Watches that cost more than US$2,000,000 are typically ugly a/f because the point is to draw attention to it. When you're worth hundreds of millions or billions, you need to invent more ways to show it off.
Watch collectors, especially if they are Ferrari owners, will probably want this. It's clear some people don't like the tininess of the actual watch face, but this is a side effect of having everything laid out so flatly. It is a technical marvel, and surely will have competitors in the future.
The winding and setting mechanism is a really unique solution.
One of the best looking watches I have ever seen. Truly a mechanical pearl. Also looks quite unique in contrast to basically every other watch looking almost the same.
I disagree. But I guess I find most things ugly that are generally well received. I find almost all cars ugly, almost all watches, almost all laptops etc.
That logo is unnecessary and takes up more room than the watch face. I don’t think this is even for telling the time. I can’t imagine this distinctive look is merely to signal that you have 1.8m on your wrist.
This to me is like Louis Vuitton. I always thought plastering their logo everywhere was ugly.
I really like the thinness. These large watches thick watches with rims I dislike greatly. I also really like the flat metal look. I agree that the logo and other details are not so good. I would have preferred just plain unmarked brushed metal. Even better have a completely transparent face which allows one to see the insides functioning.
You must be new to watches, all luxury watches sell a story along with the watch. Look at the webpage for the Omega Speedmaster. They will beat it over your head that the Speedmaster was worn by astronauts on the moon. Look at the webpage for the Rolex Submariner. They will describe, in great detail, how effective the watch is at deep sea diving, despite the fact that almost no one that buys one will even wear it in the shower.
They don’t care. I have one watch, a 2008 model from a watchmaker that no one cares about, that tells perfect time and has a mechanical alarm. It gets no love and that’s fine with me. This quote about watches from a tastemaker blew my mind:
“… the Italian-born Davide Parmegiani. I met Parmegiani, who is in his mid-50s, at his new boutique in Monte Carlo, where he sells both vintage watches and cars.
He arrived 30 minutes late. I asked him what drives the passion for watches, if not their ability to tell time.
“Sometimes I don’t even set the time on the watches,” he said. “If I want to look at what time is it, I can look at my iPhone.” He held up his smartphone: “This is the only exact time we’re gonna have,” he added.”
Indeed. Note that Swiss Watch exports to Hong Kong alone (7m inhabitants) were more than to the USA (330m inhabitants) in the last decade, until HK's recent demise. Asia is a 3 to 4 times bigger market than North America; Europe is between those.
So, it is no wonder that the number 8 figures prominently.
In 2021, in Swiss watch exports in CHF bn:
to USA, China about 3 each; HK about 2; Japan about 1.5; Italy, Germany, Singapore, UAE, France about 1 each.
1888 is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has the most digits (so far). But it’s probably just to make it seem more of a bargain than $1,999,000.
what sort of yearly income do you need to be able to buy this? I assume people in this tier just pay cash and already own a sizable Ferrari collection.
Otherwise with 30% down. current market interest rates, you would be looking at $20,000 / month to lease it.
So you could flex considerably as a double digit millionaire. Its just fascinating how wealthy some people are and how limitless it is.
i got anxiety from reading it. it almost seems like at the very top, its lonely and dehumanizing when every whim challenge is met leading to time scarcity.
i think the sweet spot is $270MM. 250MM generating 3~5% a year, 20MM in cash. you can buy everything but wouldnt spend it on this watch (you shouldnt)
which means this watch is for ppl with 800MM minimum.
It's impressive that they've actually managed to make the websites for these products as overwrought and unnecessary as the products themselves.
There must be a very happy web design team somewhere in there world that's been told "you don't need to care about any kind of optimisation, our clients will always have the tippest-top computers and phones and so that you get it right we're going to buy one for each of you too, just in case you accidentally do something that makes it work on a pleb-grade device".
This strikes me as a product that the Chinese could copy and mass-produce for -- I dunno -- $500? And it would work 75% as well. I don't see a huge barrier to entry here except for IP, which never stops the Chinese.
Tiny titanium parts aren't trivial to machine and tolernaces need to be tight to get them interchangeable and have them work. Not sure if all the parts are made by conventional machining, if so, probably doable, if it needs chemical etching or EDM might cost more.
From what I understand the Chinese are still working on duplicating far more common movements from the likes of Omega and Rolex. They have certainly mastered the external components, but the giveaway for fake chinese watches is always the movement.
I could be wrong, but I have yet to see a teardown of a superfake where the movement held up to even amateur scrutiny.
Good superfakes of the Rolex submariners come with a cloned movement that looks pretty damn close to the real thing. It's not just a generic movement shoved into a rolex-like case anymore. Either way, all rolexs have closed casebacks, so nobody is gonna even be able to see it. If the exterior looks correct, nobody is going to notice. But, the Rolex 3135 is a 30+ year old movement, so you'd hope modern technology could copy it pretty well by now.
I don't think it's that they're hijacking the scroll wheel, but that there are parts of the page that just don't respond to it. Mildly infuriating to say the least.
The typography really threw me off. Obviously this is subjective, but it gives me a really cheap vibe, like something you'd find in one of those travel gadget stores at the airport. It looks like they just didn't give a shit.
I don't mind the form so much. Obviously it's not a very practical piece, but very expensive limited-run watches rarely are.
It's consistent with the other branding I saw on their website, but that doesn't mean it's good. It makes me think of laser tag and go-karts.
If it works for the people who actually buy their products, or those people don't care what their $1.9M fashion accessories look like, then I would suggest they keep doing exactly what they're doing. But I still think it looks cheap.
Between the minuscule face and the fact that winding A) is overly complex, and B) keeps time for less than two days, this seems like more of an expensive toy than a practical timepiece. As an engineering feat, it is admittedly impressive... but impressive and useful are not synonyms.
In my opinion mechanical timepieces are novelties in the modern era, so I don't think the practicality of a mechanical watch is very important. If you want practicality, a quartz watch will run continuously without intervention far longer than a mechanical one and will keep better time. Better yet, a smartwatch can tell you more than just the time! If you want to make a statement or own a neat piece of engineering though, mechanical watches are the way to go.
Again this is my opinion, but I don't see any reason to be worrying about the practicality of something like this.
It would be pretty trivial to flatten a Casio - or equivalent tech - to this degree. The biggest problem would be battery thickness. If you didn't support charging or battery replacement you could fix that with a standard ultra-thin rechargeable battery and solar power.
OLED panels are less than 1mm thick, so the display wouldn't be a problem.
I'd honestly be more interested in that as a product than in a clockwork Veblen toy.
It's a different kind of engineering, and hard to compare.
The watch I'm wearing today was made in the 1950s, and keeps good time. I'd be amazed if the smart-watches that people are wearing in the office today are still functional in 70 years.
Smooth folding phones, foxy ultraflat watches, I honestly don't know what radiant beauty is next.
The future isn't limping along in the fog, is it?
My blind eyes already paid the price for that video, nobody else has to.
So, anyways, what's the topic today? Italian design?
Arduino and Wiring? Arduino is an inspiring beginner electronics kit, and one of the first. Innovative design.
Maybe open the user immediately into a tutorial project when they open the IDE? It's that Apple unboxing experience, right? You want to reduce the friction, reduce the time between when they open it, and their eyes light up at the blinking lights.
Arduino online stores with code-signed projects? The newer Arduinos have WiFi, but I don't know how the browsing experience is in the IDE lately.
I'm stuck in the CLI, trying to enjoy it again, hoping I don't cause too much pain to users. Which is a messed up mindset in some ways.
I'm disappointed to see this merger of art and engineering received so poorly here.
This pushes the envelope of the possible, something I consider beautiful. It's roughly as impractical, expensive, and awkward looking, as a human-propelled airplane.
I don't think any of the many commenters here who panned this watch would have anything bad to say about a human-propelled airplane. It's a pity that they can't appreciate this object in that spirit.
If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200 flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it wouldn't have been liked as much.
Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered craft possible, after all.
Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry.
I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front page of HN, but a 1.75mm mechanical wristwatch? Gratified my intellectual curiousity!
Because that's just a lightweight version of an old technology. No new value is being added here. Had this watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter etc) I might have found it interesting despite the technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent more money than everyone else.
Indeed, it's a bit like finding it hard to get all that hyped up about the latest Intel i9 whatever-K. Sure it's objectively a monstrous amount of processing on a sliver of matter (just like the one before it), but it's "just" throwing more transistors and fab at the same thing as the [whatever-1]-K.
And then this is basically just an "if you know, you know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K variant is not especially useful in the general case.
the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, or so its said. I'm thrilled to see the envelope pushed but I find seventeen jewel Chinese movements and old soviet designs so much more enriching. they tell a story that isn't just a bourgeois expression of the craft. luch, Vostok, sturmanskie, sugess and shanghai diamond all paint a rich tapestry that bridges history and modern craft, and are refreshingly approachable.
If I had 1.8mm to spend on watches I'd have to figure out what to do with the other 1.7 million, I'm happy to appreciate them on their own terms and from a safe distance.
I think it looks pretty cool, and I agree with gp that it's sad people are so caught up in some weird hatred for watch enthusiasts that they can't appreciate the engineering.
Maybe limits of human hand craft which I assume is the allure of these bespoke time pieces. That said I don't actually see the description mention hand crafting other than polishing and drawing a few surfaces. Otherwise I don't see why this is pushing any envelopes when we can make micrometer MEMS machinery. Which would be pretty slick - theoretical minimum micrometer thick watch mechanism encased in sub millimeter baseplate.
I don't need to design a thinner mechanical watch to correctly point out that they are far from the envelops of possible with respect to modern mechanics. Like this is a neat object but let's not pretend modern watch making is pushing envelopes outside it's niche domain.
These things have become symbols of wealth inequality, and sports cars in particular have become symbols of wilful environmental degradation. Many commenters would hate on a non-technical piece of art that symbolized/promoted the same things.
William Gibson wrote a piece for Wired back in the day about his obsession with mechanical watches.[1] He puts it thus:
```
Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely because they require tending.
And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin.
```
(1): Seems to be pay-walled now but you can find the whole thing in Distrust that Particular Flavor
To me they're the timekeeping equivalent of pole vaulting yourself onto the second floor. A normal person would use stairs, but it's impressive and even cheered on by a bunch of onlookers when someone can do it just by jumping on a long stick.
They're beautiful and impressive, but I find the amount of money that flows into "high horology" to be an sum with an egregious opportunity cost to society, made even worse by the fact that all that complexity goes towards a movement that is worse at keeping time than a rudimentary quartz. If people want Tamagotchis, they can get a Tamagotchi. I wish people would flex their donations to effective charities instead and find simpler luxuries.
The solution of giving away your money over buying something is some broken logic. Plenty of corrupt charity officials line their pockets and live it up on donations. The rich don’t owe society, exactly the opposite, hence the money. It represents an unpaid debt so you can’t turn around and ask for it back.
"The rich don’t owe society, exactly the opposite"
This is precisely wrong. The rich do indeed owe society. They owe their wealth to the workers working for them. To the education system that educated their workers and made them productive, the roads that brought them to work and the health system that keeps them at work.
This is obvious from the number of millionaires produced by healthy, educated, stable societies vs others. Other countries produce fewer and then only natural resource millionaires in the favour of the ruling elites. But they can't do so without labour and the resources owned by those societies. The rich owe almost everything not produced by their own hands.
