BEYOND VEBLEN GOOD AND EVIL
HELLO, chums! DO YOU LIKE TO SMOKE? Are you also an asshole? Are you troubled by thoughts that you’re naturally superior to others, but have no way to prove it? Is your cigarette pack empty? Perhaps you can find a solution to all of these woes with a pack of luxury… Treasurer Cigarettes.
The product’s only selling point is that it is the most expensive brand on the market. There is no real branding narrative. Nor anything about a special method of production or formula going back to Turkish fields or old Virginia. They do not use tobacco shavings from Winston Churchill’s old cigar stubs.
But wait, just how expensive, you ask? Whoa-up and hold-down there, my fine chumley. Back the “F” up, good bro. A true gentleman doesn’t talk about money (because he has it). If you have to ask how much a luxury item costs, then it’s not a product for you. Go smoke some Parliaments with the rest of the petit bourgeoisie, you slob.
However, as your humble narrator is no longer cowed by class signifiers (since my exile from the mainland) he did his research and found that the average pack of Treasurers is going to run you about $67 a pack. And since they’re only sold in certain elite locations (e.g. London, Burbank, Chiyoda-Ku, International City, Chavannes-Pres-Reves, Yerevan, Ogdenville, North Haverbrook) you’ll have to have them shipped to you by the carton. If expensive is what you’re looking for, it shall deliver.
Much like Hennessey, Cristal, Jaguars, diamonds, sneakers, rhino horn, pangolin meat, children, iPhones, and Warhols, Treasurer Cigarettes are an excellent example of a “Veblen Good.” These products are expensive because they’re expensive. The more outlandish and conspicuous their consumption, the more they conveys social status. Burn, money, burn!
It’s a marketing trick that violates a basic “rule” of capitalism, that higher prices will naturally lead to lower demand. In this case, higher price lead to higher demand because of social cache and value perception.
VEBLEN GOOD II, WRATH OF KHAN: A.Q. Khan is a Pakistani metallurgist and physicist who received his education in the West in the 1970s, then returned home with stolen nuclear plans and built a series of bombs for his nation. Khan recently justified his actions by saying that it was a way to prevent “nuclear blackmail” against his country, as the USA doesn’t seem to attack places that can strike back with nukes (North Korea, Russia), only those who seem to be without them (Libya, Iraq, Venezuela *SPOILER*).
Which ok, fine, might be a good point. But Khaaaaan did something far more important than help his nation, he helped himself. Being a wealthy, celebrated, and influential nation hero also had its appeal.
Drawing upon his powers of influence and his superpowers of moral turpitude, Khan had a weekend home constructed along the shores of remote Rawal Lake, that he would have all to himself and his family. There were plenty of other lakes and bodies of water nearby, many of them larger and more scenic.
His location of choice had a special appeal because it was the water reservoir for the nearby city of Rawalpindi and its population of two million people. Authorities had long restricted any sort of construction or development in the area, fear fear that the runoff would contaminate the water supply. It was a rare act of good government in one of the most corrupt nations on Earth.
A.Q.K. pulled some strings and had his house built there, just to show that he could. Not wanting to be outdone, many of the nation’s other big-shots were having their own weekend houses built up there, as well. Eventually, it just became the hip thing to do. Rawal Lake became more toxic and dangerous than Crystal Lake on Friday the 13th.
FROM THE ARCHIVES! In a final example of Veblenism run amuck, Bill Koch, Jr., one of the two Koch brothers not presently involved in the policy end of the family ecocide business, once paid $400,000 to buy a few bottles of wine believed to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson. When their provenance came into question, Bill spent an additional $23 million on detectives and other resources(?) to find the truth and catch the guy responsible for the fraud (Check out the 2016 film Sour Grapes for the hilarious details). Much respect to the detectives, btw, who milked that billionaire teat quite handsomely.
One must wonder what old Thomas Jefferson would make of this guileless, 4th-born idiot son of House Koch who should have gone to the Wall on his 18th nameday? What would he think of this person paying the equivalent of a small town’s yearly budget to verify a 225-year-old bottle of vinegar?
I’d imagine that a genteel aristocrat and refined slaver would give a thumb’s up! And yet, an anti-establishment revolutionary and enlightenment intellectual would likely cross his fingers behind his back and give a thumbs down. So complex. A man of true contradictions!
Don’t be a capitalist dog. Be a capitalist, dawg!
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