I can't seem to find it in my quotes file, but I recall once reading an interesting few paragraphs by someone explaining that capitalism allows them to "own" nearly everything they want in the world. In some sense I am the owner of a 16 inch telescope, a jet ski, a table with a gourmet meal at the best restaurant in the city, etc., regardless of whether I've gone out and bought those things and had them assigned to be my property, because at any time I could go out and buy them if the whim struck hard enough. The world is full of warehouses and store shelves and other buildings whose sole purpose is to store stuff-that-I-can-have-whenever-I-want-it. Even if the transaction costs are still high enough that I may end up foregoing some of those luxuries, just having the option is itself a kind of wealth.

And in a way this bounty of materialism leads one to be anti-materialistic. If I own all these wonderful things, why bother with the inconvenience of storing them in my own house until/unless I'm ready to really experience them?