The Consumer as King

Abstract

Power and status were once the privilege of the aristocracy. Indeed, France’s Louis XIV (1638–1735) made ostentatious display of wealth, power, and status an essential element of his leadership. The opulence of wealth by the aristocracy served the dual purposes of displaying the relative position of royalty and its lords in the king’s court, while at the same time bleeding lesser elites dry of financial resources that might be used in rivalry to the royalty and others.

Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

(William Shakespeare, King John, 1595)