Birkin bags and other impractical luxury goods are simply a signaling device. Humans care about what other humans think. This is often good, as the negative fo

Birkin bags and other impractical luxury goods are simply a signaling device. Humans care about what other humans think. This is often good, as the negative formal and informal sanctions of peers is what keeps the human animals from murdering each other. Birkin bags and luxury goods are a mostly harmless byproduct of this human desire for approval. In writing this comment, you are signaling to your HN peers how Nobel and virtuous you are, in that you only care about things like art and writing—-hoping for internet points in return (just as we all are). The problem is, the government does not have unlimited resources, and most of us lack the intrinsic motivation to do anything useful for others. If given everything for free, we’d like to think we’d spend our time creating great art and inventions—-but really we’d probably spend 99% of our time on Netflix and social signaling.