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Even if you are a self-made billionaire you still need to pay for things to be made and then pay for that to be shipped over the ocean and to your house and then pay for someone to take away all the garbage packaging. Isn't this also a kind of servitude to money?

So here's an alternative understanding of "Freedom". It's not the ability to "Do what you want." or "Buy what you want." but about *understanding* each step of the process, knowing how the sausage is made.

Understanding is freedom because it means you are not beholden to another. If your survival depends on a black box of black boxes of black boxes the only thing you can do is spend money to have someone ELSE fix it.

Money, at the end of the day, is a representation of life energy, even if you've gained it through massive amounts of leverage or are spending someone else's life energy at the end of the day there is a non-zero amount of human energy in it.

When your life depends on black boxes, you have to constantly exchange life energy and put yourself at the mercy of someone else.

this is why people who love $ also love markets. markets provide the liquidity of labor so that money IS power/freedom. In a small town, if I can't build a house I HAVE to be friendly to the housemakers. In a city, I can have them fight over a contract.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1341269411638886401 …

The Marie Kondo method minimizes your life to increase the ratio of understanding to black box. When you're surrounded by things that you love and have built or have a hand it, your "environment" (and thus YOU) feels *Very* different.

Note that with this understanding you can avoid certain traps of "Minimalism". e.g. a super fancy Ultra Gadget that replaces 10 things but you don't know how to fix is against this spirit. As is having to look behind 10 cupboards to find anything b/c everything looks the same.