I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time lately thinking about the meaning of luxury. Not because I’m drawn to consumption as self-expression—I’m not—but because the question won’t leave me alone. I don’t know why it matters, exactly, but the fact that it keeps tugging at my thoughts feels like a clue in itself.
I’m not the first to feel this way. In The Dawn of Everything, I learn that anthropologists have long grappled with the same question—seeing a culture’s treatment of surplus as a key to understanding it. Some Native American tribes, for instance, saw giving their most prized possessions to an enemy as the ultimate display of wealth. (Apparently, it was a power move.)
This example speaks to a deep human need for recognition—a drive that feels almost inextricably entangled with the idea of luxury. Monty Python, ever attuned to human vanity, has a brilliant sketch where wealthy men compete to outdo each other with tales of the poorest childhood. It works because it exaggerates something we all sense: how elastic the notion of riches can be.
Henry David Thoreau offers another memorable moment in the same vein. In Walden, he wanders through the New England countryside, passing farms and mansions, and feels rich precisely because he owns none of them—because he’s free. It’s an appealing thought (at least to this reader), though not without irony: Thoreau’s year of isolation, of course, was made possible by a sizeable private fortune.
Recently, I witnessed a three-act drama that made me see luxury in a new light. Act One unfolded six months ago, when the extended family gathered for Christmas at my parents’ house—and the dishwasher broke. It was an old model, made by a German brand synonymous with quality. The price tag towers over the competition, but it’s said to be worth it—not just because it lasts longer, but because when it finally does break (as even the best machines do), it can be repaired. That a luxury brand now markets itself on fixability might have seemed odd to my grandmother’s generation—but there you go. Times change.
Act Two unfolded recently—again at my parents’ house, again packed with extended family. My folks are as far from flashy as it gets, but they appreciate quality, so they’d sprung for an updated model from the same German brand—the Rolls-Royce of dishwashers. After just a few months of loyal service, it broke. There was no way around it: once again, the whole family had to take turns washing up by hand. (Which, to be fair, is actually kind of nice—a good moment to chit-chat.)
Act Three is unfolding in real time—and it’s a slow burn. It turns out this German marvel is such a delicate creature that, while it can (probably) be fixed, only certified technicians are allowed to touch it—lest the warranty be voided. And since those technicians are in short supply, my parents have been left waiting nearly a month for someone to come and tend to their finicky machine.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is—but I’m convinced there is one.
Trying to decode its symbolism, I find myself thinking of William H. Davidow’s classic book about Intel’s turnaround—from near-bankruptcy to becoming, for a time, the most valuable company on Earth. I’ve written about that book before, but here’s the part that sticks with me: Davidow beat the competition by redefining Intel’s core value. While others sold devices—many more powerful than Intel’s—he sold products. The difference was service. Buying from Intel meant more than just hardware; it meant a lifetime of support. It sounds obvious now, even corny—but only because that move reshaped the entire tech industry.
Apple, I think, is the clearest contemporary example. People are willing to pay a steep premium because A) the products just work, and B) if something goes wrong, Apple’s got your back. And they really do. As a lifelong Apple user, I’ve had my share of malfunctioning machines—and every time, I’ve been struck by the generosity of their service. No outsourced call centres, no scripts—just direct access to people who know what they’re doing. And they’re relentless. However old your hardware or random your bug, they won’t let up until it’s fixed. I’ve had back-and-forths that lasted days—always ending well.
Bundling premium service with great hardware clearly works—but my parents’ dishwasher reveals an interesting failure mode. They’d have been better served by a cheaper model that allowed them to choose their own repairman. The fact that they didn’t—and now can’t—not only reflects poorly on the so-called Rolls-Royce of dishwashers, it also devalues the machine itself in a very real way.
But there’s more to it than that. The story also hints at a broader shift in how we perceive value—away from the product itself and toward what I reluctantly have to call user experience. Or more precisely: a shift in the centre of gravity from hardware to peopleware.
Ellen Ullman—whose thinking I admire not just for its depth, but for its tone and stance—captures this beautifully in Life in Code : A Personal History of Technology. Reflecting on the idea of disintermediation, she imagines a future in which interaction with actual human beings becomes the ultimate luxury:
In the internet age, under the pressure of globalized capitalism and its slimmed down profit margins, only the very wealthy will be served by actual human beings. The rest of us must make do with web pages, and feel happy about it.
If human interaction really is becoming the rarest—and most sought-after—commodity, I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing.
Contrary to Ullman’s class-struggle framing, I find something hopeful in the idea that no matter how shiny your gadgets are, they’re useless unless a human being can help you fix them. There’s hope in that. It revives an old truth—one my grandmother would have recognised: the best things in life are free.