Maybe better to read “appearing” as “appearing to have”. Even if you limit yourself to talking about sexual selection, the argument is that modern industrial ca

Maybe better to read “appearing” as “appearing to have”. Even if you limit yourself to talking about sexual selection, the argument is that modern industrial capitalism has brought about a sea change in how that functions. Whether you stick with evolutionary biology and say that regardless the end goal is to get laid is irrelevant; he argues the mechanism has changed in important ways.