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Conspicuous consumption persists today. But just as the patricians of classical times changed their habits once the masses gained the ability to copy them, so too have modern American elites recoiled from accumulating mere goods now that globalisation has made them affordable to the middle class. Instead, argues Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at the University of Southern California, in "The Sum of Small Things", they have begun consuming the fruits of "conspicuous production": socially worthy things like fair-trade coffee. They also emphasise "inconspicuous consumption", of services like education. Far from making the world more egalitarian, this shift, in particular, threatens to entrench modern elites' privileged position more effectively than the habits of their predecessors ever did.
[...] Rather than filling garages with flashy cars, the data show, today's rich devote their budgets to less visible but more valuable ends. Chief among them is education for their children: the top 10% now allocate almost four times as much of their spending to school and university as they did in 1996, whereas for other groups the figure has hardly budged. They also invest heavily in domestic services such as housekeepers, freeing up time that the less fortunate must spend on chores.
Rather than frittering away that precious leisure time on frivolities, as Veblen's leisure class did, they devote it to enriching experiences, like attending the opera, holidaying in far-off lands and working out at fancy gyms. Their children, by tagging along and thus absorbing this "cultural capital", develop the sophistication needed to win admission to selective universities, vastly increasing the odds that they will form the next generation's elite.
The rich also throw lavish birthday parties for their dogs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @09:33AM (3 children)
It is an illusion that mediocrities can control top achievers indefinitely. Just a magicians sleigh of hand is enough to open your eyes: What would Harvard do if Asians realized that they alone can found their own new university which would overshadow any Ivy League university? Complain that it is not fair to admit only top-scoring individuals?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 08 2017, @11:21AM (1 child)
Why not? I heard an anecdote once that was how Stanford University was begun--Harvard snubbed them haughtily, and so the Stanfords went off and founded their own university because they were quite wealthy.
The only trouble I can foresee with an all-Asian university is that the Japanese will get ragged on by everybody, the Koreans will split into warring factions amongst themselves immediately, the Chinese will demand xiuxi every afternoon when everyone else wants to attend class, and the Filippinos will become increasingly irritated that everyone's always hitting on their women.
Asians are not a monolith.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @12:46PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 08 2017, @07:18PM
It is an illusion that mediocrities can control top achievers indefinitely.
Correct, that's why you make sure there's some lead [columbia.edu] in their water [npr.org] so they don't become top achievers in the first place.