Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law
(1659)

"…what might have been Waste was, in fact, future Prosperity."

If Prosperity relies upon the presence of Plenty, its presence also seems to encourage some uncertain volume of Waste. Before Prosperity, a subsistence existence exists. People somehow survive, perhaps just barely getting by. After Prosperity emerges, some excess enters the survival equation, resources can no longer be characterized as wanting, and the resulting excess might prove defining. If nature abhors vacuums, it seems to despise excesses even more. An excess might be considered wealth, retained earnings, or leftover resources unneeded for present survival. It might also be considered Waste, worthless, since it proved itself unnecessary for sustaining survival. What a person or a society does with their excess determines the quality of their Prosperity, perhaps whether it exists at all.

Thorstein Veblen, a renegade economist who was widely shunned near the end of the nineteenth century, coined a term that best exemplifies the defining character of what I might consider Perverse Prosperity: Conspicuous Consumption. In Veblen’s characterization, Gilded Age wealth was largely wasted on making grand public statements, essentially showing off to neighbors just how worthless one considered their excess. These were called ‘excesses’ for good reasons. Conspicuous Consumption insisted that one should lavishly spend to demonstrate one’s deep-down indifference to Prosperity’s many benefits. They’d travel “first class,” a designation specifically created to absorb “waste wealth” for which its owner could imagine no better use. Golf was invented after societies passed their hand-to-mouth stage of development. A raft of similar, essentially worthless applications of presumed excess wealth emerged to tempt the newly Prosperous.

In some, perhaps more real, sense, there could never really be any such thing as excess wealth, as a waste of resources, for resources are, by definition, finite, and alternative uses for any apparent excess might always emerge. In this way, all resources might be considered precious. The very notion of excess seems perverse in this sense, evidence of a certain unenlightenment about how this world really works. Climate deniers deliberately waste valuable resources because they believe in a clear delusion that such things as infinite resources exist, and that we humans inherited some absolute dominion over deciding their fates. We can morally declare, in this perverse philosophy, that we own what we clearly can only steward. Those who firmly believe that they hold dominion seem to be the same ones who consider their excesses to be wasteable, if not precisely waste. Perhaps they believe themselves to be blessed with the authority to determine once and for all that their mere opinions amount to immutable universal law.

These choices present themselves after Prosperity emerges. What will you choose to do with any resulting excess, the amounts that fall over and above your individual foreseeable personal need? You remain perfectly free to blow your excess on candy and gum, but will you? What quality of Prosperity will you choose? Perverse Prosperity, where you presume dominion, Wasting whatever excess you damned well choose, or a more cooperative kind, seeking to invest or share what might have otherwise been consumed or discarded as excess? Libertarian philosophies that presume it’s every man for himself encourage Wasting resources in the name of liberty and freedom. Trickle-down philosophies likewise encourage more evaporation than seems absolutely necessary to anybody waiting nearer the bottom of the trickle-down stream. Prosperity cannot become a guarantee of anything without some underlying philosophy considering the proper use of excess, what to do with what might otherwise be considered Waste.

Until a society decides what Prosperity means, it cannot become truly prosperous. It might well be considered wealthy, perhaps even the wealthiest society in the history of the world, but Prosperity will evade its jealous grasp. Prosperity comes not merely from successfully creating excess, but from the coherent and consistent productive use of even the least of such excesses. The degree to which a society’s members feel compelled to engage in Conspicuous Consumption might be the degree to which that society might essentially be bankrupt, not nearly Prosperous. To the extent that the weathiest nation in the history of the world cannot imagine how to pay for health or child care, or even attempt to guarantee some minimum quality of life, that nation might be wealthy, but it cannot be considered Prosperous. Whatever excess emerges from attempts to create wealth must be considered an illusion if one aspires to enjoy Prosperity. Apparent excess might speak to a mistaken distribution scheme, for any system might be made even more productive by the clever application of what might otherwise be considered excess or waste.

Prosperity must be widely shared to be regarded as a viable reality. Prosperity for the few amounts to nothing more or less than financial despotism, an illusion regardless of how much Conspicuous Consumption by the few eventually trickles down to the needy multitudes. A viable system ultimately sustains itself, and ultimately, seemingly effortlessly. A more perfect democracy undergoes essentially continuous maintenance. It’s always aspiring and never fully satisfied. Each apparent excess offers an opportunity to reimagine how Prosperity might be improved and more broadly shared, with ever less apparent Waste involved. My garden prospers in no small way because I compost every bit of kitchen waste into the richest possible soil amendment. My garden beds are full of prior years’ apricot and cherry pits, reminders that what might have been Waste was, in fact, future Prosperity.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz