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Poemy_Puzzlehead t1_j1wecwy wrote

Artists are a luxury producer?

All of them?

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thetwitchy1 OP t1_j1wfowh wrote

Do you NEED art to live? No.

Is live better with art in it? Yes.

Ergo, art is a luxury item.

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greenbeanbbg t1_j1wk6w6 wrote

ngl most artists are not producing luxury 😭

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thetwitchy1 OP t1_j1wlquc wrote

It’s like any other luxury item: some think it is everything you could ever want, while others think it’s fish eggs and fried snails.

Luxury items are valuable because someone wants them. That’s it.

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natepriv22 t1_j1wmjv5 wrote

That's all goods though...

Marginal utility plays a large role here

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thetwitchy1 OP t1_j1wwo8j wrote

Bread, rice, houses, shoes… none of these are really “something you can live without”.

Croissants, wild risotto, mansions, air Jordan’s… these are all items you really never NEED.

Imho, that’s the difference.

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natepriv22 t1_j1yaql8 wrote

And yet the ones you listed below are worth more than the ones you listed above

That's due to marginal utility theory: "People make decisions on the margin. No one chooses between "guns" or "butter", but between a definite amount of guns and a definite amount of butter.

As an actor acquires more and more units of a good, he devotes them to successively less and less urgent ends (i.e. ends that are lower on his scale of values). Therefore the marginal utility of a good declines as its supply increases. This is the law of diminishing marginal utility."

Source: https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Marginal_utility

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eve_of_distraction t1_j1y8mt2 wrote

According to Collins Dictionary:

"Luxury goods are things which are not necessary, but which give you pleasure or make your life more comfortable."

Let's not overthink it.

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natepriv22 t1_j1yaecj wrote

That's a linguistic not economic definition.

"In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product. The marginal utility of a good or service describes how much pleasure or satisfaction is gained by consumers as a result of the increase or decrease in consumption by one unit."

The definition you provided still doesn't give a proper method of classification of what a luxury good is.

Here is what you're probably looking for:

"In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending."

TLDR: in other words, in a desert full of diamonds, water is a luxury good, while in a city full of water, diamonds are a luxury good.

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eve_of_distraction t1_j1yk50o wrote

>water is a luxury good

Nonsense. Water is one of the basic necessities of survival regardless of the environment. Get out of here with your esoteric relativistic obscurantistism. 🤦

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guilen t1_j1wq3jp wrote

I need art to live. We’re not strictly biology just because we derive that way.

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thetwitchy1 OP t1_j1x6xtd wrote

You need art to WANT to live. You can’t survive without water, but you can survive without beauty.

I agree though; art is more valuable than just “pretty pictures”, which is why AI art sometimes just… doesn’t really fit.

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