Keith wrote: > MS certainly gained national and global attention because space travel is > still a rarity.
Isn't rarity (exclusiveness) inherent to real "status goods"? When "everyone" can have it, having it is no longer a matter of status. In the old days, a car was a status good, and ordinary people used horses. When cars became cheap enough for "everyone", horses became rare, so the horses became a status good for the rich. In their early days, cell phones were a status good. Now that everyone has to have one (or more), NOT having a cell phone (i.e. not being a slave who is "on call" 24/7) is a sign of status! So the content doesn't really matter. Rarity/exclusiveness matters, because it is the hallmark of privilege. > But I haven't > noticed any great mass desire to see the clouds lift from a close view of > the Himalayas, or the night-sky in a totally non-light polluted region, or > the aurora borealis, or coming across a family of tree frogs in a rain > forest. . . You're not up to date with the tourism industry. Getting away from overcrowding, pollution and noise is the real value today. (Not only in tourism but also in housing for the rich.) The silent places are rare... > Neither you nor MG have refuted Fred Hirsch's original argument that the > really high-status objects or services of this world would only be > destroyed by mass consumption. That's a truism in the sense that status depends on rarity. But that doesn't mean Hirsch is right on the content -- e.g. in space, there's plenty of space for everyone... If "everyone" can afford space tourism, the super-rich would no longer be interested in it -- not because space would become too crowded, but because space travel would no longer be their rare privilege. Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
