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Comment by hamburglar | Hacker News Reader

There's a huge difference between a luxury and something that indicates you have achieved a lavish and impressive lifestyle. A cup of coffee at starbucks is a luxury.

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Lavish and impressive is also relative. Your original statement about "these things are all rather unimpressive to those that actually have them within reach" is tautological: having a yacht with a helipad is not going to be particularly impressive to anyone else docked next to me in St Tropez, even if it puts all of us in the global 0.01%.

I think there's a subtlety in my point that you're missing. When you can just barely manage a yacht with a helipad, you're impressed with yourself for being that successful. When you can comfortably afford it, you cease to consider it something to boast about.

But yes, your point is valid: it's all relative.

Off topic warning.

> A cup of coffee are starbucks is a luxury.

In Melbourne, Australia a coffee at Starbucks is considered:

1. A sign that you’re a tourist.

2. A sign that you’re a masochist.

3. A cry for help.

4. All of the above.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself :)

Care to explain?

Melbourne is a mecca of coffee snobbery, and most locals wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks. (Although you need to try pretty hard even to find one.)

A joke in poor taste. Melbournians are notorious coffee snobs. As jpatokal said, locals wouldn’t be caught dead in a Starbucks. Basically if the cup is taller than 4 fingers 8-10cm or the ingredients include anything other than coffee, water and milk, or it was made by percolating - then it’s not coffee as far as we’re concerned. It’s either dishwater or a confection of some sort. It may be a fact that Melbourne has more coffee shops per capita than any other place on earth.

Those rules seem to eliminate both Turkish and Cuban coffee. That would be a shame.

Yeah, sorry - a modicum of sugar is allowed :)

(I love my Saturday morning Turkish)

Wellington, NZ would like to have a word

Australia is one of the only markets where Starbucks' global domination strategy failed horribly due to several factors (I'm not an Aussie so I can't explain the cultural differences). IIRC, in 6-7 years, they opened ~100 locations only to close over 60 of them. Aussies tend to deride the chain and Starbucks themselves have pivoted and tend to mostly cater to tourists so as not to go under completely.

In Seattle, the corporate home of Starbucks, it's exactly the same :-)

:) Calling it a luxury isn't a judgment on whether or not it's any good. It just means its an expensive thing you don't actually need.

For me, in Denver, it means that it is 5:30 and nobody else is open yet.

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