Intro. [Recording date: January 7, 2025.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 7th, 2025. I want to thank everyone who voted in the survey of your favorite episodes of 2024. I’ll have the results soon.
And now for today’s guest, author Michael Easter. His Substack is called Two Percent. This is his third appearance on EconTalk. He was last here in October of 2023, talking about excess, moderation, and the scarcity brain. Michael, welcome back to EconTalk.
Michael Easter: Thanks for having me back, Russ.
Russ Roberts: Our topic for today is based on an essay you wrote on your Substack, “Why Minimalism Doesn’t Work.” So, nominally, we’re going to talk about minimalism, but inevitably we’re going to talk about a number of related topics and maybe some unrelated topics.
Let’s start with the definition. What is minimalism?
Michael Easter: I think minimalism is–well, I think it’s a new thing in the grand scheme of time and space, I will say that. But, I think it’s a desire to get rid of as much stuff as you can to create an aesthetic in the world you live in where you have less and you’re really trying to pare down items to those that you think–I’ll use the term from a popular minimalist–spark joy.
Russ Roberts: You open the piece saying, quote:
Confession: I bought something I didn’t need on Black Friday–a truly fantastic wool shirt from Filson for a long thru-hike in the spring. (Narrator: “Michael already owns three wool flannels…”)
That’s the end of the quote. Why did you buy that shirt? What do you think–when you put yourself back: it’s Black Friday; you see the shirt–what were you thinking?
Michael Easter: What was I thinking? That is a great question. So, yes, this was timed to Black Friday because I think during Black Friday, we–obviously, all these levers get pulled by companies to get people to buy. Right? This is, like, the biggest buying day of the year. And so, I’m cued into this. Black Friday, what do you do on Black Friday? You go on the Internet and you start looking for stuff to buy.
Now, I think sometimes people will start with the idea, ‘I’m going to buy gifts for my family members. I’m going to save money.’ So, I do think that there are some good opportunities to save money.
But, what happens when I spend a little more time online, I go, ‘Oh, well, I wonder if Filson is having any sales?’ And, ‘Oh my gosh, this wool shirt, this is $50 off. This is an unbelievable bargain.’ And, ‘Oh, I happen to be doing this thru-hike, and it would be great to have a wool shirt because wool stays warm when it’s wet. I’ll also look kind of cool on the trail. I won’t be in all the super-techy stuff. I’ll look like an old school mountain man. $50 off. Yeah, let’s buy it.’
And so, I think really, kind of the two greatest levers to pull to get someone to buy are scarcity and urgency.
And, even on the site it said, ‘Oh, you want a size Large? Yeah. We only got three of those left, buddy.’ And, what happens? I click buy.
I mean, it’s funny, because I wrote that and the shirt hadn’t even landed on my doorstep yet. It was one of those where, like, you click buy and about 10 minutes later you go, ‘I already have three wool shirts sitting in my closet right now. I do not need that thing.’ I mean, $50 off, great. It was still expensive. You know?
And so, I think that kicked off the idea that: Hey, let’s write about minimalism timed to Black Friday.
Russ Roberts: There’s an environmental component for some people, I think–that the smaller footprint, fewer purchases–meaning less economic activity–so that’s part of the motivation. I assume part of it is a backlash against–a lot of lower prices in the American economy and elsewhere, but especially in America, the opportunity to buy manufactured goods from China; the incredible increase in the size of houses as we’ve gotten wealthier in America, and there’s plenty of room to put stuff. So, what’s a shirt? Yeah. Maybe I’ll need it someday. There’s many, many ways we rationalize these kind of purchases.
The thrill when it’s Black Friday–$50 off–and you’re visualizing yourself–which they would do if they could, by the way. They would show you walking through a gorgeous landscape with people eyeing you and applauding wildly rather than just a model. We understand that appeal. It’s very hard to be aware of it while you’re in that moment, because it’s very powerful.
Michael Easter: It is very powerful.
And I think–what I get into in the piece is that the fundamental questions becomes: why are we buying this thing? So, I do think we live in a time where things are cheap. There’s always deals. You can’t go on Amazon and look up anything without saying, ‘Oh, this is’–whatever, 11% less than it was last week. This is a great time to buy.
But, I think that especially in the context of a world where more and more people are working from home, and we also don’t have to physically go to a store to buy something anymore, you can get bored at work. Maybe you wrote a long email and it was really taxing on your brain, and you go, ‘Okay. I need a little bit of relief.’ And, you go online and: Oh, there’s these bargains. Right? And, I think it makes it a lot easier for people to fill time that would have been filled by some other means or deal with a sensation like boredom in a way that costs money and adds more possessions to a stockpile that people probably already have.
