My girlfriend is the consummate bargain shopper. She signs up to get coupons, watches out for sales, and will drive halfway across the state to save 50%. It's not really that she even loves shopping that much. She is however, addicted to bargains, to getting the really good deal. Of course, there is the issue of false economy to deal with. If you save $5 but you spend an hour doing so, unless you earn only $5 an hour, you are actually losing money in terms of the value of your leisure time. However, it's not about the economics I think, it's the joy of putting one over on the powers that be by getting something at a super low price. She's not the only one with this problem either. If you go to the day after thanksgiving sales it's pretty clear it's a social phenomenon.
Many cultures are built around the opposite urge, centered around rituals of squandering, of wasting. Check out Marcel Mauss' The Gift or Bataille's Accursed Share to read about how this waste plays a pivotal role in western as well as non-western cultures. What then is the joy of frugality about? Is it waste with guilt built in? We don't need much of the stuff we acquire on sale, so it's arguably just a safe form of waste that makes one less anxious about engaging in it. Maybe it's just a pure game, like poker, where one feels satisfied by figuring out the most profitable solution. Whatever it is, it is very real. I would say more, but there is a half-off sale at the comic store and I must be on my way . . .
waste
the key to what you seem to be describing here is the construction of profligacy as a social tool, as both a celebration and an act of communion, the establishment of shared well being and shared success. The key here is that the waste is shared, excess a benefit to the community which made it possible, this is the missing elemnt in most recent waste, at least after that student period where family is a fungable category. Once we see ourselves as part of a family group, it seems that's the extent of the waste's distrobution, apart from maintaining one's entourage of course. But that's an altogether creapier, dependence based, distribution, sort of like the emotional trickledown that seems to have invaded many modern families. The addiction to bargains makes double sense in this regard, since one is gratified both in terms of power and a non-reciprocal emotiona contract. It's kind of like paying a hooker, let's say, where the economics is predicated on the display of certain behaviors without resuoltant expectations. Of couse, underpaying for such a service is probably a bad idea. So I say, don't just spread it around among freind and familes, don't just seek out a socially engaged consumerism. Tip the waitress double, your playmates even more, leave a couple of bucks on the street for somebody to find, And most important, spend on what bring you together with others, celebrating something other than your own bulllshit. Maybe an online place to start would be a free stuff site. Instead of getting 5 bucks for the junk you don't want, simply give it away. Ask for a poem perhaps, or a letter, an idea, something created by the person who wants the thing you're giving away. Thay way, you get a whole hell of a lot more than 5 bucks anyways. Waste shouldn't be limitted to money, but open to all sorts of contibutions, ideas, opinions, last weeks one and only singular moment. That's the stuff we are even greadier about keeping to ourselves, or at least clamining for ourselves. From each...to each.. you get the idea. To hell with efficiency, it is both the weapon and the justification of the oppressor.