Sublime

The bottle service club today pitches Goffman’s “action” to the world’s new elite; it encourages the rich to flaunt their riches, to display wealth for display’s sake. Bottle service clubs are predicated on conspicuous consumption, a term coined, in 1899, by Thorstein Veblen, the quirky Norwegian American economist.

From 1980 to 2005, the weight of the materials used to produce a dollar of GDP fell about 30 percent on a worldwide basis, or 1.2 percent a year. Because output grew more, there was a 45 percent increase in materials use overall.

Credit card income represented 40% of Macy’s profit before its recent bankruptcy.

These are all highly contestable statements.

From the perspective of the individual, there are four principles of plenitude. The first is a new allocation of time. For decades, Americans have devoted an increasing fraction of their time and money to the market—working longer hours, filling leisure time with activities that require more income per unit of time, and buying, rather than making,

The swap market just for used children’s clothing (0 to 13 years) is estimated to be between $1 billion and

In such a society marginal value has become constantly self-transcendent. It forces the few largest consumers to compete for the power to deplete the earth, to fill their own swelling bellies, to discipline smaller consumers, and to deactivate those who still find satisfaction in making do with what they have.

An uncanny economy has emerged in which a secure, middle-class lifestyle receded for many, but the material trappings of middle-class success became affordable to most. In the 1960s, it was possible to attend a four-year college debt-free but impossible to purchase a flat-screen television. By the 2020s, the reality was close to the reverse.