Check out the video posted on Get Rich Slowly:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/03/04/possessed-people-who-are-ruled-by-stuff/
Clearly, this type of hoarding is pathological.

having kids: it’s all one great big pyramid scheme to prop up our economy and government programs like social security (only half joking) 🙂

Jacob,

I can’t help but think you might be missing some things here. First, there is a simple principle that spending keeps up with income. People “hoard” because they have money and need something to do with it. So, they buy stuff. Sure, they could give it away to charity (see Singer Solution to World Poverty), but most people really don’t care all that much about others.

Second, I have to take issue with your arrogant use of “mature” to describe civilizations that have fewer children. Since modern Western culture is clearly far, far younger than many traditional cultures that encourage large families, I feel safe assuming you mean mature as a value judgement. Have you ever heard of “chronological snobery”?

Could it be that the move toward fewer children in many cultures is a product of the selfish consumerism that you decry? If people lived frugally, they could afford larger families. But, as you pointed out, children cost money and are no longer needed. The principle of opportunity cost tells us people spend money on what they value. Obviously, many people value their blender more than children. This seems to be a good reason why people not only have fewer children, but they choose to buy new blenders rather than save the lives of children (again, see Singer Solution). How mature.

You also seem to miss the role of government is the decline of fertility. Look at a map of global fertility rates and you can see a clear correlation between government management of the economy and fertility. Communist and former communist countries are an extreme example, with low fertility, and America is more toward the middle. America is wealthy enough that people can afford heavy taxation and two or three kids. In more socialized countries, people don’t have the luxury. They have little money and high taxes. So, perhaps your mature countries are simply filled with people who cannot afford their taxes and families, while less socialized countries allow their people to choose whether to save more in a 401k, or invest in children. This is also why Europeans live in smaller homes and drive smaller cars. It’s not because they are so much greener; it’s because they lack the green.

And what about the evidence that hundreds of years ago, wealthy people had fewer children? It wasn’t because they were more mature, but wealth brings luxuries, such as birth control and the ability to be entertained by the theatre rather than the free at-home option. More babies are born in fall than in other seasons, and a common explanation is that the cold kept people indoors 9 months earlier.

And I’ll limit myself to one more point. You wrote, “There is clearly an overabundance of people now which is why more people are seen as a liability.” Clearly? Can you identify the carrying capacity of Earth for humans? Life expectancy is longer than ever before. There is more food than ever before. I can’t help but wonder, is that the result of too many people? Sure, the lifestyles of a minority of humans are having a negative affect, but it seems like pure nonsense to say there are clearly too many people. Maybe you just see too much of the wrong kind of people.

@Bruce,

1) Then the question is, why do people have money? They have money because they work hard to produce stuff. However, since stuff is so easy to produce these days, why do people work so hard? I say because they are not used to being easily able to satisfy their needs – the rest is translated into wants because people can no longer identify their needs (I *NEED* HVAC).

2) I mean mature as in complex/advanced. Not as a value/personality development judgment. Europe’s social security is more complex(mature/developed) system and it can fully take care of their elders compared to the US system where SS was never meant to be fully supportive of everybody and people still have to set up their own retirement plans to avoid eating cat food. The European SS is about 60 years older which might be one of the reasons.

3) I think that is what I’m saying with a few modifications. A more complex society requires more education, in particular of the women, which leads to delay of child birth which leads to fewer children. Higher income also leads to needing fewer children to support old age (maybe the blender is a metaphor – if you can buy your own blender when your 75, you don’t need children to do it for you). There is typically a delay of a couple of generations between the two stages in which people continue to have many children about two generations after they don’t need to anymore. Of course there are religious conservatives who see many children as a status symbol and who can afford it. This is not the majority drive of fewer children though.

4) This paragraph does not make so much sense to me. You say there’s a middle layer where people can’t afford children. Only the very poor and the very rich can afford children? In socialized countries most of the cost of children is paid for by the state: free day care, free health care, free education (to university level), and a generous tax credit from the state. If you have five children, you can practically live off of state money. If nothing else socialists should have tons of children – it’s only that they don’t need them, so they don’t. Instead they have as many children as they want. This mostly comes down to education and personal goals. Also note that the US leads the number of teenage pregnancies in the western world. This comes down to lack of sex education.