So, when I was reporting[?] my book Scarcity Brain, I came across a stat–and there was a range of stats, so I gave this really big range–that says: The average home now contains 10,000 to 50,000 items. And so, when I read that, I go, ‘Yeah, no way. That’s impossible.’ And then, I pause and I look at my desk. Well, we got a mat for our laptop, we got a laptop, we got a screen attached to the laptop. We got about seven individual cords going to the laptop. Not to mention, I got, like, 10 pens on this little pen mat. Right? And, you start to just look at that little space and go, ‘Oh. Yeah. 10,000 to 50,000 actually seems quite reasonable when you parse them out all individually.’
Russ Roberts: Well, we moved from a suburban American house in Maryland that was probably 3,300 square feet to a much smaller three bedroom apartment in Jerusalem; and, we got a feel for how much stuff we had. Because we knew there wouldn’t be room for it. We didn’t know where we were going to live. We didn’t know how big it would be. We just assumed we’d have room for less. And, we also took it as a chance to reduce the amount of stuff we have.
What’s strange for me is that when I go back to America now, there’s two things that I find jarring–among others. But, one is: I walk into people’s houses; they are filled with stuff that’s everywhere. Nobody has an empty counter. Nobody has a counter with three things on it. They all have a counter with 30 things on it.
The other thing that’s strange is that there’s a mountain–and I’m not kidding–a mountain of packages that arrives every day in a lot of our friends’ houses. They’re lovely people, by the way. I’m not talking about you, if you’re listening, the one that doesn’t–who is nice. But, there are others who have these–they order it from Amazon every day.
And, I realized, ‘Oh, we used to do that all the time.’ And, part of it is you say to yourself, ‘Well, it’s more convenient. I save travel time, actually; and money, because it’s cheap.’ But, the total impact is quite significant.
Michael Easter: Yeah. Absolutely. I think people are definitely buying more things today. And, I do think that the pandemic kicked off more impulse buying.
So, a lot of the stats say that impulse buying spiked. There became a lot higher demand for these items that I don’t think people were quite as interested in, in the past. One of those reasons might be that all of a sudden people had more income because they weren’t out spending.
You know, for example, a case study that I love, for two reasons, is the luxury watch market. So, the luxury watch market during the pandemic had this unbelievable heyday. So, for example, if you could get a Rolex GMT [Greenwich Mean Time] from a dealer–now granted, you couldn’t. But, let’s say you were the one guy that was able to pull the string and get that. That watch was, say, $10,000. You could immediately flip that online for $40,000, and someone would buy it. Second part of that is: Rolex. It tells the time–the exact same as a Timex. So, why am I buying a Rolex? Well, it’s because items–and I think that this is not new at all–items can give people status. And so, you don’t buy a Rolex to know what time it is. You buy a Rolex so the person that you see in the world knows you bought a Rolex, and that says something about you.
Russ Roberts: But of course, during the pandemic–and we’ll talk a little bit about that in a minute–but, there were a lot of things that went up in purchase volume that were not surprising. Bird feeders. People were home a lot more, they wanted to look out the window. They were stuck looking out the window because they couldn’t go anywhere else. Jigsaw puzzles, flour, bread-making equipment. A lot of people started baking bread. And, much of that, by the way, I think was very beautiful.
But, your point is that the pandemic illustrated–this is the craziest thing–the pandemic–hoarding–helped us understand that hoarding and minimalism are–you call it two sides of the same coin. Explain.
Michael Easter: So, hoarding is you’re buying and accumulating all these items and you’re not getting rid of them. Okay? Minimalism is you are buying less and you are getting rid of items.
Now, you have to ask: Okay, well, why would someone do that in the first place? I talked to this researcher whose name is Stephanie Preston, and she’s looked at hoarding as a behavior for her entire career. She’s at the University of Michigan, I believe. She’s great–
Russ Roberts: She is–
Michael Easter: And, she said that both of these acts, the underlying reason why people do these two things–whether it’s hoarding or whether it’s minimalism–is that they give people a sense of control.
So, for a hoarder, your relation to your possessions is: I need to get more and I can’t get rid of things because I might need that. And that stresses you out. Well, what if something comes up in my life and I need that second mixer? What if we have a party and I need to bake a lot of stuff? I definitely need two mixers. I can’t get rid of that.
Minimalists, on the other hand, they find a sense of control in paring down. Because, having too much stuff, it stresses them out: If I can just get the perfect items and have the perfect low level amount of them where I’m using everything specifically–it is there for a very important reason, I’m going to have less. I’m not going to have much around my house–I’ll feel so much better. And, that also gives people a sense of control and less stress.
So, really, these are two sides of the exact same coin in using possessions to find a sense of control, to sort of build an identity around.
