Luxury goods play the role of being status symbols of the owners - and are often bought as such for this purpose. They are indeed an expression of self interest & indulgence - most of us tend to think that those who have enough and more, would at least be as open to thinking about others as those who don't. But turns out, the more you have the less likely you are to think of others - that's what this wip research done by a professor duo from Harvard and London Business school says. (You can read it here http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-034.pdf) . In testing amongst those primed towards to luxury vs. those who were not, it shows that people exposed to it are more likely to be less considerate towards others.
Back home - its probably evidenced in the number of people in the top income bracket that pay tax. While there are many larger implications of this idea, the researchers are in particular looking at what it means for business. For starters it makes me question the weirdly high remuneration and kick backs that the finance industry personnel enjoy. (sour grapes ;)!) But from a business's point of view - the only thing that matters is creating shareholder value and less considerate towards society hardly means less effective right? Likely that they serve as an excellent incentive (think all the goodies that are bait for sales guys) As a build would be interesting to see the linkage of luxury with performance - so more luxury is less considerate, but does it also mean more focus on performance?
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