great article. One caveat though (at least for me), to buy a house (here in southern Germany) I have to pay quite a bit of money. Working 30% of what I do now I will never save enough money to actually own a house or pay the rent for a house... It'd be interesting to empirically calucalte how much labour in todays world is "wasted" on consumption and how much is necessary to live comfortably (ie not in a wooden hut with no real heating, etc...)

Full Disclosure: I own an iPhone and wouldn't want to live without it anymore, even though it is mainly a toy...