[nitrogen]

I wonder if you're confusing reality with Rand novels. As far as I'm aware (since I'm not one of them), most wealthy people aren't trying to impress anybody. They're just enjoying their lives, relatively quietly. The incentive provided by wealth is not status, but enjoyment. A BMW is much more enjoyable to drive than a Buick. Go ahead and pry all the logos off my car, it'll still be more fun to drive.

What's more, "status" is only a proxy for wealth and power. Status is only as useful as the additional influence it brings. Consider it from an evolutionary biology perspective: higher status means higher capability to support mates and offspring. If you take away the additional wealth that brings higher status, then the higher status is lost as well, as it doesn't actually signal a higher capability to provide.

[khafra]

I love my old M3, but I wonder if it falls in a special category distinct from other luxury items--as Aldous Huxley said, "speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure."

[ericd]

I was just going to mention BMW - when I drive one, I'm definitely not thinking about other people, just the machine and the road.

[alsomike]

Right, but why do you even need a proxy, why isn't it enough to just have money and power? It's because other people need to know.