it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case,
did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying
how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied
rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
I speak only for myself, but this, in a nutshell, is the end which
justifies (for me) the means that is economic minimalism, and the
creation of public domain data mining projects. Minimal consumption begets the luxury
of minimal production. In the maxhi schema, minimization and
maximization can apply to qualitative, as well as quantitative aspects
of both productive and consumptive pursuits.
This is why jobs (see sample job normspec),
and not just consumer goods, are presented as examples in the sample normset.
Today's job-seeker is selling so much more than the willingness to produce...
also for sale is willingness to waive rights,
willingness to express conformity,
willingness to defer values to the bottom line...
The notion I describe as a sample housing normspec is also elegantly expressed
by Thoreau (again, emphasis mine):
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it
behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he
find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an
almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first
how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot
Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the
snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would
be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to
get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was
a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for
unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box
by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers
locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man
who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having
bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it
when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have
freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the
worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as
late as you pleased, and whenever you got up, go abroad without any
landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed
to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would
not have frozen to death in a box such as this.
Category:Economic wellbeing