Henry David Thoreau was genuinely concerned for the economic welfare of his fellow man, but he did not want the people to waste their life pursuing overabundance. Whether farms, homes, businesses, or general possessions, Henry Thoreau had great compassion for those who had too much, whose overabundance was a drag on their lives. He is telling the people that their traditional goal of high material consumption may well carry with it an unexpected price tag in the form of unpleasant complexities and anxieties. Thus, Thoreau wished the people might value their natural environment and work hard to preserve it against the forces of degradation. For many contemporary economists and business people, this is indeed an odd theory of value, but it is one that Thoreau would defend both in his writings and in the way he lived his own life.