Owning what can be lost

Every object will one day be lost, broken, sold, stolen or thrown away. Sometimes it simply outlives its owner and becomes a problem for his relatives.

Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler handed mugs to some of their participants and then offered to buy or sell them. Owners generally demanded more to part with a mug than participants without one were prepared to pay to get it. That was the experimental demonstration of the endowment effect: an object changes price simply because it has ended up on our side of the line.

The effect does not mean every attachment is irrational. An owner may have acquired information, a habit and the cost of replacement. But it explains rather well those cupboards in which an object retains a special value for ten years, exclusively on the day it is supposed to be got rid of.

Before an expensive purchase it is worth weighing not only the pleasure of owning but the anxiety around it.

If an object requires:

• constant fear;
• elaborate security;
• restrictions on ordinary life;
• continuous checking;
• disproportionate insurance,

then perhaps what has been acquired is not an object but a new job.

This does not mean a material loss does not deserve emotion. Losing a family heirloom, a house or a tool your life is bound up with can be hard. Forbidding yourself to be upset only adds an examination in philosophical maturity to the loss.

But understanding the possible loss in advance is useful.

You can:

• insure it;
• make a copy;
• store it more safely;
• not take it anywhere risky;
• choose a less conspicuous alternative;
• not buy it;
• accept the risk knowingly.

The value of a thing does not have to stay below your ability to lose it calmly. But if owning it brings less joy than the potential loss brings anxiety, the balance is doubtful.

Some things are better admired in a museum. There somebody else guards them and nobody asks you to dust them.

The sign that an object has become a job is that it stops being used for its purpose. A good knife that only cuts when there are guests. A bicycle that is never left outside a shop. A watch never worn while travelling. A dinner service behind glass for twenty years. At that point the function is no longer being performed, while the cost of storage and worry keeps accruing. Formally, you have property. Practically, you own an obligation to damage nothing.

The test is simple: if a careful replacement costs less than the nerves, the question has been settled against the original. A thing you use calmly usually gives you more than a more valuable thing you are afraid to use.