81–90 of 92 posts
Sounds related to but subtly different from a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good .
Considered as an informastion and signalling good, Veblen goods start more closely resemblin Giffen.
Sounds related to but subtly different from a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good .
The difference is that Veblen goods are luxury goods whereas Giffen goods are inferior goods ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good ).
I don't have a theory fully worked out for this, but I'm half convinced that rents in HCOL coastal cities fit into this framework. Sure, it's nice living in San Francisco, but you can get the same or better weather in smaller coastal towns, get more space and live better on a cost of living adjusted basis in a whole lot of other places. But still people come to the big cities and struggle to make it financially. The…
Veblen goods are an information adjunct to a complex state that the buyer wishes to communicate more clearly. In this, they're related to a broader Gresham's Law dynamic, where the complex state is a "good coin", and the Veblen good makes communicating the "coin's" value, and differentiating it in the marketplace, more effective.
Though there may well be a rents dynamic to this as well.
HCOL cities, where housing decisions and dynamics are driven by earning rather than signalling characteristics, are rents, but not information goods in the sense of Veblen.
(A high-status, marquee, mansion or apartment more closely resembles a Veblen good, though for signalling purposes this cannot apply to an entire regional housing market.)
My theory about the meteoric rise in US undergraduate tuition since the early 1980s is that colleges and universities realized they could turn undergraduate degrees into Veblen goods.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A HCOL city brings a bunch of things together that you can't get all together elsewhere. Critically: 1. Jobs 2. People 3. Events/activities You can pay the San Francisco premium and have a massive job market, a million people to befriend/date/learn from/etc, and thousands of activities and experiences to engage in constantly. Or you can live in a small town with far fewer job opportunities, far fewer people, and far…
That explains the draw of SF vs Monterey, but not necessarily SF vs Houston. Why do the most prestigious cities reliably stay the most prestigious cities, if not for the prestige itself being the draw? As I said, I'm grasping a bit because I'm not sure I fully grok it. But there is something that would be lost about Manhattan if it became cheap. I believe it's not just the three items you list, but also the concentra…
Urban rankings are quite surprisingly durable, with the US being among the worse examples of this, given, say, the rise and fall of numerous formerly-great cities, say St. Louis or Detroit, or to a lesser extent Boston or Philadelphia.
Globally, Rome, London, Paris, Tokyo, and other major metropolises have sustained themselves for centuries. In cases, millennia.
The Bay Area's biggest risk is likely its high cost of living given induced housing constraints. If an alternative centre emergess, as Los Angeles did in the 11920s, following the 1906 fire and earthquake, plus San Francisco's transport and water limitations (neither the bridges nor Hetch Hetchy existed at the time), as well as LA as a resource hub (oil). That advantage remained until the 1990s defence contraction, which hammered Los Angeles.
If you really want to see durability of prestige, though, look to universities. Virtually all the great mediaeval European universities remain notable, and several (Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Leipzig) remain world-class. In the US, Harvard and Yale (among others) pre-date the country itself. Even in California's public university system, founding campuses Berkeley ("Cal") and UCLA, founded in 1868 and 1919, respectively, greatly out-rank subsequent expansion campuses.
(UCSB, 1944, Riverside; 1954, Davis, 1959; San Diego, 1960; Irvine, 1965; Santa Cruz, 1965; Merced, 2005. UCSF medical school, 1873, is not a general-education campus.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, see and that's the thing: I simply cannot even imagine having a hobby that would have me spend thousands of dollars. I would sooner switch hobbies. I mean, I don't mind if others have such hobbies -- to each their own. As a matter of fact, I have some friends, too, who are into collecting expensive watches. Yet, I still don't get it, just like in the grandparent comment.
> I simply cannot even imagine having a hobby that would have me spend thousands of dollars. I would sooner switch hobbies. Your imagination needs work. Being on HN, I'd assume that you have at least one hobby that necessitates a significant amount of electronics (gaming console + TV, monitor + PC, laptop). Any one of these (if you actually care about the hobby) will run you thousands of dollars. You'll probably dodg…
Can anyone recall this effect occurring with a software product?
This old piece of common wisdom is probably mostly obsolete now that software is generally sold as a subscription...
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You're all fools! All you need is a good stick and the sun's light and you can tell the time of day! Wasting 30 dollars on a watch! Joking aside, there are people who refuse to ascribe anything BUT utilitarian value to things as a sort of anti-consumerist view. Going to be hard to convert them.
Expensive mechanical watches don't work very well. For all the marketing written about craftsmanship and history and so on, the harsh truth is that they're not nearly as good as keeping time as a cheap digital watch with a quartz crystal. (Casios are rated between and 1 and 0.5 secs/day, while a Rolex Chronometer is rated to 2 secs/day. High end quartz watches that cost thousands can be rated to 5 secs/yr. Of course…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Buying the watch is not the hobby, wearing it is. I'm not sure I see the distinction between "wearing it" and merely "owning it", as they both seem somewhat passive activities (if you'll pardon the oxymoron). In other words, I'm asking, is the hobby one of collecting (as with stamps or coins), or is there something involved in the wearing that is the fundamentally interesting/engaging part of the hobby? Perhaps wha…
As a "watch wearer" I find wearing the watch to be the whole point. If there was a service where I could wear different watches without owning them I would be all over that. If I could only own watches to display them in my house and never take them out I wouldn't bother.
I am, indeed, surprised by that, but only, again, because it seems passive. Is there more to it, like being seen? Seeing others' reactions? I'm genuinely curious.
I also suspect you're unusual, which is why I was hoping to hear from the original commenter. I could, of course, be quite wrong.
> If there was a service where I could wear different watches without owning them I would be all over that.
I did a web search for "luxury watch rental" and found something at least vaguely similar. If those services aren't what you're looking for, maybe that's a business idea, along the lines of pooling/sharing private jets.
> If I could only own watches to display them in my house and never take them out I wouldn't bother.
Seems like a false dichotomy. However, it's closer to the actual practice (as I understand it) of owning multiples units but only ever wearing one at a time.
Of course, I'm lumping "collectors" in with "wearers", but that's partly because it's so difficult to distinguish from external observation and partly because some commenters have described watches as art, something which doesn't generally have an activity it can be used for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is just silly. The majority of the point is signaling, yes. To determine whether or not it is silly, you need to consider the goals. A majority of the point of college for a lot of people is also signaling. Is that silly? Again, it depends. You may dislike comparing an expensive watch to an education, but there are people out there with a lot of money who care a lot more about your ability to look like their…
Not that I care much about signalling, but you can't signal your education unless you bring you degree with you. You can signal your wealth. Wealth generally signals success, and if you're successful no one cares about your education. Formal education also doesn't mean intelligence. You can be super smart and have no degree, and be successful.