5) Wasn’t that my point? I think you completely misunderstood my use of the word “mature”. By mature I for instance means that they are part of a complex economical system that can take care of their needs. If you are not part of such a system, you need children .. or good friends.

6) The carrying capacity depends on the standard of living. Google/study the concept of ecological footprint and you will see lots of research in this field including carrying capacities, etc. US life expectancy is actually declining but that is more a problem of obesity. Some poor countries have declining expectancies due to external constraints (lack of food, health care). There is more food than before but that has nothing to do with sustainable carrying capacity. Find out how the food is produced and you’ll see it depends on finite resources mined phosphor and methane for fertilizer. Yes, this is a result of many people. You can not ecologically/sustainably feed the planet’s current population. Whether there are “too many” is a value judgment. If you want/think everybody should enjoy a US lifestyle, then there are too many people. In this case, resources will run out and people will starve. Before that there will be wars. Presently oil, next water, then possibly land.
If you think 6 billion is about right, we will fight for resources until everybody’s lifestyle is like Mexico on average. If you lean towards 9 billion, then Bangladesh it is. Or more accurately, probably 500 million rich people with the rest being chronically malnourished. Indeed a negative effect. One value judgment is whether this is equitable. I will not answer that, only remark that 15% of the world’s population uses 50% of its resources. I note that follows the Pareto principle.

People seem to get less attached to stuff as they get older – I am thinking of quitting ten to 15 years before nominal retirment age because I don’t have time to live life and I have accumulated enough stuff. It is always easier to buy presents for kids than for greybeards 🙂

People hoard for various psychological reasons. Certain people hoard because they find value within THEMSELVES if they are surrounded by piles of crap. Others hoard because they are lonely and the stuff becomes their ‘people’. Just a couple of reasons out of many.

Many fear the economy and the dollar will crash. So where to invest to conserve wealth or get a sense of security? Investing in “stuff” such as necessities is one way to do this. The homesteading trend is another. If one has land, it is tangible and will not evaporate into thin air like your bank account will if the economy crashes one day. Your stuff, if practical items, can be used to survive, put food on your table and provide barter items with others. Having stuff that other people may find valuable later may also be good. Hoarding useless things like beanie babies, romance novels, old videocassettes, etc. seems a bit weird to me though.

I never was a hoarder, but since i’ve switched to this whole new way of thinking; it been amazing. I was just thinking to myself last week how much stuff i have kept for years that was just taking space and maybe got used once in 5 years. my kitchen has 14 cabinets and i have found i really only have use for 3 and one drawer. probably 1000’s of dollars spent on stuff i really didn’t need to buy. i didnt understand how people were downsizing so much here, but now i do. there’s just so many purchases people really never needed to make.

Still a book hoarder though, i like that satisfaction that i filled a shelf with books read practically every year.

@Freeyourchains was that satire? If so, well done sir or madam. Well done. Otherwise… paging Dr. Pangloss. Politics aside, does conservation of energy/mass mean nothing? Water, food, fuel, minerals?

Also, less greed in a world that “houses” 150 billion people… less?… how… I don’t even… nevermind. I’m a pretty optimistic dude, but you my friend are the Nadia Comaneci of mental gymnastics.

I’m not sure the term hoarding is being used correctly. To me it means acquiring several of the same object – someone with 20 bicycles is a hoarder. Someone with their own set of mechanic’s tools is not a hoarder.

We have our own car, lawn mower, tools, library, DVD collection, because we are organized (mostly) into small households; often referred to as the “nuclear” family.

It’s often occurred to me that by clock (about 12 houses) could get by with one lawn mower, one weed whip, a few rakes, and so on. But where would we keep it? In who’s yard do we place the shed? And with a dozen keys to the pad lock, how long do we jointly own anything other than an empty shed? And then of course there is the inevitable clash of schedules, so inevitable arguments about who is going to use what, when.

IMO owning your own things isn’t hoarding, though it certainly isn’t the most efficient use of material goods.

@Steve Austin

So we should have kids so that they could take care of us if we fail?

Another nail in the coufin on the “you don’t have kids, you’re selfish” theory.