on materialism

i think i find materialism somewhat distasteful. primarily within myself, but also with others. i want to think a little bit about why.

most of it is the effective altruist still whispering away. there is a great deal amount of suffering in the world, and i think wasting the money on positional goods, ones which are frivolous and simply signal that they have the resources. the cost of your luxury sedan is a family's life. i know down this path lays ruin, but i think it is directionally correct. i want to be the kind of person who has some well-calibrated, well-scoped sense of the cost of my decisions. and that cost is someone else's life.

i feel sharply the opportunity cost. i am definitely not a frugal person. i will spend liberally on new experiences, on travel, on saving time, on my friends. as malaika says, money spent on feeding friends isn't money spent at all. money spent on friends, to make their lives easier, to share experiences together, to show them something new. i will not save perhaps the maximal amount i could have, nor seek the best deals. but i also feel like preferences perhaps are malleable, and that one can achieve many of the joys.

i feel like luxury-type goods/services (the watches, the flowers) they are a tool of those who play social games that i don't think are that important to win, or can be won for, honestly, much cheaper / much less opportunity cost. thrifting, i hear, is in-fashion. it also feels like a shortcut.

i really like the premium-luxury distinction -- i will buy goods insofar that the marginal dollar buys qualitatively better quality (very good noise-cancelling headphones) but not positional worth.

some of it is insecurity. i have my entire life ahead of me, which i'd like to support myself, a family, and i currently won't, at the existing trajectory, with the pace of automation, with the time we have left. i have a number, in the back of my head, which i need to hit, in the next 3 years, of savings that i'll need to have, in order for things to work out.

some part of it is the asian-child in me. my attitude to money is much much different from my parents. i am incredibly lucky to have grown up extremely comfortable. i remember, still, always pushing my family in the direction to spend more efficiently -- to spend less time on the small purchasing decisions, and to spend much more time negotiating the big ones. but their lessons, or constant reminders, over time have endured.

i value a little bit of self-sacrifice. i value self-control, and restraint, and mastery of one's destiny. i value the object-level, not social reality. the aesthetic of the only way to achieve happiness is through material objects considered within a social context, not just for the value of those things themselves, seems weak.

i know that it is an insatiable desire. many a materialistic hundred-millionaire still end up poor. you've got silver, then gold, then much above that. once you get on the treadmill, it is hard to get off, hard to ever be satisfied. the only way to win is not to play.

i'm not writing this to say that i endorse feeling this way, only that i do. my guess is some of these reasons are pure, and some are contingent. i would be sad, though, if i noticed much more materialism in me than before.