GameBlame wrote:
Your problem is you're a socialist so you don't appreciate Western Capitalist Decadence
I do have an instinctive anti-consumption reaction, it's not so much decadence as people measuring human worth by wealth, which is obviously absurd to anyone who has spent any time around first-generation international rich people who are for the most part boring, rude and selfish with bratty children. I prefer relatively poor people because they tend to be kinder, funnier and more interesting.
GameBlame wrote:
You like new cars, and you know about cars, but the average age of your car during your ownership is 5 years old. For a PCP buyer it's 18 months. In Ireland, like it or not people judge themselves and other on 'how well they're doing in life' by the car they're driving. Old car = I'm a failure or you're a failure. People who drive old cars are the cranks.
I like new cars because they have cool new features, like power assisted brakes and electric windows.
I come from a culture where rich people (or at least the interesting, polite and generous ones) tend to drive old shitboxes, or old classics, and so I tend to judge people that think nice new car = successful person (regarding themselves or others) as grasping aspiration proles.
GameBlame wrote:
And I say that as the owner of a succession of Panzer Luxobarges, the annual motor tax of which equates over 3 years to a €6k top-up on a PCP. I think you buy new cars because you like control. You want to know it was serviced properly and not abused. Psychologically, in car terms, you have Madonna-Whore complex. I have a worse problem. I have a Grab-a-granny fetish

You have excellent taste.