Observe carefully the spending behavior. The vast majority of people get rid of dollars as fast as they can.

Why? Because a) every dollar loses value due to monetary inflation every second it is held; b)loss of value is compounded by flat wages and higher taxes; c) available net interest is negative when adjusted for inflation and taxes. People buy instead of saving because they value objects, and the utility of having and using those objects more than the dollars they exchange for them.

If monetary inflation and income taxes were eliminated, spending would decrease and saving would increase. While I do not accept this outcome as justifying such a policy (appeal to utility), they should nonetheless be eliminated for moral reasons.

Materialism is directly caused by the state. The state, through various interventionist polcies, most notably expansionary monetary policy, have artificially raised the time preferences of the people. For example, if inflation is worth more now than it will be tomorrow, I am going to spend it now!

As the state reduces its size, time preference will do down with it. As time preference decreases and forward-orientedness increases, materialism will decrease as well.

A case where this approach would possibly have had notable impact is in the situation of the Buffet family. Howard Buffet was a staunch libertarian and a friend of Murray Rothbard. In contrast, Howard Buffet’s son, Warren, while a spectacularly successful businessman, reveals himself to be somewhat less of a libertarian and actually ignorant of the free market economics under which much of his success hinged on. In terms of his entrepreneurial skill in contrast with his lack of understanding of free market economics, he has been referred to as an idiot savant.

Would it not be more advantageous for liberty if it had as a spokesman such a successful and renowned businessman as Warren Buffet who was also a principled libertarian who understood the ethical and economic principles on which his success was founded? Instead I hear statists quoting him to support their arguments for government intervention in the market. That’s disgusting and does not seem to assist the cause of liberty very much at all.

“how much different would it be without a central bank to facilitate super-easy credit? Maybe what you see as the tipping point that you say is caused by abundance and spending has been greatly exaggerated by central banking and debt.”

I think we’re on the same wavelength. Personally, I see the Fed as the single biggest enemy to liberty in the U.S. today. Not only does it empower the state to do things it otherwise couldn’t afford, it warps culture in myriad “bad” ways. I’m far from a conservative, but I see much to praise in traditional sentiments regarding savings, envy and the feeling that the sum of life is not measured in terms of how much money an individual produces and consumes.

Not that I’m advocating some coercion or whatever to end materialism, but that it might be necessary to first address the cultural bankruptcy of pure materialism through education before large numbers of people will have the free time you envision to become autodidacts.