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+--- Thread: (rich community) Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now (/thread-3780.html)
(rich community) Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now - C C - Jun 13, 2017
https://aeon.co/ideas/conspicuous-consumption-is-over-its-all-about-intangibles-now
EXCERPT: In Veblen’s now famous treatise "The Theory of the Leisure Class", he coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’ to denote the way that material objects were paraded as indicators of social position and status. More than 100 years later, conspicuous consumption is still part of the contemporary capitalist landscape, and yet today, luxury goods are significantly more accessible than in Veblen’s time. [...] However, the democratisation of consumer goods has made them far less useful as a means of displaying status. In the face of rising social inequality, both the rich and the middle classes own fancy TVs and nice handbags. They both lease SUVs, take airplanes, and go on cruises. On the surface, the ostensible consumer objects favoured by these two groups no longer reside in two completely different universes.
Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars, the rich have taken to using much more tacit signifiers of their social position. Yes, oligarchs and the superrich still show off their wealth with yachts and Bentleys and gated mansions. But the dramatic changes in elite spending are driven by a well-to-do, educated elite, or what I call the ‘aspirational class’. This new elite cements its status through prizing knowledge and building cultural capital, not to mention the spending habits that go with it – preferring to spend on services, education and human-capital investments over purely material goods. These new status behaviours are what I call ‘inconspicuous consumption’. None of the consumer choices that the term covers are inherently obvious or ostensibly material but they are, without question, exclusionary....
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RE: (rich community) Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now - confused2 - Jun 17, 2017
In the UK we speak of 'New Money' :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_riche
Of New Money there is there is never enough. Old money is always enough.
Bless you Sir. I'm sure yer child will love those beads Sir. Carved 'em out of the bones in me toes Sir. If you'd like another set me wife's always ready. O a penny Sir - you are so kind - the children won't starve tonight.
RE: (rich community) Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now - C C - Jun 17, 2017
(Jun 17, 2017 12:04 AM)confused2 Wrote: In the UK we speak of 'New Money' :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_riche
Of New Money there is there is never enough. Old money is always enough.
Bless you Sir. I'm sure yer child will love those beads Sir. Carved 'em out of the bones in me toes Sir. If you'd like another set me wife's always ready. O a penny Sir - you are so kind - the children won't starve tonight.
The case is also made that they contributed to the the spread of non-rhotic pronunciation in Britain. Desiring to sound posh so as to distinguish themselves from their low ranking origins. Thanks to the rampant historical inaccuracies of their movies and TV shows, most Americans still suffer from the vainglorious delusion that they're the ones who changed radically in terms of accent rather than preserving a core aspect of the earlier Mother Tongue.
The now extinct, Mid-Atlantic accent of some Hollywood actors in old films only potentially eludes a similar origin of affected pretense due to early radio lacking bass range. Encouraging announcers and entertainers to speak higher in nasal tones. But the artificial, "international" form of speech was also clearly taught in some elite schools to help wealthier graduates sound distinct from the hoi polloi.
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