The way I would put the Crocs thing is that they are not versatile. Maybe you could live a whole life with a pair of Crocs and a pair of well made leather shoes

The way I would put the Crocs thing is that they are not versatile. Maybe you could live a whole life with a pair of Crocs and a pair of well made leather shoes. But in that situation a minimalism extremist might ask: what are the Crocs for? You can wear the leather shoes around the house but you can't wear the Crocs to a wedding. But I think your point is generally true, though I'm not convinced it is very responsive to this specific article. I didn't get much preachiness from this article, but maybe it was there, or maybe you are familiar with this person's other writing, I dunno. My take is that "minimalism" is indeed often a status game as you say, but that it also has good insights for the rest of us who aren't interested in those games, but do feel this sense of having too much junk cluttering up our lives. I'm far from a "true" minimalist, but reading stuff like this over the years has totally impacted my thinking. When thinking about buying things now, I do think about whether I could spend a little more for something I'll be able to use a lot more. Or even ignoring price differences either way, I just evaluate things from this perspective of durability. And I think that's good.