Quote:
Originally Posted by Manque
I think you are wrong. It is gauche and tasteless to buy a watch or a painting or a crown for the purpose of letting people (general or subset) know you have a lot of money. I maintain that type of fellow would want a watch that looked more "obviously" expensive than a tourbillon.
sigh. my point is that while it may be "gauche and tasteless to buy a watch or a painting or a crown for the purpose of letting people (general or subset) know you have a lot of money", it is very difficult in some cases to discern someone who buys certains items for those reasons from the people who buy them for the other.
let me explain since that reads poorly:
100% of people who buy a diamond studded platinum crown and wear it around during the day are trying to let people know they have lots of money.
some % less than 100% of people who buy picassos, etc, etc, pateks, etc are trying to accomplish the same thing. since there is a significant % of people who are buying things like picassos for other reasons than to show off their money, it is hard for an outside observer to label a person who buys a picasso as "someone just trying to show how much money they have," because they risk being a false positive.
this still somewhat misses my point: the diamond crown guy is going around purposely flaunting to everyone his money. the picasso guy does not necessarily signal "i have a lot of money" and doesn't signal to everyone. you buy a picasso, it impresses a certain set of people who care about such things, and doesn't necessarily go "nyeh i have a lot of money" to the general public, or even a subset. it signals a certain level of wealth to a certain subset of people, while simultaneously conveying good taste. the guy who buys the picasso could alternatively buy a bag of diamonds to display on his dining table, but then he would be conveying a lack of taste again.
like i said, i don't care to argue this point more but i think (imo) that i'm pretty clearly right. different people want to signal different things to different sets of people. a person wanting to convey to members of "the elite" that they belong to that set would want to buy a nice patek or something like that, as opposed to a diamond crusted rolex. a person wanting to just let everyone know they have a lot of money would buy the latter.