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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I know this is a low-substance observation that lots of people are thinking already but why the fuck would you buy a $2MM car?

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If you have $100M the car is still a lower fraction of your net worth than for most people. Also I would consider a car like that to be more like a piece of art, something you have because it's nice. Like a mansion. Nobody needs a mansion.

Also, there are diminishing returns to having a high net worth, i.e. every successive 2x increment matters less. No surprise there are goods on the market that are trying to counter this effect.

And I'm not even sure all of this is "evil". Italy wouldn't look anywhere near this nice if the rich people of the past hadn't splurged big on status symbols. Even in the United States where philanthropy is included in the portfolio of status symbols (or perhaps is even the major status symbol) you can see the positive effects. What Rockefeller did with much of his money was good and useful.

I didn't call it evil. I mean to say it's baffling. A mansion makes sense! I don't want one but see the appeal: it's extremely durable, can be handed down for generations, can potentially improve day-to-day quality of life in a number of ways. I literally don't see what a $2MM car gets you than a $500k car doesn't.

What does an $800 meal get you that a $200 meal doesn’t?

Really, probably not much? A $200 meal is already --- except I guess maybe for very high-end Japanese --- pretty much topping out the scale. The Salon at Alinea is ~$200; you can pay $100 more to go from 14 to 18 courses, but, as someone who's eaten at Alinea before, I wouldn't recommend that.

Anthony Bourdain has a whole chapter about the $800-meal phenomenon in NYC in Medium Raw, and, long story short, those people are getting rolled.

> I literally don't see what a $2MM car gets you than a $500k car doesn't.

Front line valet placement in LA/NYC/Miami. When everyone has $500k cars, you need to go higher if you want them to keep your car out front. It’s a status thing.

Do you own a house? Those come with non-trivial continuing expenses and time investment to maintain (or more expenses to have someone else manage the work.) I assume a mansion would only scale up in expenses from there. Plus taxes go up too. Perhaps that’s part of the appeal to just spend the money on a car instead. Myself, I’m not much of a car person, and am currently content to rent. Everyone values different things.

> I literally don't see what a $2MM car gets you than a $500k car doesn't.

$1.5MM in conspicuous consumption. The ability to burn through cash for no practical benefit is how much of our society signals success.

Every beautiful old building, never mind, say, the pyramids, probably represents a lot more relative wealth and suffering than any modern toy of the rich. It's implicit in the amount of hand work you can see in old stuff.

Do you need someone to actually say out loud that they would not build a pyramid like a pharoah? Meanwhile, I just want to know what the actual attraction of a two million dollar car is.

My point is that building a pyramid with thousands of laborers is not a thing you or I are considering. Nor is buying or designing a two million dollar car. These are just things that exist in the world. They might or might not appeal to your sense of aesthetics.

I'm not saying you should somehow suppress it if a $3M car makes you sick to your stomach, like you saw someone punching an orphan. It just seems arbitrary and crazy and I have a creeping horror that more and more people are like this.

Do you think that if someone enjoyed reading about the pyramids, was fascinated with them, and said "yes, I would build a pyramid like a pharoah if I could", that they ought to be sanctioned, punished, or shunned?

Do you feel that way about art too? Most of these cars are more like works of art. Sure as transportation it doesn't give you anything more, just as an original Warhol doesn't give you anything more than a print.

To put it in perspective, if you have $10k in your bank account, does $200 seem like that much for a car?

You buy a Bugatti simply so you can say you have one. It's a status symbol. It's an expression of power.

Is it really that much better than a Ferrari F8 with bearer bonds duct taped to the hood?

There's no accounting for taste.

Someone could steal my bonds. They can't steal the roof of my car.

If you have disposable 250k, spending $50k on a car is pretty normal. If you have disposable $100m, spending $2m on a car may not seem that big to the buyer either.

It's a Veblen Good

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

It will probably go up in value and its fun, if you have that much money, so why not?

Because it shows that you have the money to buy a $2M car.

Conspicuous consumption, no more, no less.

because you're rapt in the trap of materialism and run completely by "the devil" (selfishness)

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