That reminds me of a quote from the book "The Billionaire Who Wasn't", about Chuck Feeney, co-founder of DFS, who secretly donated $8 Billion to various charitable causes until he was outed:

“Since my earliest days I have been frugal, but I am a frugal person in that I hate waste, at any level,” says Feeney, who always wears off-the-peg clothes, a cheap plastic watch, and reading glasses of the type sold in book-stores. “If I can get a watch for $15 that keeps perfect time, what am I doing messing around with a Rolex?”

I beg to differ :). For $30 you can buy a quarz-watch which will be quite accurate and work for some time. For a really well-made and durable basic quarz watch you have to pay a bit more. And far beyond that, you can easily see where the money goes if you handle a more expensive watch.

The question is: what is luxury? Is it anything beyond owning the most basic device that will perform its task for a short period in time? Is wanting a decent robustness and longlevity a luxury? I don't dispute that high-end watches have a high silliness-level as they are extremely expensive for little to no gained practical value.

For all the recent talk of the energy cost of bitcoin, it would seem a far greater amount of energy (money, time etc.) is expended on making things that are slightly worse than other options that are available, but more exclusive and therefore sought after by some part of our monkey brains.

I've always wanted to start a luxury brand called TAKEN.

"Wow! What kind of watch is that?" "I got TAKEN!"

The ultimate Veblen good.