To this day, high-end automobile companies make cars by hand for the luxury market, and those vehicles still are demarcations of status.

The increased complexity of modern consumer society reflects the increased complexity of our social strata. We are no longer characterized in broad categories of nobility, bourgeoisie, workers and peasants. Our society today has a near infinite number of strata. This has taken consumption as a marker of status to near-absurd levels. Comparisons of products are endless. We compare the square footage of our houses, the engine power of our cars, the number of DVDs in our collection and the size of our television screens. Each slight improvement is another increase in our status. This shift has taken us from a society with only a handful of social strata to one in which the social hierarchy is a continuous progression. This in turn fuels near-continuous consumption in order to...
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