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On quibble: I don't foresee the market for luxury and sports cards drying up any time soon (as the author suggests). A status symbol is still a status symbol: t
by ender7 12y ago
On quibble: I don't foresee the market for luxury and sports cards drying up any time soon (as the author suggests). A status symbol is still a status symbol: the main value proposition of an expensive car is to be expensive [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- majormajor 12y agoYes. This has been my experience at all whenever my younger relatives (ages 10-20) see a nice (to them defined as Tesla or European and fast, it seems) car. Kids still like toys, even with smartphones and the internet. And they'll most likely grow into adults who still like toys. Car ownership patterns will probably change (students living on campuses and young professionals will probably have much less need for a personally owned car in the next decade or so), but there's two pretty big car markets that won't be threatened by that: luxury status symbol cars, and utilitarian people/stuff-movers. Uber and all the "fleet of centrally owned self-driving cars" talk is useless to someone who needs to keep a stash of items for their kids in their car, and needs space for their kids' friends, and needs that vehicle several times a day for family/commuting purposes (I don't think UberMinivan would really take off...). Owning won't be practically replaced by renting for every use case, and there's a lot of use cases for personal vehicles out there that fall outside of the typical HN perspective.
- deciplex 12y agoThe main value proposition of an expensive car is to impress people in that expensiveness. So what happens if nobody gives a shit?