firecat

Is there anything that doesn't have other purposes? A bag has other purposes: you carry things in it and perhaps it's an accessory to your outfit. A car has other purposes: you get from place to place, maybe it has good gas mileage (e.g. Prius, which I keep seeing referred to as a status thing in a dismissive sort of way) or it's really comfortable or whatever. Art has other purposes: you like looking at it or it's an investment or it goes with the couch and the wall looked boring. Charitable donations, even the kind where your name goes on a brick or a building, have other purposes. Conspicuous food consumption (truffles or pate or really fancy cheese or expensive wine) presumably tastes good, or at least interesting.

I mean, there's a point where you can look at any of those things and say that the cost per marginal value is so high that you must be looking at spending for the sake of spending, rather than at what the person's decision would be if all of the available options cost the same, but I don't know that that's an objectively determinable point.

I feel weirdly like I'm defending the existence of high-end luxury goods. This is strange because I don't, as a rule, like high-end luxury goods (except for some art, and some furniture). YKIOK, IJNMK?