And comparing the figures of corruption in those countries to that of charities generally is so absurd it's laughable.
> They owe their wealth to the workers working for
> them. To the education system that educated their
> workers and made them productive, the roads that
> brought them to work and the health system that
> keeps them at work.
Assuming that they've paid their taxes, they've paid their debt.
Taxes are the price we pay for society. Quite! Well, a price never fully captures the value to the buyer of what they're acquiring. Otherwise they'd be worse off for making the exchange. We cooperate because we both gain more than we lose from said cooperation. That's a great and beautiful thing.
This is a lazy libertarian talking point. When someone accepts come award saying he owes his success to his family/mentor/agent, it's not an IOU for some cash value.
But even if it was, how would you quantify whether a tax rate captures the full, less-tangible value of what a society provides? If through lobbying or creative accounting, a billionaire is able to reduce his yearly taxable income to $100 then he's met your definition of fully paid-up, when obviously he 'owes' (in the ethical, non-accounting sense) a lot more.
Because society provides more than just economic opportunity, taxes are just one of the things we're required to pay back. We're expected to follow the law or sometimes fight for it (giving up some of our absolute freedoms), to be helpful or follow hundreds of other social conventions. If you insist on reducing all that to a tax rate, then it's so low that it points to a welfare state for the rich.
Indeed, the rich owe society for all these things. The amount they owe is called the price. And the time for which they owe it is from the moment of services rendered until the invoice is paid. Some of them, indeed, weasel out of paying the agreed-upon prices for their inputs. A certain former President comes to mind. But once paid, the debts are clear.
The rich wouldn't exist without society. They owe far more than the average person. Simply maintaining and storing wealth requires rather complex societal structures; before modern society wealth was only a product of power, because without power any schlub with a dagger would come for you. Today's wealthy need a small entourage of security and bookkeepers, but that's a far cry from a whole-ass army.
Oh no. US billionaires do, indeed, have a military. It is the largest, most powerful, most well equipped military in human history. It is the US armed forces. They also have police departments across the country. This is a very large subsidy to these billionaires, as are: mass transit, food stamps, WIC, etc. Without these government services (which the billionaires put in place through politicians whom they purchased), the billionaires would have to provide the services or be killed by angry mobs.
The US military is a jobs program that elevates hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. It’s the most effective socialist program in human history. It’s unassailable in domestic politics.
It’s arguable but generally I agree. The New Deal worked for the US. National service policies in general seem to work well globally.
Defense seems to be a non-issue but domestic service is debatable. It’s disgusting but this is our reality. It’s the ultimate condemnation of “conservative” values.
As a millennial I would have joined the National Guard if there was a guarantee of no service in foreign wars.
I think a peaceful national service organization that guaranteed some kind of modest lifetime pension and higher education would resolve a lot of debates.
But, for most US military vets that’s already true of their service.
Well, technically they are interdicting smugglers. The smugglers happen to be carrying drugs because they are illegal. But even if we legalized all drugs domestically we would still need someone to monitor and prevent smuggling.
The USCG is a full on branch of the armed forces with an additional law enforcement mandate. During wartime it was under the command of the Department of the Navy. Currently it is under the DHS.
I can believe that some rich individuals are uniquely gifted in some way that makes them deserving of being richer than most of other people. I also think that the magnitude of this phenomenon is not proportional to how much richer they are, in practice. I share the sentiment that most of the wealth of billionaires is attributable to their workers, luck, and favorable environmental circumstances. Some marginal amount is due to the industriousness and ingenuity of the person in question.
For sure, charities would be a much better use of the money involved... but on the other hand couldn't you say the same about art in general?
I think what makes it different is the conspicuousness of these watches when they become a way to advertise wealth and status. But I like that artists/engineers can make a living by putting their time into producing such marvellous things. The world is richer for them.
150 of the exact same model, among huge piles of other models.
I don't want to argue about word choice. In the distinction I was describing, however imperfectly worded, watches like this easily go on the bulk side of the line.
I drew a line. It goes on that side of the line I drew.
> And you won’t find many watch enthusiasts who agree with you either about this class of watch.
What specifically would they disagree with? The idea that these 150 watches are made in bulk to a single design, and that watches of this class have many closely related designs? Or something I said that wasn't watch-specific?
If they're not made in bulk that's extremely interesting to me. Would that be like old guns that didn't have interchangeable parts, each one carefully and individually refined by expert hand to fit together? More so? Less so? How much variance is there between pieces? (I'd guess many old watches are like that but I haven't heard so specifically.)
To me it seems in bad faith to use a word that draws a line in a roughly agreed upon place, and then claim you have freedom to place that line wherever you want, and thus are always correct in asserting that it is "made in bulk". Using your argument, you could claim that 1, or even 0 watches are "made in bulk", or that 30C is "cold" bc you draw the line of "cold" at 40C, etc. Throwing away all understanding of concepts that has ever existed in order to win this one point seems pointless to me
Well it's not bad faith if I'm accidentally somewhat unclear. Like, I could say something completely objective like "100 for watches" if that's better, and it would be impossible to argue about whether 150 is more or less than 100.
If I'm wrong about the production of 150 watches having some quality, argue about that quality, no need to argue about broader categories in a completely abstract way while introducing no other examples.
For your analogy, if I say a temperature is cold so we shouldn't do some activity, let's talk about that activity and how the temperature affects it, not how we categorize temperatures.
I think he's disagreeing with the arbitrariness of where you're drawing lines to make your argument sound more reasonable. And he's free to argue his way. Mass production already has a definition and I'm pretty sure significant manual work goes into each copy.
