I never understood the demand for luxury watch businesses.
From what I have heard, it is widely used as a tool to transfer value (read $$ laundering). I do not know how prominent it is but if so then we might want to look at it from the utility perspective (to achieve that goal) than the "brand" story.
The Brand Age
261–270 of 403 posts
Re: The Brand Age
#262[deleted]
Re: The Brand Age
#263Watch nerd here. Watched this just yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYMWRUMOeA
Looks like PG drew inspiration from there. Or just a coincidence
Re: The Brand Age
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
More and more I realize I am completely obvlious to all of the class signaling happening here. I couldn't imagine spending that much on anything, let alone a watch. And I certainly wouldn't think someone wearing that did, either. I feel bad for the folks who pick up on stuff like this, that must be a heavy weight to bear constantly comparing yourself to other people.
Ironically a desire for such social signalling requires being poor enough that you believe the item is worth a vast and near unobtainable amount of money making it seem like a very impressive signal to you. That’s what makes these items desirable. As in these signals can be a sign of just how poor you are as opposed to how wealthy. A classic case is when you observe teenager targeted status signalling trends. This ca…
Yep. I'm in a European city, most of the people driving Mercedes and BMW cars are, if not outright poor, low-status, low-education, low long-term wealth.
The old money drives beat-up cars (often Swedish made, US imports for enthusiasts, or old-style 4x4s for outdoor pursuits) and are more likely to take taxis. Young, highly-educated BoBo types walk, take transit or cycle.
Just-above-poor neighbourhoods have a much higher proportion of flash cars than rich ones.
Re: The Brand Age
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality". It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a cheap quality watch today. For some product types there is no better alternative, like ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have negative brands, and there…
So the cutting edge things are happening in places where brand doesn’t matter. I could think of better examples but moldbot/clawdworld comes to mind. Or ASML, or national lab physics, or cheap attack drones, or.. idk can anyone think of better examples? And “brand age” (as a broad moniker) is another way of saying innovation has stagnated.
OpenClaw is an exception to your list. It’s easy to spin up an OpenClaw alternative (you can even fork it), but not clear how to significantly improve its function. You may argue that name recognition (what OpenClaw relies on today) is separate from brand; but if a competitor becomes popular (perhaps by offering slightly better security), unless OpenClaw can make a significant functional improvement (like better OpenAI integration, since OpenAI hired its creator), the only way I can imagine it regaining market is via brand.
Re: The Brand Age
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
innovation has stagnated because businesses have driven us to stagnation. Very few businesses provide any real value - the ones that do are running circles around everyone else - given the lack of ability, businesses turns to other, less useful methods of prying our money away from us and largely succeed because consumers are gullible and malleable.
ah the classic "most people are mere sheep, unlike us Great Minds"
Where did you get that from that comment?. It seems clear to me that it was meant were all consumers.
Re: The Brand Age
#267The watches mentioned carry status for a certain sub-group of the population.
The utility stems not from the functionality of watch itself but from what it signals to other people.
It’s a simple status games. PG, like every other human being, also plays status game. But not with watches.
He plays with a different group of people. With different rules for status gain/loss.
Maybe it's: who has the better blog, or the better investments. I don’t know because I don’t live in his world.
Re: The Brand Age
#268Or BYD vs BMW.
BYD is more reliable and arguably better by metrics that matter to people.
BMW still has more cachet and is bought largely for the brand value.
Re: The Brand Age
#269When the tech tops out, the ecosystem moves from natural selection to sexual selection.
Re: The Brand Age
#270A rich relative arranges charity balls.
Her friends buy 20K tickets to them and in return she buys tickets to their balls.
The money presumably goes to some good cause ( her thing at the moment is some rare pediatric neurological disorder ) and the organisers get to socialise with each other and wear millions in clothing and jewels.