Commercial airplane tickets are divided up into coach, business class, and first class. In 2014, Etihad introduced The Residence, a premium experience above first class. The Residence isn't very popular.

The reason The Residence isn't very popular is because of economics. A Residence flight is almost as expensive as a private charter jet. Private jets aren't just a little bit better than commercial flights. They're a totally different product. The airplane waits for you, and you don't have to go through TSA (or Un-American equivalent). The differences between flying coach and flying on The Residence are small compared to the difference between flying on The Residence and flying a low-end charter jet.

Even in the rare situations where it's slightly cheaper than a private jet, nobody should buy them. Rich people should just rent low-end private jets, and poor people shouldn't buy anything more expensive than first class tickets. Why was Etihad's silly product created? Mostly for the halo effect. The existence of The Residence boosts Etihad's prestige which, in turn, boosts the soft power of Abu Dhabi.

The Residence shouldn't exist. If Etihad wasn't a state enterprise, then The Residence probably wouldn't exist. That's because there is a price breakpoint in the airlines' industry. Below the breakpoint, everyone flies commercial. Above the breakpoint, everyone flies private.

Luxury Products

The word "luxury", like the word "art", has been profaned by marketing. Personally, I define a "luxury" product to meet the following criteria.

• There is a price breakpoint above which the product is fundamentally different.
• A small minority of consumers (for a reference class) use the product above the breakpoint.

"Rich" is relative. In the case of flying, the breakpoint is "private jet", which costs tens of thousands of dollars. In the case of wasabi, the breakpoint happens much cheaper.

Wasabi is a popular condiment eaten with sushi. Most of the products marketed as "wasabi" are made out of horseradish.

Real wasabi comes from the grated roots of the wasabi plant.

The green paste you squeeze out of a tube markets itself as a luxury product, when it really belongs to a different class of product on the other side of a price breakpoint. I call this faux luxury.

Product Bifurcation

Many production factors can cause a product category to bifurcate into luxury vs mass-market. In the case of airlines, this happens because "private airline" is all-of-nothing. Either an airplane flight is private or it is not. In the case of wasabi, the bifurcation happened because real wasabi plants are expensive to grow, so manufacturers created fake wasabi to fill the demand.

Generally speaking, civilization gets wealthier as technology advances. Private jet flights are at a record high. Real wasabi production is higher today than at any point pre-Industrial Revolution. In absolute and relative terms, these luxury products are more available than ever.

However, other luxury products decrease in use as civilization gets wealthier. "Maid" used to be a major industry. Then washing machines and vacuum cleaners were invented. Labor-saving devices are the horseradish of personal servants. Having a personal maid is better than having a washing machine.

But having a washing machine is much cheaper than having a maid. Super-elites kept their servants, but most people switched to horseradish. For the former-maids now working in the modern service sector, this was a major step up.

In the case of servants, eliminating women's most common urban job was a net positive. Not all of these transitions were so benign.

The Death of Live Music

Are you single in your mid-20s and thinking to yourself "I'm a decently-attractive man/woman. I have my life put together. I've got a basic social competence. So why is it so hard to find a mate? Something is wrong with civilization. I feel like it shouldn't be this hard."

You're not crazy. This is a situation where "the good old days" really were better. It used to be easier to find a mate and technology destroyed the social institution.

Here are the primary systems we're left with.

• Church. This works great except for the problem that God isn't real.
• Dating apps. Dating apps are tailored to man-style filters. Women have a bad experience because they can't filter properly. Men have a bad experience because there aren't enough quality women.
• Singles meetups. Singles meetups are tailored to women-style filters. Men have a bad experience because they can't filter properly. Women have a bad experience because there aren't enough quality men.
• Work. You try to flirt with someone and then get fired for sexual harassment.

Now imagine how the perfect meeting-people-of-the-opposite-gender institution would function.

• It would be a physical place people go just to have casual fun.
• There would be something special which draws everyone to the place.
• There would be a social equilibrium that drives an approximately 50-50 gender ratio.
• People would interact in short voluntary male-female pairings of approximately 5 minutes. Or you can just hang out.
• These pairings would be extremely high bandwidth. Each person would learn a ton about their partner. Each person would learn what the other person looks like up close, how they feel, how sensitive they are, how dangerous they are in a fight, how they communicate, how clean their clothes are, how empathetic they are, and even what they smell like.
• Both partners would naturally build a little chemistry or, at the very least, measure their collective chemistry.
• You could have plausible deniability of your intentions. Sure, you might meet someone hot, but you'll have a great time even if you don't.

I'm not describing an imaginary theoretical utopia. I'm describing an actual social institution that used to exist. It's called a dance hall and the pairings are called partner dancing. There are many varieties, including waltz, swing, and salsa. Dance halls used to be the place young people went to hang out [and find mates].

Why are dance halls niche these days? There are many factors, but the single biggest one is recorded music. It used to be that all music was live. Live music was a coordination point where everyone could form new social connections. And once you're there you might as well dance.

Recorded music is the horseradish of dance halls. We live in a fallen world and if we were collectively rational then our civilization would find a way to severely limit the recording and electric transmission of artificial music.