[surreal]

Without commenting on whether the product is worth the price (I don't know enough about HiFi quality):

There is a bell curve of purchasing mentality - from a minority who buy solely based on what's cheapest, through varying degrees of cost/benefit tradeoff, through to a minority who will tend toward whatever is most expensive. It often pays to offer something to that latter group.

[tormeh]

This. Fashion and luxury is crazy. Sales may increase as you increase the price.

This video explains the Swedish concept of "vasking", essentially throwing expensive liquids down the drain to demonstrate how little their price tags matter to you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhEpMJ3n_wU (it's also hilarious)

Making stuff that people use exclusively to show off is such a great business that the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity.

[furyg3]

Why doesn't this work with taxes? I feel like the US government needs to steal some marketing team from champagne companies...

I mean, only the very rich can voluntarily pay 95% of their income in taxes! Nobody else can do that! Go ahead and try to beat me!

The more you believe paying taxes is a 'waste of money' the better it works!

[gruntled]

Luxury isn't necessarily crazy, it can be rational economic signaling: http://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-veblen-goods/

[alexbecker]

My favorite example of this is drug dealer's cars. In Gang Leader for a Day, the author recounts how lieutenants in a Chicago drug gang who made only 30-40k/year had to spend almost all of it on their cars, and often had to live with their mothers as a result.

[omegaham]

This applies to a lot of jobs. Lawyers at certain firms are expected to wear expensive clothes and drive nice cars; the guy who drives a Geo Metro to work and wears a "meh" suit is frowned at. Even more ridiculous is the fact that like the drug dealers, the fashion is driven by the richest people, and the less secure and wealthy folks follow.

There's a great book called The Millionaire Next Door, where they look at the spending habits of millionaires. One of the things that stuck out was the fact that a lot of these people have "boring" jobs that don't have "face" to keep. No one really cares about what the owner of a janitorial company or a welding supplier looks like, so there's no pressure for him or her to have the Right House or the Right Car or the Right country club memberships. In contrast, the book notes a couple of doctors and lawyers who are really active in their professions' social scenes and are living paycheck-to-paycheck despite earning far more.

Personally, I like my Shittic (beat-up Civic that is missing half the paint). Every month that it keeps running is another month that I don't have to make a car payment. My girlfriend winces every time she sees it, though...

[glesica]

> the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity.

Or an inability to keep a straight face through an entire sales pitch. I doubt the effect works if the sales person or market copy actively mocks the buyers' intelligence.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

In a society with ridiculous and increasing inequality, you make a fortune by investing in what the ultra-rich and the very poor will buy.

[icebraining]

How does that fit with Apple rolling in cash?

[zaphoyd]

There is probably more than one way to make a fortune. That said.. Apple's upcoming watch product appears to be employing this strategy.

[Udik]

>Making stuff that people use exclusively to show off is such a great business that the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity.

This must also be the reason why this kind of manufacturing is prominent in Italy, where any faith in humanity is long gone.

[DanBC]

I don't mindthat people make, sell, or buy these stupid cables.

My problem is with the dishonesty that often comes with it. There are some companies that are not crooks but mostly it feels like an area full of scams.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They're not really selling technology. They're selling consumer narcissism and status display.

This kind of thing is extreme, but it's no different to any other positional good.

And it is full of crooks.

I know someone who made a fortune from 'special' cables.

Did they know they were scamming people? Of course they did.

[sokoloff]

The dishonesty is inextricably linked, though. Otherwise, those products just don't sell.

Asking otherwise would be like saying, "Oh, I don't mind all that water; it's the wetness that often comes with it that I mind..."

[colinbartlett]

That's the difference between this crap and high fashion, which leads a far more respectable existence. Lots of people pay huge prices for Louis Vuitton bags or Christian Louboutin shoes. Easily 100x times the price of comparable alternatives.

But those companies don't advertise their bags as having more "stuff holding power" as the average purse. Or "unparalleled foot retention and lifting capability".

[wodenokoto]

I was thinking the same. If just 5-10 rich guys ask their personal shopper for the best setup, "money not an object" and the shopper buys these cables, then it was worth it to set up the entire thing.

[sharpest]

As far as I know its just a Ethernet cable and that means that there would be no difference to the "sound".

It does have an extremely high bandwidth at 100 gbps (gigabits) but unless you have a audio file that requires 10 gigabytes per second then it is completely useless (Uncompressed audio is at most a few hundred kbps).

Also the pure silver and other features would not make a difference to sound quality.

So I would say go buy a $5 Ethernet cable as the audio is digital and the receiver will either get the packet or not, the cable can't damage the sound quality unless it's analog.

[cnvogel]

> it does have an extremely high bandwidth at 100 gbps

Please don't believe even this (technically sounding) claim! You cannot specify the "bandwidth" of a cable, so even if they'd write 2Tbit/10km it would be just as made up as what they are writing now.

What you can do is to specify physical parameters, such as attenuation at specific (most interesting: high) frequencies, distortion and reflection caused by impedance mismatches at the connectors. Then maybe it will meet the requirements to transport Ethernet accodring to the standard, and under the conditions specified therein (1000Base-T, IEEE 802.3ab), carrying 1 GBit/second over up to 100 meters.

100 GBit Ethernet, for what it's worth, is currently planned to go through these kind of connectors: https://www.google.de/search?q=cxp+connector&tbm=isch

And while the cable being sold might be well shielded enough, and using a dielectric that allows it to exceed the attenuation requirement of Gigabit Ethernet by huge amounts, 100 GBit/s is so far off the scale that I'm pretty convinced that with current technology this is completely unattainable, even under best laboratory conditions.

[rb12345]

It's worth noting that the 100GigE standards only allow copper cabling up to 7m (or 30m at a push). Despite the advert's claims, 100m is fibre-only at this point.

[tonyedgecombe]

I've seen this in my own business. In my last full time job (18 years ago) my time was charged out at £150 pre day, I setup on my own and started charging the same customers £600 per day.

The difference in the way the customers treated me was astounding, I was exactly the same person in the same clothes with the same knowledge but they valued my skills more just because they were paying more.

[Sealy]

Would anyone then agree that this could be a marketing ploy? After all, given that we've all clicked on it to see what its all about, hasn't it worked on us?

Something I learned from startups is that PR is an underestimated force. Could this be for PR?