I am fairly certain from context that by "we", he means "white collar professionals in the US/Canada/Europe who make a very comfortable salary and have all of their essential material needs already met by an overabundance of choice"

But I also wouldn't say that shopping for cute handmade weird custom things is essentially an activity of some extreme elite. Once people in any culture have lots of disposable income they'll do it. Here's a video from a few days ago of shopping for traditional hand made jewlery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Language is Dari. Farsi/Persian speakers should understand it OK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_titl...

If there were a sufficiently large population of Afghans with a reliable, secure online payment method, and HSPA+/HSDPA/LTE data services on their android phones, I have no doubt that those products would show up on the Dari language version of Etsy. At present probably less than 1% of people nationwide have any form of credit or debit card.

Ecommerce is exploding across Asia, across populations where not only do most people not have credit/debit cards, but they may not have bank accounts either. Various forms of electronic money and good old cash on delivery are bridging the gap quite rapidly.

I'm usually one to call out HNers for being in a sheltered bubble, but in this case I'm not sure it's far from the truth, as long as you only include those in developed countries. I grew up in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. My own parents and my friends' parents were all earning barely above minimum wage. But nobody really even struggled to own essential items like pots and pans, bedsheets, shoes etc. Most can even afford their own car if they want to. Even the poorest are well beyond material necessity. I think maybe you just set the bar between necessity and luxury a bit too high.

Americans just love to spend, I heard drone makers in China say Americans have money and leisure, they buy anything.

Seems like you haven't been to South Korea for example. I see makeup shops literally on every corner, tremendous mall culture (which is sort of dying in America) and highend stores are jam-packed with newly minted millionaires.

Here is how Costco in China opened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfO4gpML4g

Not to say Americans don't love to spend, I think America has exported this culture to the rest of the world which is that every holiday is an opportunity for sale, put debt on credit card and get addicted to the dopamine rush of shopping. I don't think its unique to America anymore.

There is no need for the shopping culture to be imported anywhere, it already existed pretty much everywhere. Just check out the malls in the first world and the local markets in the less developed places

I think the difference here is that is this of "everyday people" or just high-earners, Costco only has several stores in China and remains a high-end exotic market, drones are still expensive "toys" here, new iphones often cost a month's salary or more. The drone makers have a reason to be amused at how much Americans love their products.