Notions of scarcity: are you hoarding wealth?
Dean Spade, a trans lawyer believes scarcity pushes people to hoard wealth:
‘¦capitalism is always pushing us toward perfection, creating ideas of the right way to be a man or a woman or a mother or a date or whatever that people cannot fulfill. The goal is that we’ll constantly strive and buy things to fill this giant gap of insecurity that is created.
You can never be too rich or too thin (greed) or rich enough or thin enough (insecurity). Capitalism is fundamentally invested in notions of scarcity, encouraging people to feel that we never have enough so that we will act out of greed and hording and focus on accumulation.
Spade is the creator of Enough, a space for conversations about how a commitment to wealth redistribution plays out in our lives. He wants us to challenge capitalism in daily, revolutionary ways.
For me personally, I’ve never had an issue with capitalism (or felt compelled to resist it); but Spade’s thoughts gives me reason to think about how I can strike a healthy balance between financial security and hoarding wealth.
At Queercents, I write about saving for retirement, buying real estate, managing investments, and developing our careers or entrepreneurial pursuits. These are all topics I love, but yet, at what point is it finally enough? I’ve often wondered what form my next blog project might take when I’m finally done with money.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits thinks we should let it all go:
Just remember that holding onto your money doesn’t bring more of it to you. It does just the opposite. Holding onto or hoarding your money (in fear) is evidence enough that you don’t think there is enough.
How have you figured out what is ‘œenough’ when it comes to making and saving money?
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
I think about this a lot. As a naturally frugal person, (maybe I’m naturally cheap and trying to learn to be frugal instead) I have an instinct to save every penny that I don’t need to spend right now. However, I work hard to make sure that I save only for actual goals of things that I want. I include in this goals of things that are not specific, like an emergency fund and repair funds for big things I have that may break.
But I have to be careful because my relatively cheap lifestyle combined with my saver tendency can mean that I’m saving without a goal. I would rather invest in sustaining my community and people who need a hand now, than just save and hoard the wealth. What’s the point of living and dying with a pile of savings? Why should people in my community who need money now be forced to wait?
My favorite piece by Dean Spade on the topic is this one http://makezine.enoughenough.org/greed.html
wtto: Thanks for the link to Spade’s piece on greed. While I don’t agree 100% with what he says. For example:
Yet, he is thought-provoking in so many ways:
It certainly makes me think and ponder how to create that healthy balance between financial security, helping others and hoarding wealth.
Good wake up call Nina. I go through periods where I become obsessed for a while about money. Usually these are productive periods because the increased consciousness results in positive changes. For example I read about the woman who managed to live on $1/day food budget for 30 days. While even I thought that very extreme, the vast chasm between her budget and ours made me rethink and set a tighter budget.
This has been a fun challenge and the reduced budget puts us that much closer to financial independence but it often crosses the line into all consuming focus and that’s not really what we’re about.