Quote of the Day: Paul Graham on "Stuff"

Photo credit: sindesign

Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven't changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff. That was a big problem for me when I had no money. I felt poor, and stuff seemed valuable, so almost instinctively I accumulated it.

What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's 'worth?' The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will."

::Paul Graham via ::swissmiss