I realize it's a joke but actually one of issues with aggressive minimalism is that it's actually very nessisary to be decently wealthy to pull off. If you can not afford to treat tools and materials as effectively single use items that are frequently expunged from your spaces then it can actually be fairly wasteful and expensive. Extensive lending resources like tool libraries in cities being available makes it more tenable but otherwise yeah... Minimalism is kind of for the rich.

[–] nebula42 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Why would you do that though? If minimalism is about having to much excess, wouldn't you have tools built to last?

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That requires you to be able to afford higher quality tools that are built to last. If you can't afford the higher upfront cost, you'll end up spending more over time, and it creates a vicious cycle.

It's like the organic food trend - it costs a lot more to eat healthy.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

[–] GFGJewbacca@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

Ever since I read through the Discworld series, I always think of this when I see comments like the one above. GNU, Terry Pratchett.

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Cost and quality are very detached things in this day and age.

Expensive can be far worse build quality than cheap.

And eating healthy is a perfect example of this, its cheaper to cook your own food and use lots of veggies, that’s healthy. You dont need the latest and greatest ”superfood” to be healthy.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 months ago

I'm not talking about "superfoods" or whatever, I'm talking about being able to buy something more expensive than a $5 meal from McDonalds for dinner.

You can save money by cooking yourself, but that requires you to have access to that stuff in the first place. Many people in the US live in "food deserts" and only have access to whatever they can get on their bimonthly trip to the supermarket on the edge of town. And with stores getting rid of generic versions of foods, prices are increasing dramatically on everyday basics. You can save money and get fresh vegetables by starting a garden, but that expects you to be able to afford to start one, whether you're talking about land or time or tools, even if that garden is just a pot in the window.

And price and quality have always been sort of detached from one another, that's nothing new, but we live in the age of planned obsolescence, and the price doesn't matter anyways if anything other than the cheapest is unaffordable to you.

[–] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

You're thinking of the more nebulous "decluttered lifestyle". Minimalism is an aesthetic design choice. Think of those houses where like there's no shelves, no storage tucked out of the way.

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