I own a watch from a brand of comparable quality and complexity expertise as Vacheron Constantin. I don't use it display purchasing power - I almost never actually wear it because I like to wear my Apple Watch most of the time. When I do wear it, I am almost never around anyone who would recognize the brand of the watch. Essentially no one I personally know is aware of how much I paid for the watch, no one has ever commented on the watch specifically, and I do not bring it up in conversation even when I wear it.

In other words, I own the watch because I enjoy it for its own sake. It's a beautiful piece of handcrafted machinery. It's not supposed to have superlative practical utility, nor does any serious watch house actually strive for that. These timepieces are a form of art, and whether or not you appreciate them has no bearing on the fact that their manufacturers are under no illusions of their practicality.

Don't generalize your perception of the entire industry based on your experience or preconception of a relatively diminutive portion of its consumers. There are people who buy Rolexes because it's a good way to show off money, but there are many other people who honestly buy them because Rolex genuinely manufactures high quality mechanical watches. My experience as a collector is that most people do not buy these to show off. Rationally, a Vacheron Constantin is an inefficient vehicle for doing so - it looks pretty, but virtually no one will recognize it nor even comment on it.

Yeah... or the owner just appreciates horology and the cost is less meaningful to them because they are wealthy. I own a cheap mass produced mechanical watch. Its about ten times more expensive than the cheapest Casio with date and time. But that's not a lot of money to me compared to the pleasure of seeing the mechanism work as I drink a coffee and start my day. Mechanical time is a good remi der time is passing in the real world. The abstraction is closer to your own existence because of the motion. There is more to the experience of owning a thing than the thing itself. Computers are wholly uninteresting devices for calculating flips in bits, pushed and marketed by the dreggs of capitalist society. No normal person needs enough computation to model nuclear explosions in their pocket. Obviously.

> These are pure Veblen goods

I collect and restore fountain pens, and I have to disagree. There is surely a segment of the market that this fits well (Montblanc, for instance), but the majority of the fountain pen market is < $100.

For example, I have three pens with me today: a TWSBI Vac700, a Pilot Falcon, and a Sheaffer Snorkel. The TWSBI and Pilot are modern and cost $70 and $110 respectively, but the Snorkel is vintage (1958) and I paid $35 for it.

Excellent modern fountain pens can be had for <$20.

A psychologist said that for some people these kind of objects are a modern ethical way of owning a slave - someone dedicates one year of it's life to meticulously create an object that you then buy, essentially being your slave for a year.

The fundamental difference between slavery and employment is that employment is a) compensated and b) opt-out. So it'd be better to say that for some people these objects are a way to hire someone to do something for them, which doesn't sound all that profound, does it.

The point was that the something to do for them was waste one year of your time. I'm not saying that the other party didn't get anything out of it, just that the whole point of the exercise was to control someone with your money, and waste their time, just like the rich people which buy a bottle of Crystal and then they just spill it onto the floor.

Are you seriously saying that the master watchmaker wasted _his_ time making the watch?

That's ridiculous, he (or she) doesn't do it just for the money, the work itself is satisfying entirely separate from the monetary compensation. I'm sure he could find a job with pretty much the same income but less responsibility and therefore less stress if he felt like it but then he wouldn't have the satisfaction of building such an object.

I don't make watches but I do write some moderately complex software (I try to avoid it being complicated). It pays me the money that I use to feed my family but that is far from the only reason I do it. It is a satisfying endeavour in itself, sometimes just to see the customer's delight in using the finished article and sometimes my own delight in achieving a neat and efficient solution.

Back to physical things, I used to be a test equipment designer and the one thing I regret about moving into software is that I can no longer show my creations to people like my wife and have her see even a slight glimmer of what I have achieved.

That idea doesn't really seem at all comparable to slavery, and I'm curious which specific psychologist has ever staked a claim like that. It seems utterly inane and insulting.

Sounds like a psychologist of the armchair variety to me.

What psychologist said that? That doesn't seem coherent.