More than good enough

I've been reading Grant McCracken’s blog for a while now, and enjoying his posts without quite feeling the need to point anyone else at them. But this is a beaut, and not just because I feel it strongly myself.

Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, has a yacht that is 416 feet long. It cost something like a quarter of a billion dollars. It carries two helicopters. It’s so large it cannot dock anywhere on the French Riviera. (That's why it needs those helicopters. They are the only way to get to port.) The “Octopus” seems to be a perfect example of way-too-much. Possessions of this kind act like barnacles that slow movement and limit freedom. “Going for a sail” must seem to Allen like something that requires him to mobilize a third-world country, an event so wearying that it must seem better, most of the time, just to leave the thing be. Allen's Octopus is really an Albatross.

Go read the whole of Just-enough, a new trend in the works (or, why Paul Allen's Octopus is really an Albatross). You’ll be glad you did.