Henry David Thoreau · Philosophy

Economy and the True Cost of Things

Thoreau’s radical economics: the real price of anything is the amount of life you must trade for it. Measured that way, most luxuries are bad bargains, and most people spend their one existence buying comforts that quietly cost them their freedom.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Thoreau redefined ‘economy’ around a single principle - ‘the cost of a thing is the amount of… life which is required to be exchanged for it’ - and concluded that most men lead ‘lives of quiet desperation’ and that many comforts are ‘positive hindrances’…

Leads to Leo Tolstoy.

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