Getting $1000 of Free Stuff
I write a good amount about the paradigm shift towards the abundance of capital. This is an abstract concept that is sometimes difficult to conceptualize, so I'm always on the look out for concrete/physical manifestations of abundance. Thus far, I've mostly found abundance through consumer culture. Something like Amazon is a good example of this (cheaply buy anything you want and have it delivered to your door in 2 days!). But you still need to buy the thing. True abundance would be closer to "random stuff you want randomly shows up at your door." Though it sounds crazy, I've actually experienced this twice in the last couple months:
- I lost my headphones but got a free set of $350 Bose headphones that were just "lying around" at MIT. (Crazy!)
- My jacket zipper broke but I got a brand new Eddie Bauer jacket (likely worth $300) from an outdoorsy friend. The company gave it to him, but he didn't need it. (I also got a warm puffy jacket and long underwear from him for free.)
For me, these examples show two things:
- Randomly experiencing abundance of physical consumer goods is a great way to manifest the abstract concept of abundance. (As part of my $900/month self-tax, I could see giving some of it to a "lottery system" that aggregates with others to randomly buy the group stuff we want.)
- There's a massive difference between scarcity and abundance (or privilege and underprivileged). When a poor person loses their headphones, they aren't just given a $350 pair. Or if they break their jacket, a pile of high-quality new ones don't just "show up". Instead, they experience snowball effects where their scarcity compounds and it gets worse. (See the book Scarcity for more on this.)