But this is beside the point. Regardless of how many copies are made, the creativity and ingenuity that went into the first one alone makes it something marvellous. Jaquet-Droz only made one handwriting automaton boy. But if he made 150 it would still be a contribution to human endeavour and I'm glad for that.
Manual work goes into each copy, manual artistry less so.
So it's true that I should classify batches of 100+ and mass production quite differently. Along with pure one-offs and batches under five. But my original point still applies. I think these different quantities should be treated quite differently in terms of how art can be very expensive.
In your other comment you said: Finally, quantity is irrelevant to whether something is classified as art. My point was that the fact that it was created at all is meaningful and valuable.
It's art, very good art, but it's also far short of 150 artistically different watches. Almost everything is art at some level, but the amount that the artistry should affect price depends on production quantities and methods. Most of the artistry here is one piece.
But all this missed the point. I like that there are artists making these things. If they go on to be copied X times so that it can provide a living wage to the original artists and designers, then in my opinion it's money well spent, even if some of it goes to the (also talented) machinists and assemblers.
I also think it's good that it's accessible to 150 people who maybe appreciate the artistry that went into it, as opposed to 1 super rich guy who maybe doesn't.
All I'm saying is charity is really important, arguably more so than art, but when they're created with skill and artistry; appreciated and not just consumed conspicuously as wealth/status objects, such things have value too.
So I generally agree with all this. But in my opinion there's a limit to how much money you can justify with "it's art". If you're making 150 of something, you shouldn't be justifying a particularly huge price with it being art. If it really cost that much, and the price of making just one would have been ridiculously huge, then there is a point where I'd say the whole project is not worth it, is not making the world a better place. (Note: I am not stating any opinion on where this watch is relative to that level.)
Or to restate and elaborate on my original point: 99% of the time, it's fine to use art as a reason to buy something. You don't always have to be donating every dollar to charities. But for any level of justification you want to reach for the price of a piece of art, the dollar amount that fits under "justified" depends on how many copies are being made.
It is not bad faith at all. He is pointing out that the watches are an example of artificial scarcity. The original engineering may be impressive but once the tooling and quality control has been setup the process will be, to a reasonable extent, automated.
Whether 10, 50 or 100 or 100000 of these watches are made, is the process any different? Is it more like a limited edition print. High DPI printing is an example of technology magic but you can't argue that the choice to limit the output of a printer to a few runs means that the print itself is not mass produced
But that's not going to be how these watches are made. They set it to 150, which means there is almost no value in creating customised tooling just for the assembly. The parts may be mass produced (and used in other products), but their tolerances in this assembly will mean they have a low yield, and expensive manual quality control.
This is called batch production. It is not akin to a printer and even if it was, limiting the production quantity would, by definition, mean it is not mass produced.
Finally, quantity is irrelevant to whether something is classified as art. My point was that the fact that it was created at all is meaningful and valuable.
It should be priced at the maximum value someone is willing to pay for it… and naturally in market economy it often will. The Artist needs to also make a living and not all of their artwork will sell at earth shattering prices. It seems just as arbitrary to limit the price of the item to a fraction of the value of a single item. I do wish more art was auctioned rather than come with a fixed price tag to make the market more fluid and less egotistical.
What weird hill are you trying to die on here? You're saying that 150 of a watch means it's mass-produced, ie that there's a heap of them, that they're made en masse, in bulk, whatever terminology you want to use. You understand that because it's exactly what you were getting at. The point is that 150 of them is still bugger all.
150 copies of something is enough that it's extremely different from making one or two copies. Isn't that obvious?
It doesn't matter if they're both "bugger all" compared to some arbitrary threshold. It's a huge difference in scale and methodology. There's more than two categories here!
And I don't know why you think I'm trying to die on a hill, the only downvoted comment in the chain is your first one...
Several works of Pissarro, Munch, Matisse, Picasso, Miro et cetera are in museums in a single copy. MOST of their work are in private collections in a numbered signed lithographs.
Eh, these are cnc milled and and robot handled just like any other industrial good. Sure the quality expectations are high, but the production process is nothing unique..
I'm guessing the part production is automated but low yield and the mechanisms/watches hand-assembled. For a run of 150 it makes no sense making a custom assembly device.
Why does the production process have to be unique for the result to be art? It's like saying Picasso wasn't making art because he used paint, brushes and canvass like everyone else.
Those cars are way worse. It’s not just flashing money around, it’s actively making your wealth other people’s problem. From the noise they make, the extra gas they burn, to having to drive careful around them because you’re going to get sued into oblivion if you fuck them up
I've always thought that there should be a property damage liability limit on public roads. If you want to drive a $250k lambo why do I have to buy extra insurance because you brought an expensive toy out to play on vital public infrastructure?
Pass the extra liability beyond, say, $100k to the owner of the toy car. If some shitty driver plows into my crappy old car, they are out maybe $3k in property damage. If they happen to hit a supercar, then somehow the same action nets them a liability that could buy them a starter home?
Mind you, I live in BC, where there is only one liability insurance company, and they have a government mandate to insure everyone with a license, no matter how bad their driving record is. Which means that every idiot's risk gets spread onto my bill.
I would actually disagree with this one even though I agree with the overall sentiment.
Hypercars are much better than regular/sports cars, and should be considered the atomic clock equivalent to the quartz watch - far more accuracy/performance albeit at a significant literal cost.
I do not know the real world implications of hyper cars on fuel consumption (I can't expect it to be very good, but I don't expect too many such vehicles either). For better or for worse there are many more mundane things that can have a much larger improvement for human life (eg reducing food waste).
Watches are about movement/storage of wealth and tax evasion. Like art, very high timepiece value is its ability to move money. They're Old Money Cryptocurrency.
Bring $50,000 in cash on a plane to another country and you're a drug dealer/criminal, or at the very least, the tax inspectors want to talk to you.
