The Best Boat Is the One You Never Buy
The Economy of Imagined Lives.
Each night, my father sat before his screen, browsing boats. Timber-decks, old hulls, sails folded in far-off harbours. It wasn’t fixation, just a habit. The little ritual before bed.
On holidays we’d walk through marinas, inspecting creaking boats listed for cheap. Back home, he’d join the yacht club. He took sailing lessons, crewed races. He even bought an old dinghy— brown, slow, and heavy. I was signed up for sailing comps too. And I left after two Sundays.
Still, he kept looking. Years passed. He sold the dinghy and bought an old car. But he never stops watching the sea, or the screen.
I used to wonder why he never bought a boat. But the answer, over time, became clear.
People don’t always buy things. They buy the feeling those things promise. We already know this. A person pays a high price not for food, but all that service, setting, and feel.
But there’s something weirder: we sometimes get more satisfaction from not actually having something rather than having it.
Think of the country house. A lawyer buys a cottage in Scotland. He rarely visits it. He spent hundreds of thousands, and gets little more than a daydream — sitting in meetings, picturing rain on the windows in a place he’ll never live. The cottage is just a comfort, a symbol. It’s like the rich man’s pool, wines, and paintings. Not for use, just imagining.
Economics says utility comes from consumption. You get satisfaction from using the goods and services you buy according to your preferences. But even before you get the thing, there’s a kind of pleasure: anticipatory utility. The dream’s true satisfaction.
In the original psychedelic novel, Tristram Shandy, there was Uncle Toby. An old soldier, who dreams of war, but never returns to it. Instead, he builds miniature battlefields at home with his servant. Using a hookah pipe, he creates a contraption to fire miniature guns all at once.
His little world satisfies his dreams of war. It is enough for joy, just like his smoking guns.
The most powerful love is the one never fulfilled. In Swan’s Way by Proust, Swann wants Odette, but what he wants isn’t her— but the wanting. That feeling that drags your heart through dark and dust, and the moment it reaches its destination, it vanishes. '
As Proust puts it: “desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.”
Anticipation sets the trap. The longer you wait, the more you expect. And the more you expect, the more you risk disappointment. You dream of a year abroad. But when it comes, it’s full of solitude and cost. The world doesn’t match the image you built in your mind. Better, maybe, to leave it there. Imagined, unspoiled.
Sometimes the dream gives more joy than the thing itself. Maybe not buying is rational. The opportunity cost of actual ownership (financial or emotional) may outweigh the dream’s anticipation. Why spoil the dream by consuming it?
How much is desire worth? A dinner? a kiss? There’s no market price. And no two people would pay the same. Price doesn’t always mean value. Nor does it mean anything useful.
But value is still real, even if it’s subjective. Adam Smith understood this. The “real price of everything”, he wrote in the Wealth of Nations, ‘is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
Some things are valuable not because of what they are, but because of what they cost us—in effort, not just money.
That heavy, brown dinghy sat for months in our driveway. When my mother finally convinced dad to clear it away, we sent it to the local angling club. The only way to park it in its new spot was to lift the old barrel by hand. In the process, a man’s finger was crushed.
Was the boat now worth more? No. But we never forgot the trouble. And that effort sticks to value. It’s the same with people who refuse to sell homes they spent decades maintaining. The market doesn’t see the work, but they do.
It matters. Sitting at your desk, picturing a holiday you never take— that’s a kind of consumption. You give time, you give it thought. Effort. The same goes with hours training for something that might never come — that is the hidden price of a dream.
People spend thousands on dreams every day. Think of the movies, music, and books you consume. The average American consumer in 2023 spent more than $3,500 on entertainment. That isn’t even including the opportunity cost of all that time spent watching the 7th season of the Simpsons.
What is its value? The consumption of imaginary lives.
Think of the last movie you watched. Something happens, a person acts, and the story unfolds. You see their decisions and their consequences. That’s the structure of the story: aestheticised cause-and-effect.
As toddlers, we know that one thing leads to another One ball to another, like billiards. And later, you discover how one words starts a fight, a choice shapes a life. We learn both from our action and by observing the world: in gossip, history, or science. We are hungry for cause-and-effect.
Fiction refines that skill. It lets us run simulations. It tells us what might happen if we left the country. Took a risk. Fiction helps us experience it.
This is why when people enter structured lives, they grow a hunger for stories. It’s not escapism, but the opposite. We consume these imaginary lives to nourish our own.
A dream can be a kind of consumption. You can create its value just by your toil and trouble. And like desire, if you never act on it, it may never disappoint you. Some hold onto their dreams, carefully, for years. You protect it by leaving it unspoiled, simply imagined.
My father still hasn’t bought his boat. He might, one day. But I think he has mastered the dream. He consumes it every week. As long as he doesn’t realise it, the dream never fades.
He told me once, smiling: as a boy, he chose a bicycle for his birthday. The waiting filled his days with longing, catalogues, imagining rides. When it arrived, it was just a bike.
But the anticipation—that sweet anticipation—that was the greater joy.