alt Hacker NewsFrom a purely utilitarian point of view, the price of a Louis Vuitton bag is unjustifiable.
But from a social signalling perspective the price makes sense, it’s a way to show that you have lots of money.
Anyone who would need to “save up” to buy such an overpriced item (even if it’s “pretty”) is merely trying to fake being in the “I’m very rich club” which if they aren’t really, they could probably do with spending their money a bit more wisely.
For a Playdate, the cost is high for what it does, probably because it doesn’t have economy of scale compared to more popular hardware, but it’s still at a price point that’s affordable to an average professional, compared to a Louis Vuitton bag which is not.
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But isn’t the scale not really relevant? There’s entire classes of luxury that are exactly the same thing to people who can own an LV bag. Saving up to buy a faberge helicopter or whatever it is.
I’m not fully sure how to articulate the thought. But it’s that looking at specific instance details distract from looking at the pattern in the abstract. Or that the first order costs don’t really tell the story. It’s the second order: percent markup for practical vs. prestige that tells a story.
>But from a social signalling perspective the price makes sense, it’s a way to show that you have lots of money.
I think it's not purely an outward facing signalling.
I remember attending a lecture by a former Apple designer on design and what people want. Their claim was that people buy products that represent the people that they want to be.
This isn't people buying Louis Vuitton bags to show others that they can afford to buy them, this is people buying things because they want to be the kind of person who buys those things. The values attached to those archetypes vary considerably. Apple tends to promote an association with quite virtuous properties, creativity, intelligence, and independence. They are not targeting a customer base of independent, creative, and intelligent individuals. They are targeting people who would like to be independent, creative, and intelligent.
I think there are only a small fraction of purchasers of Apple products who buy them so that others will think that they are creative, independent, and intelligent.
That is probably something that changes by values. If someone has values that are more closely aligned with the perception of others, then they are probably more likely to choose products that 'signal'.
I find the playdate interesting. I like retrotech and I have made emulators, and unnecessarily low level whatchamacallits, but the playdate doesn't speak to me. It seems like a kind of whimsy that is not aligned with my own whimsy for some reason I can't really discern.