Bring a $50,000 watch on holiday or a business trip, and nobody blinks an eye. Your average customs/border/security person probably no idea what a $1,000 watch looks like compared to a $50,000 or $100,000 watch...or they're
The Chinese in particular are using luxury watches to get around money export controls (you can't export more than a fairly small amount of money out of China.)
Put differently: we want market economies to be about satisfying the greatest need. In practise, they're about satisfying the greatest ability to pay. And ability to pay does not come with need -- it comes with privilege, luck, and political skill.
The point is you don’t get to tell other people how to spend their money outside the narrow exception of taxation and prohibition, both of which are democratically defined.
I mean, herein lies the philosophical argument of opportunity cost to society in general. Every thing we spend money that is, perhaps, any amount over-engineered or nice-for-nice sake, or made of slightly higher grade materials, or, well, anything other than strictly utilitarian and minimalist as possible is technically consuming opportunity cost that could benefit society.
If I order wings with my pizza tonight, as I have done, and I decide to consume both of those things, instead of donating the money on the wings to someone else, I've directed excess to myself instead of to the betterment of society. And obviously that's the reductive, logical conclusion of the argument. What I'm getting at is that it's an interesting mental and philosophical exercise to figure out where that line lies. Does it lie with $400M super-yachts? Sure, probably we don't need that wealth going directly to propping up the yacht industry, which, itself, doesn't need to exist from a utilitarian perspective. But I'm not sure how to define where that line lies. Is it the old "know it when you see it" line? If I buy a 26' sailboat, is that still falling into the ostentatious conspicuous-consumption-that-could've-been-spent-on-others? Of course it is. What about a jet ski? What about a $400 kayak?
I'm not sure the answer here. I agree with your core sentiment that "I wish people would flex their donations to effective charities" in that it sounds lovely. I struggle with the idea that charities have to exist to patchwork fix parts of society and government that are inherently broken. Creating a construct that inherently hyper benefits a small coterie of people and necessarily introduces some inequities, and then hoping that that same small coterie of people will feel just guilty enough to donate to others to try to whitewash some of those problems... is inherently flawed. Obviously.
But I also recognize that the downstream and upstream of the middle of the bell curve of capitalism is basically what powers almost all of our jobs. We work because we produce something that someone, somewhere wants. Or needs, sometimes. But a LOT of it is "wants." And if it was _just_ needs, the economy would be an even bleaker place. We've seen what that looks like too.
That being said, I personally feel like, you know, a clever tax policy helps with a lot of this, if it's underpinned with effective enforcement and effective oversight and efficient use of those funds. But boy are those tricky.
I find a super-yacht less offensive than an expensive watch, because at least a super-yacht lets you do things that a regular yacht couldn't, or do them better. Getting a yacht with e.g. a helipad on it is obviously a luxury, but it's a reasonable luxury: anyone can see how it's nicer to be able to fly to your yacht rather than having to bring it in and out of port. What makes these watches so infuriating is that all that money (and not just notional money, but real hours of skilled labour) is poured into a black hole: at the end of the day you get a watch that's very visibly less good than a $300 smartwatch.
Right, we all want nice things. But the nice things that the ultra-rich desire are almost garish in their tone-deafness. Spending an extra $10 on a meal is a relatively accessible luxury, that perhaps 90% of the population can imagine doing every so often. Accessible luxury is almost therapeutic, though, as it gives transient relief to an otherwise overburdened class in society. I cannot imagine what end the luxuries of the ultra-rich serve, save for the ego. In my opinion, the moral valence of luxuries depends on the practicality of that luxury spending in the grander scheme of the person's life, as well as the cost of that luxury. Most people don't spend a meaningful amount of money on luxuries for that opportunity cost to be significant.
And yeah, ideally charities would not need to exist. I also believe that government could become a lot more efficient. I think a luxury tax is a good solution, provided that those funds are put to good work. The nature of these ultra-rich toys can make them hard to tax, though. If America wants to levy a tax, I can just buy it the next time I'm in Geneva.
I believe parent comment is trying to convey that more societal good could be done through more effective donations compared to donating thousands to a watchmaker or watchmaking corporation.
Are they using the surplus to better society or only to enrich themselves?
> Why? Are watchmakers not people who deserve to have an income?
Why? Just because they're good at something that takes effort? By that logic everyone who has a challenging hobby - and most hobbies are ultimately challenging - deserves an income from it. Would you say that anyone who's good at any sport, or any craft, or any game, or even knowing celebrity trivia, deserves an income?
IMO at most people who produce real value for others can be said to "deserve" an income. And while watchmakers produce something that a small number of people are willing to pay a lot for, it's hard to say that they're producing real value as opposed to some kind of Veblen status display. (Contrast that with something like a mansion or a sports car - although it's a luxury good, there are tangible ways in which it's objectively better than the "cheap" equivalent, in a way that a mechanical watch is not)
But why is someone willing to pay them? Because luxury watches are a status item. Why are they a status item? Because enough people believe them to be one.
So value (in this sense) is not really between buyer and seller at all, but a common agreement between a large enough number of people.
What OP in this discussion did was shine a spotlight on that fact, maybe in the hopes of getting at least one person to change what they think is valuable, to ultimately help society redirect money to more needed things.
Rolexes are a status item. They're cheap in the world of watches. Many brands you've never heard of command far higher prices.
The value is in the fact someone who studied horology their whole life devoted a certain amount of hours and effort into creating something. People who love watches love the craftsmanship.
Sure, but this sidetrack were started from the fact that there are many hobbies where people devote hours of craftsmanship and effort into creating something that's not considered nearly as valuable.
So "hours of craftsmanship and effort" is not what makes something valuable. It takes something else -- in this case that it's a status symbol. A long time ago it would have been certain tulips. Now it's watches.
