Mason jar example: They are handy, I like them, and if some sort of TEOTWAWKI scenario hit TSHTF tomorrow, I would want to have some in my kitchen cabinets.
But, if the BAU continues forever, I don’t want to clutter up my cabinets for no reason. In this case it’s sensible and feasible to settle on a compromise: Keep five (or ten, or whatever number makes sense to oneself), but hold oneself to not hoarding more than that.
Doomstead “lifeboat” property – burned in the wildfires while the absentee owners toiled at their high-paying tech jobs. There are so many examples of this kind of thing. Where people would’ve been better off picking a place and investing fully in it.
If you pooh-pooh my “mason jar” example as too trivial, then do it with your car-dependent location lifestyle, or your dependence on a high-income job, or your retirement account.
You might be thinking dissensus is all well and good on a collective level, but that on a personal level it sort of falls apart. You make a wrong decision and you’re stuck with the consequences. Even if you have the luxury of being able to recover from it and make a course correction, it might be really expensive and exhausting.
I know ppl who so afraid to make a wrong decn that they never make ANY decision – leads to hoarding.
At some point even a choice that turns out to be wrong choice is better than no choice, bc it contains information, and, more importantly, because recovering from it makes a person resilient – builds skills and courage – and adds to the store of their life-wisdom.
Non-decision (or its sensible-seeming cousin, a split-the difference compromise) can be worse than making the wrong decision but really putting money where mouth is
Some people, esp anxiety-prone ones, might actually benefit more from doing the wrong thing and living through it, than by always making the right choice and never having their risk-aversive stance challenged by the reality that things work out and people adapt. (Ask me how I know this, haha.)
A more serious decision (that might send you screaming back to the mason jar example) is making some sort of decision as to whether you believe we are staying rooted in the total money-based society, or moving toward a society where money will not buy what you need (skills, mature fruit trees). And making some step forward based upon that decision.