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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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