Sublime

Meanwhile, the fragmentation of culture into the “long tail” has diluted the power of taste to serve as an effective means of social exclusion.

In this group of chapters on decline and regeneration, I intend to dwell on several powerful forces that can influence, for good or for ill, the growth of diversity and vitality in cities, once an area is not crippled by lack of one or more of the four conditions necessary for generating diversity. These forces, in the form that they work for ill,

It was the consumption of what Mandeville called ‘fripperies’ – hats, bonnets, gloves, butter dishes, soup tureens, shoehorns and hair clips – that provided the engine for national prosperity and allowed the government to do in practice what the Church only knew how to sermonize about in theory: make a genuine difference to the lives of the weak an

After a certain point, the only people still playing the conspicuous consumption game will be those for whom it is still a useful signal—lower socioeconomic groups, people in developing countries—and those who don't have other dimensions on which they're able to compete. In other words, it will quite literally be a poor man's game.

The consolidation of vast wealth in the hands of a few industrialists, and a burgeoning population of new millionaires, required moral justification.

Now the outward signs of status are often a combination of high art and low art.

These determinants range widely: across income, education, housing, stress, social relationships, and more.

Maybe the new local news is by intellectual vertical, rather than geographic area.