Comment by Emma_Goldman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Emma_Goldman | Hacker News Reader

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I am not formulating policy, so I need not act as such.

Pen's are not useless. But the clear implicature of what I said is that the functional difference between an ordinary pen and a $4000 pen is negligible such that the $4000 pen is useless given that fact (i.e. one might as well go ahead and use a normal pen).

That is not an axiomatic answer, it's my answer under the present state of things (I was explicit on that point).

I don't really understand the point of this pedantry? I think all of the things you list are fairly grotesque. But I don't have any great interest in wandering from a discussion about conspicuous consumption to one about tax policy. To be frank: I am interested in alternatives to capitalism, and a great deal of the existing order of things bothers me profoundly.

"If you want to call certain spending grotesque, it's helpful to have a reasonable rationale for that figure."

I have already given you a rationale. To claim otherwise is supercilious. You may not like it; but there is one.

Since youre frank: >I am interested in alternatives to capitalism, and a great deal of the existing order of things bothers me profoundly.

It would be prudent to articulate the specifics in order to deliteate alternatives to capitalism. This would be "formulating policy", or "pedantry". You can't have it both ways. If you just want your argument to be heard and not discuss the specifics then say just that: "I don't care about the specifics, I know how i feel about it already."

The amount of gibberish you just produced is astonishing.

You're absolutely unable to give a rationale despite your claims. So reading your posts, I'm still unsure if we should we all get the cheapest option we can get for anything because money can be "better spent helping others" or not. Is buying a car that is not the cheapest one available also a "farcical, individualist act of petty self-congratulation." ? Is it impossible to fulfill altruistic as well as personal goals ?

Also, why would money be better spent on "those who actually need it" (no definition is provided, from your stance and hate of wealth I'd guess people that can't afford 4000$ pens) than on elite craftmanship ? Do these craftsman, who produce something you're actively interested in (creating some kind of bond) not deserve money for their art ? Better give it away to something you have no emotional bound to ?

>To be frank: I am interested in alternatives to capitalism, and a great deal of the existing order of things bothers me profoundly.

Oh, really ? What a surprise ! A sadly common trait amongst hateful and judgemental people who show blatant inconsistencies coupled with a compulsive need to press reply.

If you think anything I said was gibberish then demonstrate it; don't hand-wave at it.

I have given a rationale. It was not especially complicated but, then, this is a thread on hacker, and not a manifesto. I don't see why identifying a paradigm case of conspicuous consumption requires that I offer either a comprehensive program of public policy, or a normative philosophy of what one should and should not buy. I can perfectly well defend the proposition that people who buy $4000 pens are doing something terrible on its own terms. Which I have been doing.

My position is straightforward: there are reasons based on cultural capital, and on political economy, for the proposition that those who buy these pens are worthy of contempt. I broke these down as follows above:

1. Distributional: in that the $4000 pen is functionally useless relative to a pen 1/100th its price, and that we live in a world of palpable inequality where billions of people live in misery, to buy the pen is to suggest that you think very little about other human beings

2. Ideological: This is a little more complicated. I have the view that capitalism is a system that has an inherent drive to inculcate the desire for commodities, whether or not they are especially useful or not. This is a kind of genetic argument (you have the desire because and only because of the economic conditions in which you live), and an ideological argument (that desire is created by and supports capitalism; it helps to perpetuate a very unjust set of relations by giving you highly distorted preferences).

3. Cultural: these kinds of items are part of a cultural game of symbolic capital played among the super-rich, by virtue of the fact that they have everything (and more) than anyone could possibly need, and need to find some other way of differentiating themselves from others. It has much the same function as buying branded clothes - the desired property is not the clothing, but the status that comes with it.

4. The above 1-3 suggest that whoever buys a $4000 pen is a shallow person who doesn't care about other humans, and who is unduly concerned with their social status within a sub-culture of similarly noxious people.

"Oh, really ? What a surprise ! A sadly common trait amongst hateful and judgemental people who show blatant inconsistencies coupled with a compulsive need to press reply."

Again, if you think that I am somehow inconsistent then demonstrate it. Don't just allege it. I don't really see what the word 'judgmental' is doing here. Yes, I have an evaluative take on conspicuous consumption - this seems like a fairly standard kind of evaluative thought. Do you not evaluate the social world? The allegation that I have a 'compulsive need to press reply' is also rather strange. I have replied once to each reply to me.

I am not hateful. We just live in a very unjust world.

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