But, one final point about minimalism, too, is that although the underlying sort of, the reason for it is we’re going to relate to our possessions in a certain way. Well, your possessions are still possessing you because now you’ve built your identity around having less. We’re still obsessed about our possessions here.
Russ Roberts: That’s a great insight. But, your point, which–or maybe it’s Stephanie Preston’s–it’s so interesting to me, is that the pandemic, which now seems to be about–that was in the previous century, or maybe it was the 19th century? I can’t remember? It was a very long time ago in human years. It was very anxiety-producing. First of all, a lot of people started to realize they were mortal. You could die. They were very anxious about not getting COVID. And, in particular, for me, at least, some of that anxiety was: When is this going to be over? When can I go back to my, quote, “normal life”?
We have some of that here in Israel–quite a bit of it, actually. In fact, being here in the middle of a war, is very COVID-y in the sense that: Well, it’s going to end soon, right? And then it doesn’t. And, you’re jarred by that. And then, you have trouble dealing with the fact that actually you have no idea when it’s going to end.
I think back a lot on what it must have been like to live in London–or Berlin–in World War II where, it’s 1940 in London. You must think, ‘Well, how much longer could this thing last?’ Or the Civil War, which, ‘Oh, it’ll only take about a week or two.’ So, after two years, you have to start to confront the reality that it’s going to go a little longer maybe than we thought.
And, this idea that you cope with that anxiety–I think of it here especially in the early days of the war, is a lead overcoat. You don’t even know you’re wearing it. Just, you’re weighted down.
And, one way to cope with that is: stuff.
And, what’s fascinating about this insight is that there’s two ways to use stuff to reduce uncertainty and stress. One is to get more of it. One is to get less. And, that is not intuitive. It’s, I think, a deep insight.
Michael Easter: Yeah. So, I would say there was two phases of the pandemic in terms of stuff and buying things. The first phase is that it sets in and what do people do? We all go to the grocery store. We just buy anything and everything we can. And, I remember I was living in Vegas, and we go to this grocery store and we have this long list of all this stuff we’re going to need, all this food. Long lists of food we’re actually going to eat. And, we go in there and it is like a war zone, right? And we quickly find we’re not going to be able to get any of this stuff. And, I very distinctly remember–I’m walking down an aisle with a bunch of other people, and there’s a guy and he’s wearing a Tyvek suit and a gas mask and, like, has his eyes covered in safety glasses, and he’s got this cart that is just, like, the cans are literally falling out of it he has so many. And, I saw that and I just went, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to need more food.’ It was just throw everything in. So, first phase is–
Russ Roberts: You’re going to need a bigger cart.
Michael Easter: Yeah. Yeah. So, first phase, I think, is that everyone went and bought a lot of, quote-unquote, “necessary” supplies. Toilet paper brawls break out. Canned food.
And then, things sort of settle. And, what tended to happen is there were two trajectories. On one hand, like I mentioned, that just impulse buying went up. You had a lot of people buying just random items they maybe wouldn’t have before. But, the second group that was interesting is that you also had this massive surge in people who were decluttering and getting rid of things and minimalizing.
So, there was really interesting anecdotes from people who run secondhand stores, from people who run donation centers. They all just said, ‘We’ve never seen this much stuff come our–we don’t know what to do with it all.’ It’s just been this insane surge of stuff. So, you really had these two different reactions.
And Stephanie Preston, who I mentioned, she thinks: Well, yeah–pandemic was a stressful time. You could deal with that stress through distracting yourself on the Internet on shopping sites. And, it feels good to buy. It feels good to click-buy. The search is–oh, it’s so much fun. Looking for that one right item. Right? But then, on the other hand, you had people who got in their house and go, ‘I can find a sense of control here if I can just get everything in its perfect order–if I can pare down, if my shelves are perfect, if I have only what I need.’
Russ Roberts: And, you’re a hunter. Or you’ve been a hunter–I don’t know if you still hunt. But, certainly there’s a dopamine, primitive–I mean, it’s an absurd thing to say, but I think it’s true: Shopping is a lot like hunting. I’m sure there’s been Ph.D. theses written on it. Many.
But, you make another observation, which I think is really interesting, which is: people who hoard–and there’s degrees of hoarding, as you talk about in your paper. It’s a continuous variable. But, hoarding as a general phenomenon is pitiable. People who hoard–people feel sorry for them. There’s clearly something wrong with them. They have huge stacks of things. At its extreme. A modern American house that has 50,000 items, most of those people would say, ‘Oh, no, no. I’m not a hoarder.’ But, they are using purchases to satisfy many times a dopamine shortage that they’re trying to correct or a desire for that control.
