Overconsumption is a spiritual problem
66 comments
·December 16, 2025everdrive
I think the case here is overstated, and the author falls prey to a common problem; the first thing most people do when they conceive of a clever idea is to over-apply that idea.
I think the criticism in this thread is valid, and the essay would have been better if it had been a bit more nuanced, but there is something there; are you critically thinking about what what you have in your life and whether or not it was a good use of your time any money? Money itself is possibility. A couch is just a couch. But despite this being true, that doesn't mean the couch wasn't worth it.
cj
“Over-applied clever idea” is a good description of the essay IMO. I used to write like this in college. For me it felt good to take an idea and take it as far as possible to create logic around why the world is the way it is.
At a certain point I realized that the most complex intellectual explanations for why things are is very often no better than the simplest and least intellectual explanation.
readthenotes1
Of course, if you over apply you end up predicting the future by looking at chicken entrails
elil17
How do you know what your values are? I've spent a lot of time thinking about this after listening to this podcast episode: https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/238
The interviewee gives a good map for figuring out how to figure out your values.
zkmon
I went to IKEA store last weekend, to return something I never needed. Felt happy when I got the money back. But then made the mistake of going into the maze again. The maze led to the checkout counter and I ended up spending all that. Got back home, looked at what I bought, and couldn't find a thing which I don't want to return again.
edgarvaldes
The points in the essay are not as exaggerated or extreme as some comments suggest. I think the central message is simple: we acquire and accumulate things we don't need for psychological or spiritual reasons, and we need to regularly introspect on our attitudes toward spending.
Froztnova
It's always interesting to get a window into this sort of thing because I've never really felt the urge to just buy stuff for the sake of buying it.
Like, I don't live like a monk. I have a nice computer, a tv, my living space is furnished. But the transactional aspect of buying things always keeps me from just "shopping as entertainment" the way some people seem to enjoy doing. I don't like acquiring things more than I dislike spending money. I have to really want something, or need something to the point that doing without it is kinda a non-starter.
n0us
It really doesn't need to be that deep. Or pretentiously moralistic.
hartator
Yeah, they literally just cleaned their room and the immediatly jumped on a conclusions for external “you” moralistic.
moron4hire
Seriously. That opening is textbook depression.
TrackerFF
Well, the good news is that overspending also stimulates the economy. For every person that purchases a sandwich or cup of coffee they don't really need, that's also some other persons salary.
But as others have mentioned, reckless / impulse spending can also be a sign of conditions like depression, BPD, ADHD, and the list goes on...
Epa095
Paying someone to break a window, and then someone else to fix it, will also stimulate the economy. But it's clearly not a rational use of our time here on earth.
taeric
Replace window with house, and you basically described a lot of the market?
There are also interesting efficiencies in there. Fixing a window is not as quick as just replacing it.
yoavm
Not sure I understood your comment. How often do you pay people to break your house / phone / car, just so you can pay someone (else) to fix it?
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jfindper
Don't need to be rational all the time for your whole life. Sometimes you just want an extra sandwich.
Many of my most memorable moments stem from from a bout of irrationality.
tsunamifury
You aren’t really aware of the realities of the modern economy are you.
Games like these are everywhere.
I mean this comment is like the epitome of sweet summer child.
pjerem
And ? How does that changes the second sentence of gp ? "But it's clearly not a rational use of our time here on earth"
blitz_skull
Can you cite an example?
kingofmen
If someone drinks a cup of coffee, there is one less cup of coffee in the world. The money that other people get is just a piece of paper, it is not useful for anything. Wasteful consumption of real resources is not 'stimulus', it is just waste.
pjerem
> For every person that purchases a sandwich or cup of coffee they don't really need
But that's also a toll to the environment.
lazide
Really the problem is that we are alive?
komali2
It's pretty easy to be alive and not harm the environment in the outsized way we do. We have the technology!
lesuorac
That's easy to solve.
Just encourage them to take part in some low-cost digital alternative like Sports Predictions.
SilasX
But that's a false benefit. You don't want to stimulate the economy for the sake of it, you want to stimulate the economy to the extent that it satisfies genuine human wants. It would be better if that other person's salary came from doing so, not from Making Number Go Up.
torginus
Reading the article one thing occured to me that the wasn't mentioned - but certainly relevant to me at least - all this overspending because lack of values applies to your (and my) time.
tolerance
The argument—independent of the author's illustration of it—is a valid one. But her writing does not appear to be an arena where it will be resolved in truth.
The problem is that she presents no direct stance as to what values a person should have in order to resist overconsumption. I suspect that's because this post itself is a sort of product to be consumed and it really doesn’t matter what the reader may buy less of under its influence...as long as it’s not y’know...a Substack subscription.
AnimalMuppet
You might be able to make a case that for this, the specific values don't matter. What matters is having some, and knowing what they are, and keeping them in mind when you make purchasing decisions. (You'd have different purchases, depending on the values, but you'd still buy less than if you aren't guided by some kind of values.)
tolerance
I understand why a person may come to support that idea and I don’t think that it’s that simple and I don’t think that if the underlying issues are at all to be taken seriously that the universal gesture toward ~~values~~ is useful to people with the spiritual defects described in this post.
It’s important that people who have the nerve to present these sort of arguments to color their appeal with some sort of objective stand beyond what’s bound to appeal to the broadest audience/target demographic. Or else the reader might as well go back to whatever Netflix series they’re in the middle of. Unless these sort of posts are meant to be consumed in conjunction with said series...
bluedino
Like many people, I have a bad habit of visiting Slickdeals, and buying things I might never use, because they're a good deal.
A lot of people also have the problem of visiting /r/somehobby and then buying things because other people are buying them.
It's kind of mind-blowing to look at all the stuff you bought this year and didn't end up really using.
1970-01-01
Obvious counter-argument: You're overspending because "stuff" is no longer super-cheap (inflation, tariffs, cost of living) and you're too busy to stick to a budget or find a good deal for "stuff".
I think overspending usually is indeed trying to reduce some other negative feeling without solving the underlying problem that caused it.
I don't think though the same mechanism is at play with the feeling of lust for some person, as seems to be implied. The lust is in our DNA for good reasons. 'Overconsumption' or over indulging into it, is what we should avoid indeed, but that doesn't make lust a vice.
I would promote the feeling of love - in the broad meaning of the word. Love is what we truly desire, that is what can provide as well to our fellow people. We can do that without overspending, simply showing care can go a long way.