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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) by crafoo on Tuesday August 08 2017, @05:02PM (2 children)
It's a farce. Opera was entertainment for the common person. Now it's "old" and therefore cultural and more dignified.
Seeing Iron Maiden perform "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" live is a much more relevant, entertaining, and culturally-significant experience than any opera.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:13PM (1 child)
It's a farce. Opera was entertainment for the common person.
A quick reading of the Wikipedia page for opera shows this to be incorrect. It started out as entertainment for courts (i.e., nobility), and wasn't until later, esp. with German opera, that it became aimed at the masses with ticket sales.
Seeing Iron Maiden perform "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" live is a much more relevant, entertaining, and culturally-significant experience than any opera.
I don't know where you live, but here in the US, while I happen to be a Maiden fan myself, if I started asking random people I'd have a very, very, very hard time finding anyone who even knows about this song, or who would want to see a Maiden concert. I don't see how something that obscure can be called "culturally-significant". I'm sure an Emerson, Lake, & Palmer concert would be extremely entertaining too (if you could resurrect the guys who are deceased), but again, hardly anyone knows who that band is any more so I think it's hard to call it "culturally significant" or "more relevant". Today, what's "more relevant" is going to be whatever stupid rapper is popular. Iron Maiden isn't that much unlike opera: it's "old" and not at all popular currently, but has a dedicated following; the main difference is that much of that following was actually alive back when Maiden had more popularity (80s), whereas no one is old enough to remember when opera was in its heyday in Renaissance Europe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @09:40PM
i'm an expert because I read wikipedia
do you have a certification in wikipedia bullshittier?