Paul Graham has an excellent essay on stuff. Have we reached the point where most things are so cheap, we no longer need them?

A historical change has taken place, and I've now realized it. Stuff used to be valuable, and now it's not. In industrialized countries the same thing happened with food in the middle of the twentieth century. As food got cheaper (or we got richer; they're indistinguishable), eating too much started to be a bigger danger than eating too little. We've now reached that point with stuff. For most people, rich or poor, stuff has become a burden.

From Stuff
Referenced Tue Aug 07 2007 08:40:34 GMT-0600 (MDT)