No, but it's different. Wheat has value because people want it. Regular watches have value because people want them. Luxury watches have value because other people want them.
Owning an actual luxury item is pointless if there's nobody to brag about it to.
This is a terrible take. So you're saying restaurant workers in high end restaurants don't deserve income, neither do musicians, or any number of artists and artisans based on what YOU think is valuable to society.
The value isn't in what they produce, the value is in the fact that someone will pay them for it and the worker will then contribute to and participate in the economy and society.
> This is a terrible take. So you're saying restaurant workers in high end restaurants don't deserve income, neither do musicians, or any number of artists and artisans based on what YOU think is valuable to society.
Good service or entertainment definitely has real value. But yes, IMO if people are producing something whose value is fake (e.g. artificial scarcity) then they don't "deserve" income; if they can get someone to pay them for whatever they're doing then more power to them, but they shouldn't feel entitled to it.
> It's more that others shouldn't feel entitled to take away their profession for "reasons" when they very clearly are in demand...
Everyone is entitled to try to change fashion. If your profession is only in demand because of fashion rather than real value creation, you should make peace with the possibility that fashion will change, or find a different profession.
Mechanical watch pricing has become silly. The Rolex Submariner, a useful tool in the 1950s for mariners and pilots, sold for $150 in 1953, or about $1500 now. It now costs about $8950. Same item. “Rolex is not in the watch business, we are in the luxury business” - attributed to a Rolex chairman.
It's an acceptable way for men to wear jewelry. To flaunt success without being gaudy. I prefer skeleton watches and although even more expensive models exist imho Richard Mille makes the top of the line.
Expensive timepiece today is the only way for a man to show off his wealth indoors in a relatively tasteful manner.
Woman can wear gold and diamonds on the neck, in the ears, on the wrists, on the lapel. She may carry a bag which costs thousands. Man can't wear any gold at all, except he is a rap star. He can't even wear cufflinks outside formal attire. Not sure about even a ring with stone. Maybe steel one with small diamond will not look extremely kitsch, but it is a big maybe.
Expensive low-key watch on steel or leather wristband is totally okay in almost any social situation. In case someone suddenly recognizes the brand - you always may say that it is a Chinese replica.
Practical watches are ones where it's clear at a glance which way up it goes and what the time is; they have numbers on them, preferably in a digital readout like 00:40. Watches without numbers are fashion watches. Watches with analogue faces are relics from when technology only let you decypher the time from rotating pointers. Rotating pointers where the numbers they point at have been removed are form over function.
Technology Connections did a really interesting video showing how a traditional clock face can give a different perspective on the flow of time through the day, as the face and hand let you easily judge the remaining fraction in an hour.
I find it much easier to make mental time maths on an analogue face. I mean, it's basically what a time calculator device would look like, if it existed.
This thread makes me think about how the common usage "a quarter past" and "a quarter two" likely come from the clock dial, and how we don't use that kind of language in other measuring scenarios - with a metre rule saying "a quarter to three metres", and how we don't say "a third past" or "a third to" meaning twenty minutes past the hour and twenty minutes to the hour.
Numbers aren’t necessary to tell the time and the analog watch provides more information in the hours hand than digital does in the first two digits. I think you’d find that the time to tell the time can be quicker in analog than digital but I couldn’t find any studies.
I didn't say numbers were necessary, people can learn an awful lot of contortions to achieve things. I said more like: given two devices which let you know the time, one needs you to imagine a ring of natural numbers, identify which number the short hand just passed, and identify which number the long hand just passed and multiply it by five and then guesstimate how many 6-degree increments it has moved since then and add that on, then adjust for whether the short hand said "12" and it's night time or not; the other has the time written out and you can read it, the former is not the more practical one.
Given how much we read numbers in everyday life, we have more practise at reading numbers and it requires fewer steps. Analogue clock faces are only really used for time, we do that less often and it requires more work. How could it be quicker?
Analog watches let you glance at the time more subtly while in a meeting.
Numberless watches are instantly readable after you own one for a little bit.
Watches are worn on the wrist, so up is always the pinky side of the wrist.
The beauty of an analog watch is that it is a graphical display of time that doesn't even need numbers.
The hands indicate both a numeric time as well as a representative of how far through a day, hour, or minute you are.
This is the same reason that cars still have dial style gauges. The brain can parse the relative location of a rotary dial faster than it can parse 4376RPM.
Once you teach your brain how an analog clock works it reads as fast or faster than a digital clock.
Thick and heavy compared to the watch in the fine article. For a desk jockey maybe that doesn't matter. If I'm being flung around at seven G, I'll take the thin, light watch at great expense.
I probably wouln't want to wear an expensive watch while doing intense activities that would experience that kind of acceleration, but maybe that's just me.
as I always say about watches, they are socially accepted forms of men's jewelry. after advent of smartphones they are hardly about time anyways. its mostly style & flex. That too in a in-group because most people including many jewelers cant tell difference between and original and a replica for some common mid-high end watches like rolex submariner.
I am actually fine with these 'vanity jewels' for high end buyers so long as they don't end up being a tax haven like art market. its all a way for the money to flow back into society and some more productive good in subsequent iterations. I mean after all its better than a NFT of picture that watch.
> watches, they are socially accepted forms of men's jewelry. after advent of smartphones they are hardly about time anyways. its mostly style & flex.
As a daily wear of a “dumb watch“ I somewhat agree with this statement. Having a watch that matches my shoes and belt certainly makes an outfit look both more professional and well coordinated (RE jewelry/style).
However, I find that when I don’t wear my watch and just have my smartphone it is a significantly diminished experience.
Having to pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time is both socially less acceptable (am I checking the time or am I just bored with our conversation?) and far more likely to pull me into some rabbit hole and off of what I was currently doing.
