A Quote by Ludwig von Mises
It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business.
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I'm not in the luxury-goods business. I sell unique objects. I wish I was in luxury goods because then I could just call the factory and say, 'I need 10,000 more of whatever.' But I can't - because then it's not art, it's something else.
Capitalism improves the quality of life for the working class not just because it leads to improved wages but also because it produces new, better, and cheaper goods.... Indeed, with capitalism, the emphasis shifted to producing goods as cheaply as possible for the masses--the working class--whereas artisans had previously produced their goods and wares mostly for the aristocracy. Under capitalism every business wants to cater to the masses, for that is where the money is.
Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.
People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.
You can't do business with a man who doesn't know the meaning of a contract. You can't do business with a firm who swears they'll do one thing one day and does just the opposite the next. You can't do business with a company who takes your goods on a cash basis and then pays you off in bum harmonicas.
I'm suspicious of the idea of architects acting like business executives, brand managers, or purveyors of luxury goods.
Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
We want to help U.S. entrepreneurs, small business owners, and brands and companies of all sizes sell their goods to the growing Chinese consumer class. Chinese consumers will get to buy the American products they want. This, in turn, will help create American jobs and increase U.S. exports.
I don't think it ever does any harm in any business to feel that there is someone there who cares about it. If you look at any business, fashion being the most obvious, the aura, or the reality of the designer, is part of what creates it. It's true in luxury goods stores and in good food stores. It leaves a palpable sense that someone cares.
When a small business grows like eBay did, it has a multiplier effect. It creates other small businesses that supply it with intellectual capital, goods and services.
If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man.
The boom for luxury goods is unending. There are people who never have to worry about whether they can afford something they like. In one part of the world or another there will always be someone with money to spend on luxury.
Luxury is obviously the direction that interests me the most, but there is a lot of confusion between luxury and exhibitionism. For me, the concept of luxury is more traditional, more exclusive, more sophisticated than luxury for the masses.
Business exists to supply goods and services to customers and economic surplus to society, rather than to supply jobs to workers and managers or even dividends to shareholders.
I want to spread the message in the U.S. that there are good philanthropists in China, and not all are crazy spenders on luxury goods.
It never really understood its own situational luxury. And I think that by and large the privilege of being Kehinde Wiley in the 21st century, making these high-priced luxury goods, traveling the world, pointing at these people, behooves me to have a point of view and to say something about it.
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