So the problem with too much global consumption - too much emissions, electricity usage, mining, etc - is really a problem of too many rich people. There is no point restricting or banning these things - people will just find other ways to be wasteful - maybe even worse ones. The only way to solve these crisis is reduce wealth, by reducing inequality.

your presumption here seems to be that individuals will engage in pollutive activity when pressured to do so for the benefit of someone else (via the demands of wealth), but never for themselves (the hypothetical in which they’re less subjected to the demands of wealth). i’m not sure this is generally true — it may be only narrowly true in that without capital structures the benefit of any individual engaging in any pollutive activity — e.g. transport by automobile — would not be worth the work of accumulating the resources needed for that activity (e.g. fossil fuels). whereas with the markets which wealth creates, the cost/benefit looks substantially different.

1. Homeless, outdoors. No privacy at all.
2. Shared apartment
3. Private apartment with shared outdoor space
4. Private house
5. Gated community
6. Gated private estate

privacy has a material cost. physical walls aren’t cheap. being physically distant from your neighbor isn’t cheap (distance demands lengthier roads, pipes, powerlines).

on the other hand the most expensive land tends to be in the densest places. that is, people with wealth pay extra to live near other people… that paints a more complex picture than just “wealth -> privacy”. in my particular peer group also, i witness a trend of 1: shared dorm. 2: private apartment. 3: group house. 4: living with a spouse. that enough people i know who could afford their own house choose to room with others anyway is a personal anecdote that points against a strict “wealth -> privacy” angle.

i think a certain amount of what you see is a lack of mixing between classes. people tend to select peers who have similar levels of wealth as them (witnessed e.g. by poor people congregating in poor neighborhoods, wealthy people congregating in lakeside neighborhoods). given a power-law shape of wealth, the wealthier you are the less likely your commons will coincide with the commons of some member of society selected at random. in that sense, you may perceive yourself as having more privacy from the eyes of the masses. in the other sense, a smaller crowd with which to blend into makes for less privacy: anyone can track the movements of those who take “private” jets: yet an “everyday person” can easily take a bus anywhere without anyone having knowledge of their whereabouts.

if i were pressured to provide a definition of wealth, i might say that wealth is some form of durable power. sometimes that manifests as power over nature: in the extreme, an underground shelter with a food stockpile, completely isolated from any societal form of wealth. other forms of wealth can be a power entangled in society: your notional ownership of a (piece of a) corporate entity. from the perspective of a state, any durable economic system it presides over may be wealth. in all these cases, wealth acts as some insulation against the immediate demands of nature, in a broad sense of the word. that’s similar — but not identical — to saying that wealth allows one to focus on or center their life on a greater time horizon. the difference is most notable and the concept most challenged when confronting the end of a fixed lifespan, say, some terminal diagnosis. i would strive to define wealth such that it still has worth even near the end.