So… it’s actually kind of nice to have a watch around, even if it only cost ~$100 (Skagen are amazing value for the price).
I agree, smartphone is a context switch, much better to have a watch.
I have had a minor hack for WFH for last 2 year. Just to feel a bit of formalism I rotate through my watches every day of the week. also its a good vanity decision at the start of the day.
If you spend any time in Singapore you'll note that the fact that private ownership of cars is so difficult and rare it means people use other luxury goods to denote status.
To generalize hugely, women buy designer handbags and men have watches. It took me a while to work out, but it makes perfect sense once you think it through. It's so hard to get yourself a BMW 3 Series so you spend $20K on a watch instead.
This is also true in Hong Kong, but cars are readily available - and you find people with both. I think there are some more cultural nuances to watch ownership in this region.
I felt similarly to computer tape drives. People in general miss turntables and k7 players. Maybe it's a level of complexity that you can still relate too and thus feel more about. Your life does not revolve about perfect information at infinitely low cost. You want to be stimulated / inspired. A modern SoC with all its technical prowess is out of reach to your senses.
Doesn't seem to be paywalled (from where I am, in the UK), if this [1] is the article to which you are referring: William Gibson on Twitter, Antique Watches and Internet Obsessions, published Sept 14, 2012.
Slightly offtopic: If anyone missed Bartosz Ciechanowski's website explaining how mechanical watsches work, you sold at least look at it once. It is a piece of art.
I love that all the diagrams are rotatable in 3d. it's such a great write up of how a mechanical watch works. The Youtube channel linked at the end (https://www.youtube.com/c/WristwatchRevival/videos) is a good companion to see the pieces in action.
You can learn a lot about how a watch works by getting a few old inexpensive pocket watch movements off eBay and playing with them. They’re bigger movements than a wrist watch, and thus easier to work with, but most of the concepts are the same.
I did just this a couple years ago and got hooked on horology, although I actually moved the other direction and now have a big collection of 18th and 19th century clocks.
pondering flatness I had this idea to paint the small hand onto the dial then get rid of the big hand and replace it with a virtual one using a Moiré pattern painted onto the glass and the dial.
very crude demo (running in the wrong direction :P)
Also, am I reading this right, you can only adjust it by hours? Do you just gently tap your special screwdriver and hope to try and adjust it in minutes at a time? And you have to wind it every single day, so have fun doing it all again if you have a busy week
You think you’d wear the same watch every day if you got to the point of buying this? It’s more likely that you would have someone working for you who could keep all your watches wound and set.
277 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadThe winding and setting mechanism is a really unique solution.
Unique look: yes
Best looking watch: hell, no. it looks like utter crap. like a $2 scratch-off lotto ticket
That logo is unnecessary and takes up more room than the watch face. I don’t think this is even for telling the time. I can’t imagine this distinctive look is merely to signal that you have 1.8m on your wrist.
This to me is like Louis Vuitton. I always thought plastering their logo everywhere was ugly.
As far as I can tell, they sell flying stunt teams.
“… the Italian-born Davide Parmegiani. I met Parmegiani, who is in his mid-50s, at his new boutique in Monte Carlo, where he sells both vintage watches and cars.
He arrived 30 minutes late. I asked him what drives the passion for watches, if not their ability to tell time.
“Sometimes I don’t even set the time on the watches,” he said. “If I want to look at what time is it, I can look at my iPhone.” He held up his smartphone: “This is the only exact time we’re gonna have,” he added.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/inside-the-frenzied...
They're surprisingly useful, especially when camping or going to places where you don't want to take a phone with you.
Think of it as art, not a tool.
So, it is no wonder that the number 8 figures prominently.
In 2021, in Swiss watch exports in CHF bn:
to USA, China about 3 each; HK about 2; Japan about 1.5; Italy, Germany, Singapore, UAE, France about 1 each.
http://www.fhs.swiss/scripts/getstat.php?file=histo_regions_...
http://www.fhs.swiss/pdf/regions_210112_a.pdf
Otherwise with 30% down. current market interest rates, you would be looking at $20,000 / month to lease it.
So you could flex considerably as a double digit millionaire. Its just fascinating how wealthy some people are and how limitless it is.
i got anxiety from reading it. it almost seems like at the very top, its lonely and dehumanizing when every whim challenge is met leading to time scarcity.
i think the sweet spot is $270MM. 250MM generating 3~5% a year, 20MM in cash. you can buy everything but wouldnt spend it on this watch (you shouldnt)
which means this watch is for ppl with 800MM minimum.
It’s also probably not for people who gained their fortune via their own intelligence.
There must be a very happy web design team somewhere in there world that's been told "you don't need to care about any kind of optimisation, our clients will always have the tippest-top computers and phones and so that you get it right we're going to buy one for each of you too, just in case you accidentally do something that makes it work on a pleb-grade device".
I could be wrong, but I have yet to see a teardown of a superfake where the movement held up to even amateur scrutiny.
Hugely impressive piece of machinery though.
I don't mind the form so much. Obviously it's not a very practical piece, but very expensive limited-run watches rarely are.
If it works for the people who actually buy their products, or those people don't care what their $1.9M fashion accessories look like, then I would suggest they keep doing exactly what they're doing. But I still think it looks cheap.
Maybe they should be marketing this watch to rich nerds instead of playboy LARPers - to people who will appreciate it for the technology.
Again this is my opinion, but I don't see any reason to be worrying about the practicality of something like this.
OLED panels are less than 1mm thick, so the display wouldn't be a problem.
I'd honestly be more interested in that as a product than in a clockwork Veblen toy.
The watch I'm wearing today was made in the 1950s, and keeps good time. I'd be amazed if the smart-watches that people are wearing in the office today are still functional in 70 years.