Minimalists, on the other hand, are respected, even revered. First, the environmental parts–it’s considered virtuous–but also the idea of some kind of harmony with their stuff because the shelves are lined up neatly and there’s not stuff everywhere. The word ‘clutter’ is really an interesting word. Clutter is definitely a negative word. So, decluttering is virtuous, and clutter is clearly a sign of a disordered person. I don’t really believe that, but that’s a common view.
But, you make the point that minimalism has a downside to it that’s not obvious. The two tails both have their problems.
Michael Easter: Yeah. I think you’re right. Culturally, we look at hoarding as this bad thing. If you’re a hoarder, you’re gross. And, hoarders get portrayed in these sort of reality shows where the host goes into a home and there’s newspapers from 30 years piled up; and it’s just gross. So, that’s what we see when we think of hoarding.
Now, Stephanie Preston, she did make the point that if you look at all of us in the grand scheme of time and space, we’re all hoarders. People didn’t really own that much up until really after the Industrial Revolution. And I think it’s really kicked off since the Internet came into our lives. But, minimalists, on the other hand, if you watch the reality shows around minimalism–oh man, it’s like a religious experience. Everything is clean and perfect, and that gets really propped up as next to godliness almost.
For example, I was on a podcast that was about minimalism. They were talking to me about Scarcity Brain, and even the way it was filmed–I mean, I had this black background and light on my face, and it was just, like, the whole aesthetic. I’m like, ‘Oh man, I look like a cult leader or something. This is great.’ But, I do think one of the other downsides of minimalism is that–and this was especially true after the Magic Art of Tidying Up–was that the name of the book?
Russ Roberts: I don’t know but I know what you’re talking about and I bet a few of our listeners do. First, I want to apologize that we don’t have the production values you’re used to, Michael. I apologize for that. You’ve been spoiled. Go ahead.
Michael Easter: You can do some after-effects, Russ.
Russ Roberts: Maybe.
Michael Easter: It’ll be good.
So, one of the things that people found is once they did start to really minimize, they started throwing stuff out that they two weeks later go, ‘Oh, wait, I actually needed that.’ Like, to a certain extent, we have our tools for a reason.
So, one of the things that I write about in my newsletter–and I had this in the book Scarcity Brain, too–is: how do you frame purchases? Now, my way is: I think of things as gear, not stuff. So, by putting it through that sort of framework–works for me. I can think: ‘Okay, gear is an item that I am using to achieve some higher purpose. It’s going to help me do my job better. It’s going to get me out in the world and give me these experiences that elevate my life as a whole.’ Whereas, stuff is, ‘Here’s this thing I have that I’m not really using for the sake of it. It doesn’t really get used. It felt good as I was searching for it, sure, but once I got it, it was kind of: the thrill is gone. It didn’t add to my life after the fact using it.’
Russ Roberts: But, I derailed you. I apologize about my bad joke about production values.
I think what’s interesting about the revering of minimalism or the religious component of it–I would call it spiritual, maybe is a better word–is that: I’m sure there’s some people who do it for all kinds of reasons that are admirable. But, the psychological reason that Stephanie Preston is talking about and that we’re talking about, of control–it suggests that your urge to be minimalist is a way of covering up an underlying problem. And, if you’re not careful, you will blind yourself to that challenge. And, the real challenge is not accumulation: it’s accepting that life is unpredictable and you’ve got to live with uncertainty.
Michael Easter: Yeah. Yeah. Spot on.
I do think that–I mean, she would argue, and I think this is true–that life is complicated. It’s really complex. It comes with a lot of tough feelings. And, having to ask these bigger underlying questions is tough.
And, people find ways to deal with that through a variety of ways. Some people buy a bunch of stuff. I live in Las Vegas: some people gamble, some people drink. But, some people, they find the control and a little bit of certainty in that uncertainty by minimizing–by finding the perfect number of items and getting everything in their house orderly.
And this was actually–as I was reporting this, it was really interesting for me because I would say that, in terms of a spectrum, my wife and I are on different sides. I’m a little more likely to have stuff out around the house; and stuff will be out, a little more disorganized. And, my wife keeps our home like a museum. If I leave something out, it’s, like, ‘Why are you leaving this thing out? What are you doing?’ And, my reaction is, ‘What do you care? It’s just sitting there. It’s not dirty, you know.’ But, for her, she goes, ‘No, I get stressed out when there is stuff all over the house. It just stresses me out.’
And so, when I spoke to Stephanie Preston, it was this–like, a little bit of light bulb went off. Like, ‘Oh. Okay. I see. I feel like I might need something at some point, so let’s keep it out. I have all these different reasons. But, for my wife, that’s like a panic attack: We don’t want all this crap all over the house.’ And so, it helped me understand some of these underlying reasons we behave the way we do with possessions. [More to come, 25:23]