COLUMN: Property — To what end?

Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can’t we seem to grasp this simple teaching? Can’t we understand that with property we destroy our soul? Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday. Look around you-there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn’t make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you’ll hear.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

As persons living in the 21st century, we reside in an extremely materialistic world. Consumerism has reached unparalleled levels. As a society, we love to buy things. In an economic sense, this is great as it bolsters the economy and continues to push innovation, but for individuals this focus on materialism and property can lead to both a self-imposed freedom restriction and a misunderstanding of what is important in life.

Before this issue can be discussed further, it must be established as to why we buy things. We buy things because they fulfill an end, or in other words, provide some sort of utility for us. We have a necessity to eat in order to survive and we purchase food to fulfill that end. Some more abstract things can be purchased as an end in themselves, such as a vacation. Material purchases, however, are not ends in themselves, they must fulfill an end. The value in buying a cheese shredder comes from the fact that someone can use it to shred cheese, there is no intrinsic value to owning a cheese shredder unless one can use it. When it is accepted that property’s role is to fulfill needs, it follows that there is no actual additional value created from owning a surplus of goods that goes over one’s needs. If one owns a jacket that satisfies all that one needs, there is no reason to purchase an additional one. Yet, how many of us own multiple jackets that we never use?

For the most part, all of us in the first world own far more than we could ever need. It leads to a huge misallocation of resources in lives of individuals. We need to aim to eliminate superfluous property. I’m not saying that we should all ditch our smartphones for barebone flip phones. I’m merely saying that we should own things with a clear end in mind. As for the example with phones, society has evolved in a way that necessitates smartphone ownership and that developed unforeseen externalities in social interactions. For example, in one of my articles, the Economics of Dating, I discussed about how iPhones have essentially become a “peacocks” tail or a reproductive viability signal for purposes of sexual selection. There are clear practical and demonstrable reasons as to why one might buy an iPhone over a cheaper model. The point is, property should only be purchased to fulfill an end, and that end should be explicit, not a second-hand justification for the purchase.

I have an example from my own life that perfectly illustrates this flawed mentality of property accumulation for no reason. I really enjoy reading and I like to own books. Whenever I would buy a new book, I liked to buy the hard copy so I could add it to my “collection.” With time, this resulted in the building up of a substantial book collection, but it was genuinely to no end. It was just another commitment that tied me down to one place, just another thing to worry about. The value from a book comes from the knowledge contained within it, not from the physical books themselves. Electronic books fulfill the exact same end, they can be transported anywhere effortlessly on a mobile device or a kindle, and they can be easily accessed to reference when studying. The logic is clear, yet nevertheless, individuals will continue to go around saying something along the lines of “there’s just something about a physical book” and continue to shackle themselves with unnecessary and burdensome possessions.

There’s also a strong moral argument to be made against owning superfluous possessions. Peter Singer, one of the most famous modern moral philosophers wrote a work called Famine, Affluence, And Morality where he talks about moral obligation. He says that we often view morality in the sense that there are supererogatory and obligatory moral actions. Supererogatory moral actions are actions that would be good and nice to do, but aren’t necessary a moral obligation, you’re not bound to do them. He argues that such superfluous actions do not exist, because the mere fact that we are capable of doing good creates an implicit moral obligation to actualize that good. Peter Singer argues that we should use money on ourselves up to an economic marginal utility of net zero and donate any surplus to those who need it more. Essentially he means that we should donate every dollar up until the point where a dollar donated to someone else would do more harm to you and the net effect would be negative. When we have surplus money, we shouldn’t view merely as the means to purchase more possessions, we should view it as liquid opportunity and figure out how to distribute that opportunity equitably in accordance with our individual moral beliefs. Even if one doesn’t hold with Peter Singer’s conclusion, it is readily apparent that after one’s basic needs are met, in pure terms of marginal utility, the money can be used more effectively than buying more things.

It must be admitted at a young age that all of our property will die with us. The ultimate aim of our life should not be possessions, it should be developing ourselves through experience, growth, and learning; it should be deepening relationships with our loved ones and the world around us. Even if one is an Epicurean, the vivacity of life is best experienced through unbridled freedom to pursue experiences.

Leo Tolstoy, the famed Russian author of War & Peace, wrote a short story similar to this called How Much Land Does a Man Need? which I discussed in a previous article, What do you want to live for?. When summarizing the story I wrote that “the main character is guaranteed as much land as he can walk around in a day. He eventually exhausted himself to death from running, and in the end the only amount of land he needed was a six foot grave, which conveniently answers the question the title presents.” Most of us live in ignorance of our mortality, and this ignorance can cause us to live in a way that we ought not to live, and being property focused is a huge part of that.

I would invite all who read this to ask themselves: what do you really need in your life to be happy? Have you lived superfluously? Let us remove the chains of materialism which bind us and embrace lives focused on meaning, love, and humanity — not property.

Kristian Fors is a student at Utah State University majoring in Economics and Philosophy and is an opinion columnist for the Utah Statesman. He can be reached at krfors@gmail.com.