Upper-class luxuries historically become mass necessities through production cost declines
Evidence
That the luxuries of one generation or class become the necessities of the next has been fundamental to the evolution of capitalism during the last five hundred years. Historians describe the “consumer boom” that ignited the first industrial revolution in late-eighteenth-century Britain, when, thanks to visionaries like Josiah Wedgewood and the innovations of the early modern factory, families new to the middle class began to buy the china, furniture, and textiles that only the rich had previously enjoyed. This new “propensity to consume” is considered “unprecedented in the depth to which it penetrated the lower reaches of society.…” In 1767 the political economist Nathaniel Forster worried that “fashionable luxury” was spreading “like a contagion,” and he complained of the “perpetual restless ambition in each of the inferior ranks to raise themselves to the level of those immediately above them.” Adam Smith wrote insightfully on this social process, noting that upper-class luxuries can in time be recast as “necessaries.” This occurs as “the established rules of decency” change to reflect new customs introduced by elites, triggering lower-cost production methods that transform what was once unattainable into newly affordable goods and services. Ford’s Model T is the outstanding twentieth-century example of this progression. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 801
Categorization
- XREF: Adam Smith’s transformation of luxuries into necessaries connects to the luxury-to-necessity dynamic, and Josh Cohen might be the person to share Varian’s rich-people-have-personal-assistants line with. — connects to: Modern working class has more to lose than its chains; Luxury goods shifted from craft to mass-produced status markers; Mass production made goods affordable by exploiting high volume and low unit cost. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 89
- SHARE: Adam Smith’s account of how luxuries become ‘necessaries’ as rules of decency change is a framing any economist or historian of consumption would enjoy.
Broader Connections
- Luxury goods shifted from craft to mass-produced status markers
#exemplifies(0.92) - Modern working class has more to lose than its chains
#exemplifies(0.72)