Living on less, and less on the world.

One of the most popular articles on the New York Times is Pico Iyer's "The Joy of Less" that explores the wonder and joy of a simple life. It's a remembrance of the living without and what one does not mix. Less is a sense of freedom in many ways. I originally was going to post about how this relates to the environment and how the simple joys are more delightful than costly ones. My general laziness caused a delay and billionaire Mark Cuban had a blog post titled Success and Motivation 2009 in a completely different vein but had the same conclusion. If you are willing to live like a student, you have much more freedom. He even says it directly

The cheaper you can live, the greater your options. Remember that.

When we think about our financial mess and our environmental mess, the irony is the more we buy, the more we consume, the more expensive we live. We actually have less options. The more drastic our environmental imbalance, the fewer and more extreme options we have to extract ourselves. The more in debt or the more you lose at the casino, the more you feel pressure to make that one big score.

It's ironic, we are sold that the more that we can buy the more freedom we have. But you have a philosopher and a billionaire coming to the same conclusion. If we want options, perhaps we should look at less choices in what we consume so we have more choices in how we live. If you have the money to buy the best of everything, should you. Or should just spend on the best of what you really care about. The question is knowing what that really is.