In 2016, an article exploring the positive side of 'own nothing and be happy' appeared in Forbes. Here's a quote from that:
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there. Once in a while, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
The own nothing and be happy faction of the World Economic Forum has many supporters. Some of their ideas are even appealing. For example, I'd love to see personal automobiles replaced by collectively owned fleets. And a sustainable and equitable 'circular economy' sounds much better than the structurally predatory current system. It sounds good, but I don't think it means what I want it to mean.
The future the WEF envisions seems particularly appealing to the kinds of well-to-do people that have never really had to share things with others. I can't share tools with my relatives without the tools getting lost or broken. Nor can I get my seven roommates to put metal cans in the recycling bin consistently. So the idea of digitally tracking every little piece of community property would probably break down immediately on contact with the actual habits and behaviors of human beings.
The people behind these ideas are also promoting the idea of eating bugs to fight climate change. As someone who has eaten bugs, including the silk worms frying in the image above, I'll stick with old-fashioned cattle meat, thank you. Importantly, the most ecologically sound agricultural practices involve both plants and animals living in complimentary ways. But the eat bugs people appear oblivious to real environmental sustainability.
What they want, and what I suspect the whole WEF-new world order network wants, is sterility. Fertility is already sharply declining in humans and other creatures exposed to pesticides. If biological sterility is their goal, then they're succeeding. Ecosystems, too, are being sterilized. Most of the world's insects are simply gone.
Agribusiness kills soil then uses the dead soil as scaffolding to support crops as they're injected with nutrients and chemicals. In the same way, multinationals sterilize local economies to capture the value being produced by community residents. Instead of working with what's already there, they create a tabula rasa to build on. The strategy has merit, but it's often used in deeply unethical ways.
As someone who works remotely and has few possessions, I can see how own nothing and be happy might seem feasible from a certain narrow perspective. But there is no path from here to there unless the social structure is sterilized to make way for the new program. I don't see that going well.
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