Luxury is not quality

Our family of country mice went to the city and had a great city weekend. One thing that’s healthy about being in the city but not working is it reminds me what living in the city is like. I lived in New York from about 1990 to 2005 so it really isn’t a foreign place or anything but still, it’s getting pretty far back there in my past.

I noticed a hair salon with a number of high-end Macs they were using to make appointments with customers. Now, you can make the same appointment on a $150 Chromebook that you make on a $3000 Mac. But that’s kind of the point: anyone can make an appointment on a $150 Chromebook and get their haircut somewhere. Only some people can make their appointment on a $3000 Mac and get their hair styled in a facility that pays $20,000 a month in rent.

But is the hair styling any better? If a human being opens the door for you and calls you “sir” is there any difference to when the robotic automatic door opens at Walmart?

I’m all for quality. Food: we are in a CSA, have a garden, raise our own sheep, keep bees. Quality is important. I can see that it might be the same with clothes, even a camera, or anything.

But I think there is a type out there that is a confusing luxury for quality. Luxury is a con. You are either fooling yourself or someone is fooling you and laughing at you behind your back. That’s luxury. You are paying for nothing, fluff, or an illusion. You get what you pay for? No, sometimes you get something quite poor for a very high price. It looks nice on the plate. The reviews of the restaurant are good. But its mass hysteria: the food is not actually high quality.

On the topic of dogs in the city, I noticed that some people definitely have a dog as an accouterment to their overall lifestyle. The same luxury/quality dynamic is definitely playing out in the business in which I find myself participating. I just can’t do participate in the luxury con. It’s not in my nature and it’s morally questionable.

Anyway, we had a terrific time in the city and did some high-quality activities, and none of them were inexpensive in this case.