The Block, and the surge in interest in luxury. I’ve argued that what we call an economy is really a trick,…

The Block, and the surge in interest in luxury. I’ve argued that what we call an economy is really a trick, the replacement of the public sphere with a fictitious market of free-floating individuals, interacting. Driven by a sophisticated understanding of social psychology. /1 https://t.co/g0NcLOlX6F

In reality societies are always driven by one thing - conformity, and status. People aspire to be like higher status people, in whatever group, of whatever size. They conform with that status-driven mechanism. The removal of the scaffolding of public institutions to level out…/2 https://t.co/HKUNh1IXnr

…the massive gap between the haves and have-nots, a removal which is what the concept of the economy was designed to do, means the only way for that aspirational status mechanism to function is the emulation of status, in our individual lives. Enter luxury, stage Right. /3 https://t.co/EtfdjLzyqj

Go into massive levels of personal debt, and reproduce the luxury lifestyles of higher-status individuals, inside your own homes. Private opulence, public squalor, as Galbraith once said. You may have also noticed a massive upsurge in European luxury cars, Audis and BMWs…/4 https://t.co/6q5MEIYm0A

…and Mercedes, even in regional communities. All part of the same mechanism. John Howard once said he imagined an Australia where a Rolls Royce drove past, and people said ‘I want that to be me’. That’s the Australia we’ve arrived in. Public squalor, personal (debt-funded)…/5

…aspiration. If you have a go, you’ll get a (debt-funded) go. Conservative politics is smart, it knows how to tap into this social psychology that actually drives societies. Progressive politics has no idea, targeting ‘the poor’ in deeply patronising ways, not realising that…/6

…the poor hate being poor, hate being seen as lower status in that way. It’s why it’s been child’s play for the conservatives to win them over, with aspirational nonsense. Look around and you’ll see the increasing passion for luxury, which grows in inverse proportion to…/7

…wider social decay. Service industries falling over themselves to offer the greatest customer service, the most granular and enriched customer experience. Whether it’s coffee shops, or software platforms disintermediating social processes, or outrageously glamorous watches. /8

All designed to make the buyer feel like the higher status person they want to be. Whether they can afford that or not. And in most cases, the answer is definitely not. Welcome to the end times of the economy, where we watch social collapse from the luxury of our own homes. /end https://t.co/JNnYJycnfz