"virtue signalling"? Nobody even sees me doing this. Signalling to the squirrels?

Political reasons? You bet! Everything we do is political. We are /zoon politicon/. I do things the way I do them because I like it this way, and if by doing them this way I contribute to the mainstream leaning one lifestyle closer towards what I consider comfortable then: yes, this is all terribly political.

That reasoning illustrates the problem exactly. You should have read the article until the last line, I'll quote it here for you:

> That is our failure, and it's a failure brought about to a large extent by bad policy that tells us we can't have nice things, because nice things are for the rich