Rejecting taste weakens cultural capital and elevates raw wealth as status.

Evidence

Yet in the past we did rely on stauncher notions of taste to encourage the very radical innovations idolized today. Taste was a powerful signaling cost—a nonmonetary way to keep certain styles and artifacts within the confines of certain communities. By rejecting taste, omnivorism weakens cultural and subcultural capital to the point of nonexistence. As a result, raw wealth becomes a more obvious criterion for status distinction. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 775

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Taste functioned as a nonmonetary barrier preserving innovations within communities. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 775; Omnivore poptimism replaced critical taste with permissive eclecticism. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 744; Awareness of culture’s mechanisms destroys the ability to hold earnest taste. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 751 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Under the culture industry the concept of taste has become obsolete. #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 68
• Consumer culture degrades culture because capital takes over the powers that criticized it #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 47
• Fine art loses aesthetic value when removed from its creative location into wealth #expands (0.75)
• Prestige seeking replaces genuine enjoyment in cultural consumption #corroborates (0.75)