Capitalism optimizes for wealth accumulation, not for utility. If an entrepreneur can sell a false but appealing image for millions and move on, why would they spend their time inventing anything concrete or meaningful? It’s a lot easier to sell a viral video of a revolutionary product than it is to invent and sell an real revolutionary product. So why innovate then, if you can just green-screen it and get the same result with less effort?<p>This article is a fascinating study of the increasingly post-material world we live in where images without substance - signs, signals, and abstract statuses - determine the true price of things. Think of the Supreme brick. It’s all about signaling that something has value, like Dollar Shave Club, and in our bizarre economy, that empty signal <i>becomes reality</i> - the image alone eventually is what <i>gives the useless thing value</i>. The fact that in reality they just resell cheap razors made by someone else using a technology - the mail - that Sears used 100 years ago doesn’t matter; they simulate innovation, and so they are innovation. God this shit sucks.