Fisking the "Buy Nothing" Crowd

Pejman Yousefzadeh Fisks the "Buy Nothing" crowd, especially Andrew Sullivan, that you might pay to see. But only if that gives you no pleasure, or every pleasure, or something else smacking of idolatry:

So let me get this straight: It is wrong to derive meaning from buying something, but perfectly all right to derive it from buying nothing?

He links to an entry by Don Boudreaux, where you'll find this succinct reminder that, while material goods aren't the principal reason we should be thankful, we still take too much for granted:

Personal space; privacy; intimacy chosen rather than intimacy inescapable: these features of a desirable life seem to the non-economist to have only the scantiest relationship to markets and economic considerations. But for ordinary people these features are made possible and expanded only by the prosperity made possible only by markets – by markets that permit us to travel at low cost, to occupy homes and apartments that would have seemed magnificently palatial (and amazingly clean and sturdy) to America’s settlers, to allow us to dispose with the many bulky appliances that crowded our ancestors’ tiny homes – appliances such as butter churns, salt barrels, cheese presses, and feed troughs for animals. (Actually, cows, goats, pigs, sheep, and chickens were themselves, in their own way, household appliances.)