LA DOLCE VITA

Will we reach the promised land if luxury leads the way? Have Plato's healthy cities become a myth? The stock markets are singing an old tune 

-  Sujit Bhar

IN Plato's Republic, one of two cities is healthy, the other has "a fever". The latter, said Plato, was the luxurious city. Dwelling on Socratic dialogue, Plato argued that the difference is that the citizens of the latter "have surrendered themselves to the endless acquisition of money and have overstepped the limit of their necessities". Plato's main character Socrates (not his guru Socrates), finds communities in the luxurious city living beyond the natural limits of necessity. He finds the healthy city sustainable, limiting consumption to actual needs, and the luxurious city unsustainable, because it lives beyond its needs.

That was authored in 375 BCE.

Back to today's news: As Tesla stocks tanked over the last couple of weeks, CEO Elon Musk lost nearly $200 billion of his wealth, a world record. That brought back to the top of the pile, as the richest man on earth, Frenchman Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault, co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy. He had been there before, but, like a good old wine, the stock has matured further.

The luxurious city has not only survived, but has grown beyond the expectation of all wise minds.

Assimilating this within a general social perspective, let us get one thing clear: luxury matters. LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton SE is the world's largest luxury goods company, and Arnault has an estimated net worth of $182.8 billion as of December 2022, according to Forbes.

Forget Plato's apparent prescience; flip through any business journal that cares for reality checks, you'll see the world predicting a recession. Switch on any news channel and a possible collapse of the Chinese economy is in sight. Yet, the luxurious city's walls remain high and straight, protecting its communities in cocoons of invulnerability.