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> If you are trying to buy a book to bring you the joy you feel when buying a book, and you get that joy, then it isn't money wasted. It's still wasted. That p
by chmod775 5y ago
> If you are trying to buy a book to bring you the joy you feel when buying a book, and you get that joy, then it isn't money wasted.
It's still wasted. That person would just be an egocentric idiot. Even if they are a happy idiot.
A capitalist society cannot work properly if the experience of buying is valued at the cost of whatever is bought.
Neither can this world or society sustain widespread wastefulness. It hurts everyone (else).
Wasting money on things that are unused causes labor and resources to be diverted from more worthy endeavors. More directly it causes the price of those goods to increase, or even become unavailable.
- vasco 5y agoDefining waste is almost impossible when you see things in these terms. Is culture a waste? Are things not needed to survive waste? Are activities only valid if they generate enough new knowledge or happiness - who judges that? Ultimately you need to trust that if someone spends, there's utility to the spend, otherwise they wouldn't have - even if the act of spending is the benefit itself. It's not for 3rd parties to judge the usefulness of the spend. To illustrate this, think about the typical teenager who's mom says wastes all their time on "insert hobby mom doesn't like" and extrapolate that to the world's consumption habits. Everyone thinks others are wasteful.