Minimalism, like most words describing styles, is a very flexible word. If I write a composition in which a single person plays a pair of water glasses with one drumstick, that's "minimalism". And if I employ a very expensive sound studio to record a famous pop song consisting of the simplest possible drum track, a sparse guitar riff, a one-note vocal part with occasional distortion, and a toy Casio organ, that's also "minimalism":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg&feature=relat...
And, of course, I can be a "minimalist composer" even while writing complex works for entire orchestras:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coolidge_Adams
None of these forms of minimalism is more "real" than the others.
Meanwhile, I'm afraid I don't understand your point. At least the OP has provided a living example of his style of minimalism. Can you give us a living example of yours? Even poor people "use money to access what they need", eat meat, travel by bus, use shared public infrastructure, and hire immigrant workers. Even subsistence farmers do these things. Even ascetic Buddhist monks do these things. (They don't subsist entirely on oxygen, after all: They're supported by donations. Or, if you insist, they "outsource the burden of sustaining their lifestyle".)
So when you say the words "real minimalist", who am I supposed to see in my mind's eye? Could it be someone I've ever actually met?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg&feature=relat...
And, of course, I can be a "minimalist composer" even while writing complex works for entire orchestras:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coolidge_Adams
None of these forms of minimalism is more "real" than the others.
Meanwhile, I'm afraid I don't understand your point. At least the OP has provided a living example of his style of minimalism. Can you give us a living example of yours? Even poor people "use money to access what they need", eat meat, travel by bus, use shared public infrastructure, and hire immigrant workers. Even subsistence farmers do these things. Even ascetic Buddhist monks do these things. (They don't subsist entirely on oxygen, after all: They're supported by donations. Or, if you insist, they "outsource the burden of sustaining their lifestyle".)
So when you say the words "real minimalist", who am I supposed to see in my mind's eye? Could it be someone I've ever actually met?