Luxury Redefined
The concept of luxury comes from some combination of Latin, Old French and Old English and generally meant excessive extravagance. It was generally considered in olden days to be decadent, bordering on offensiveness. But then society decided to change all of that a few hundred years ago and the concept of luxury turned more benign, or at least less troubling. It became a standard of extreme comfort that may have gone beyond pure necessity, but was not so much disdainful as nice to have.
I am a self-admitted liberal who believes in most things that advance the common good even at some and sometimes high cost to myself. Liberals are often challenged as to whether their views are abstract and theoretical or if they are prepared to bear the cost directly. Recently, my texting red pals, both of whom are residents of Florida, and quick to tout the libertarian wonders of the state as it is getting more and more so under the governorship of Ron DeSantis and the endorsement of its most prominent resident, Donald J. Trump of Mar-A-Lago, got into a finger-pointing exchange with me. Since I choose to live in California and the state enjoys a number of liberal extremes in line with its overall liberal leanings of the moment (admittedly, California tends to swing widely on that index over the years with the likes of Reagan and Schwarzenegger juxtaposed against Jerry Brown and Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy out there against Pelosi and Feinstein), they love to admonish me about things that the state stands for but which bother them. Such is the issue of homelessness. No one likes homelessness and most of us are somewhat threatened by its proximity and randomness, so its an easy target.
The facts that were posited to me were how it felt to be living in a state with such high state income taxes with equally high homelessness levels. The obvious jibe is whether we would like a homeless shelter in our neighborhood. Strangely enough, one of those red pals is committed to drug rehabilitation (their daughter was a serious drug addict for years and now runs rehab centers as a business) and is quick to say he would welcome a rehab center in his community. For somewhat less personal reasons and on very ideological grounds, I say that I welcome and respect the homeless since they need somewhere to live too. While I have not had to face that issue first-hand, I have made certain decisions along the same lines. I have chosen to and am quite outspoken about not wanting to live in a gated community. It offends me to live so exclusively that I need to hide my life behind the walls of a gated community. That enclave form of life has a certain security logic to it, but to me it is neither justified nor particularly effective. I have hung my hat on what I think of as a Pearl Buck metaphor that you can’t build your walls high enough to keep out social injustice that comes about due to inequality. My response to all of that has always been that the only way to keep your walls from being breached is to work towards leveling the social and economic playing field and to do so for your own benefit if you must be self-centered.
Luxury, if thought of in the classic and historical sense, is certainly about differentiation and is the epitome of the sort of decadence and offensiveness that leads to gated communities. LVF (Luxury Vinyl Flooring) is an example of the more modern or refined version of luxury. The replacement of that great leveling flooring known as linoleum has been modernized and called LVF and it is the best of luxury in that it certainly adds a form of comfort to life that is anything but offensive. It seems almost humanizing and within reach of anyone. We watch HGTV enough to know that every renovator of a home (whether in Waco, Texas for $200k or in Newport Beach, California for $2 million) serious considers and often uses LVF rather than the bespoke and exclusive hardwood or stone shooting. I like that LVF and polished concrete have become much more broadly desirable than expensive wool carpeting or mahogany floors covered in hand-knotted Kilim rugs. That is my kind of luxury redefined.
Yesterday, I arrived at JFK and needed to get a rental car to take me up to Connecticut. When I booked on Jet Blue, they have a new Paisley service which is a fancy name for cross-selling that every travel company engages in. They wanted to cross-sell me a hotel room and a rental car, as per usual. They suggested I could save 35% by booking through them and their promotion worked. That was a big enough discount to make me feel that I would be stupid not to use them. It meant I would have to use Avis versus my regular go-to of Hertz, but so be it, it was not exactly a big downgrade, so I went with it. As I went through the process of booking the car, I found that their definitions of “full-sized”, which was a Toyota Camry, seemed more like a compact to a big guy like me. I didn’t need to feel luxuriant, but I also didn’t want to feel like a sardine either, so I booked based on the car and went to a Chrysler 300, which seemed more full-sized than not. I suspect I managed to eliminate my 35% discount and then some by this adjustment, but by then I was too far in, so I went with it. By the way, rental car prices are WAY up from what I remember. It cost me $600 for two days and if you has asked, I would have thought it should have been a third of that. But then I was told it was a Luxury Rental.
When I got to Avis JFK there were no Chrysler 300 to be found so I was given a Ford Explorer. When I found a boxed meal for two under the front seat, I told Avis that I needed a clean car for my Luxury Rental. They gave me a Chrysler minivan. Suddenly, I realized that Avis had inadvertently put me back into an LVF situation. They had redefined luxury, but in a good way. The way John Travolta did in Get Shorty. Suddenly, a minivan was luxury.