the rich person would just hire poor people to buy their trivial consumption items for them, both to get better prices and to put downward pressure on the pract

the rich person would just hire poor people to buy their trivial consumption items for them, both to get better prices and to put downward pressure on the practice. that's not even a particularly ingenious solution, but that's the kind of thing i mean by underestimating our collective ingenuity. the transactional value of money is not inconsequential, but people absolutely do all kinds of (silly) things for status (see social media), moreso than just for transactional value.