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Kathleen Sykes's avatar

This was a great in-depth explanation of luxury beliefs—I'm going to keep it bookmarked.

You might be interested to know, however, that luxury goods like top hats did have detrimental effects on the working class. Hat-making was dangerous to the craftsmen because of the use of mercury, but the practice was in demand for fashionable hats since the 17th century well into the 19th.

In the 19th century a color called Scheele's Green (or arsenic green) was a popular pigment. The copper arsenite in the dye probably wouldn't kill you if you were just wearing a bright green gown (or at least kill you *that* quickly). The same couldn't be said for the workers manufacturing the fabric who would come down with terrible illnesses.

Similarly when lace cuffs (which were so long they would cover men's fingers) and collars were highly fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries. Handmade lace is a time-intensive labor requiring highly skilled workers. Considering how expensive lace was in that time period, you would think the young women who were making it would have been well off, but most of the money made from the lace industry went to the merchants.

I think, to your point, it's almost (perhaps completely) impossible to have luxury beliefs or goods that do not come at a cost for someone else. (Although I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that.)

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Barry's avatar

The struggle for distinction seems to strongly overlap with (or, is it just the same essence as?) the craving to see oneself as special. And achieving the affirmation of one’s “special-ness” seems to always involve getting others to “recognize” that. While the essence of such drives probably plays an appropriate role in individuation, or, developing an identity, the comments describing the addicting qualities of “the more one gets the more one wants” stimulate reflection. Not intending to challenge the value of what is put forth here, only offering a perspective from which I see similar narcissistic dynamics at work in many contexts of life.

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