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How does "ostentation value" fit into the categories of "value in use" vs 
"value in exchange"? 
 
Allyn Young (1876-1929) touches on this, and on the question of our 
cynicism, in a chapter on "The Meaning of Value" reproduced in the volume 
edited by Perry Mehrling and me, Money and Growth: Selected Papers of Allyn 
Abbott Young (Routledge, 1999), thus: 
 
"... If diamonds of good size could be produced at low cost, the demand for 
diamonds for personal adornment would be likely to decline rather than 
increase. If the price of moving picture theaters were, by reason of a 
supposedly high cost of production, greater than the price of grand opera, 
doubtless it would follow that moving pictures would 
become rather more fashionable than grand opera, and would be given in 
theaters offering every opportunity for the ostentatious display of wealth. 
But we should not allow the undoubted truth of these facts to lead us to 
the conclusion that the expenditure of money over and above the amount used 
in the purchase of necessities is merely a form of competition in what 
Thorstein Veblen calls "conspicuous consumption".  
 
There are many people who love diamonds... not because they are expensive, 
but because of their real beauty. And doubtless the great majority of those 
who listen to grand opera will continue to go there because of the real 
appeal of that combination of musical and dramatic art and not for any less 
worthy reason. It is easy to be cynical, but the thorough cynic rarely sees 
more than the surface of economic life." 
 
Roger Sandilands 
 
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