Geographic arbitrage of scarce goods can manufacture great taste

Evidence

A shortcut for great taste is arbitrage, finding easily procured things in one location and then deploying them elsewhere where they’re rare. Stylish teenagers from the Bronx in the 1970s would avoid shopping on nearby Fordham Road where everyone bought clothes, and instead take the subway down to Delancey Street in Lower Manhattan to buy “nice and fresh” clothes unavailable uptown. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 259

Categorization

• CANDY: Bronx teens riding the subway to Delancey Street for fresh clothes is a delightful concrete vignette.
• XREF: Relates to earlier chapters’ point that imitation and distinction complement each other (ch4); geographical distance substitutes for social distance. — connects to: Standards of taste are relative to an era and society, not universal criteria; Globalized production erodes the territorial basis of authenticity claims — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 274; Manufactured scarcity and disposability sustain value by regulating perceived demand — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1879 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Manufactured scarcity and disposability sustain value by regulating perceived demand #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1879