Gib, it makes some sense to me, as sense means nowadays
keeping up appearances by buying into the good old Madison avenue bull of literally buying what everyone buys to make one happy.
I feel ashamed by driving a run down lemon , rattling down the street, looking straight ahead for shame , course over worrying about what my more proximate neighbors think .They got used to the eccentric guy across the street.
Why worry? Alfred Newman started to say way back generations ago, but that too has been converted by Madison ave into am iconoclastic oddity.
So worry is good, it makes you into a shopoholic, bit every one knows that without those nice things, nice upscale neighborhoods it won’t be long until a solid unto lesser values commences, and in place of humorous understanding, the new neighbors will create a ROW, or worse.
So the incentive is to buy into it. Besides, what would happen to the urban myth of not buying American , the US would slide into a varience of a banana republic
They say, only in America can some people afford to be idealistic. Sad!
In addition, only in America can people become so devalued , if they can not keep up, that once the slide begins, they say forget it, might as well go all the way and enjoy the ride, since it will be waaaayyyyy faster then the upward one.
Lets live a while , drop out and see what it looks like at the bottom of the heap
Here is a true story. The owner of Kodak, back during the times after the roaring twenties, had a net holding of 600 million, which in today’s worth would be probably 20 times more. He lost everything but a few tens of millions, resulting in his suicide. A friend of mine told me this and I am yet to verify. Which I will soon.
Bit the jest of it lies in the fact that not everyone can take downward mobility, and if you are upward mobile, you set yourself up into a kind of machine from which there is no let up. Downward mobility, means letting go, may it take you wherever
Bit here is the clincher. Lwrtong go is unheeding in its constraint of having no center, where it can be said , wheeeey, atop mow, the regression must stop, this is a good place to get off. Just so that I can be centered here. Most are unable to do this. Remember the unibomber?
He got over his head, he was a.Harvard educated genius and now serving I don’t remember how many life sentences, its risky business.