That is overpriced and impractical actually adds to its appeal.
The future isn't limping along in the fog, is it?
My blind eyes already paid the price for that video, nobody else has to.
So, anyways, what's the topic today? Italian design? Arduino and Wiring? Arduino is an inspiring beginner electronics kit, and one of the first. Innovative design.
Maybe open the user immediately into a tutorial project when they open the IDE? It's that Apple unboxing experience, right? You want to reduce the friction, reduce the time between when they open it, and their eyes light up at the blinking lights.
Arduino online stores with code-signed projects? The newer Arduinos have WiFi, but I don't know how the browsing experience is in the IDE lately.
I'm stuck in the CLI, trying to enjoy it again, hoping I don't cause too much pain to users. Which is a messed up mindset in some ways.
> The future isn't limping along in the fog, is it?
> My blind eyes already paid the price for that video, nobody else has to.
I enjoyed these words. Felt somewhat like lyrics to a Cardiacs song. Thank you.
This pushes the envelope of the possible, something I consider beautiful. It's roughly as impractical, expensive, and awkward looking, as a human-propelled airplane.
I don't think any of the many commenters here who panned this watch would have anything bad to say about a human-propelled airplane. It's a pity that they can't appreciate this object in that spirit.
Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry.
I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front page of HN, but a 1.75mm mechanical wristwatch? Gratified my intellectual curiousity!
And then this is basically just an "if you know, you know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K variant is not especially useful in the general case.
There's an entire economy dedicated to pandering to the pretensions of the vulgar rich, and it certainly fits in there.
But as a design classic - no.
Maybe limits of human hand craft which I assume is the allure of these bespoke time pieces. That said I don't actually see the description mention hand crafting other than polishing and drawing a few surfaces. Otherwise I don't see why this is pushing any envelopes when we can make micrometer MEMS machinery. Which would be pretty slick - theoretical minimum micrometer thick watch mechanism encased in sub millimeter baseplate.
I look forward to your Show HN on a wristwatch < 1.75mm in thickness.
How long do you figure it will take you? three months? six? should I send an email to remind you?
``` Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely because they require tending.
And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are, in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond, Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of the expensive ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly restored from virtually any stage of ruin. ```
(1): Seems to be pay-walled now but you can find the whole thing in Distrust that Particular Flavor
This is precisely wrong. The rich do indeed owe society. They owe their wealth to the workers working for them. To the education system that educated their workers and made them productive, the roads that brought them to work and the health system that keeps them at work.
This is obvious from the number of millionaires produced by healthy, educated, stable societies vs others. Other countries produce fewer and then only natural resource millionaires in the favour of the ruling elites. But they can't do so without labour and the resources owned by those societies. The rich owe almost everything not produced by their own hands.
And comparing the figures of corruption in those countries to that of charities generally is so absurd it's laughable.
Assuming even further that taxes effectively redistribute wealth to workers, educators, and nurturers.
These are together three assumptions, none of which I think are true.
But even if it was, how would you quantify whether a tax rate captures the full, less-tangible value of what a society provides? If through lobbying or creative accounting, a billionaire is able to reduce his yearly taxable income to $100 then he's met your definition of fully paid-up, when obviously he 'owes' (in the ethical, non-accounting sense) a lot more.
Because society provides more than just economic opportunity, taxes are just one of the things we're required to pay back. We're expected to follow the law or sometimes fight for it (giving up some of our absolute freedoms), to be helpful or follow hundreds of other social conventions. If you insist on reducing all that to a tax rate, then it's so low that it points to a welfare state for the rich.
Defense seems to be a non-issue but domestic service is debatable. It’s disgusting but this is our reality. It’s the ultimate condemnation of “conservative” values.
As a millennial I would have joined the National Guard if there was a guarantee of no service in foreign wars.
I think a peaceful national service organization that guaranteed some kind of modest lifetime pension and higher education would resolve a lot of debates.
But, for most US military vets that’s already true of their service.
Except for the National Guard and the Coast Guard (which, as I understand it, gets some military money).
I think what makes it different is the conspicuousness of these watches when they become a way to advertise wealth and status. But I like that artists/engineers can make a living by putting their time into producing such marvellous things. The world is richer for them.
I would say that mass-produced art should be pretty cheap, and these are mass-produced.
I don't want to argue about word choice. In the distinction I was describing, however imperfectly worded, watches like this easily go on the bulk side of the line.
> And you won’t find many watch enthusiasts who agree with you either about this class of watch.
What specifically would they disagree with? The idea that these 150 watches are made in bulk to a single design, and that watches of this class have many closely related designs? Or something I said that wasn't watch-specific?
If they're not made in bulk that's extremely interesting to me. Would that be like old guns that didn't have interchangeable parts, each one carefully and individually refined by expert hand to fit together? More so? Less so? How much variance is there between pieces? (I'd guess many old watches are like that but I haven't heard so specifically.)
If I'm wrong about the production of 150 watches having some quality, argue about that quality, no need to argue about broader categories in a completely abstract way while introducing no other examples.
For your analogy, if I say a temperature is cold so we shouldn't do some activity, let's talk about that activity and how the temperature affects it, not how we categorize temperatures.
But this is beside the point. Regardless of how many copies are made, the creativity and ingenuity that went into the first one alone makes it something marvellous. Jaquet-Droz only made one handwriting automaton boy. But if he made 150 it would still be a contribution to human endeavour and I'm glad for that.
So it's true that I should classify batches of 100+ and mass production quite differently. Along with pure one-offs and batches under five. But my original point still applies. I think these different quantities should be treated quite differently in terms of how art can be very expensive.
In your other comment you said: Finally, quantity is irrelevant to whether something is classified as art. My point was that the fact that it was created at all is meaningful and valuable.
It's art, very good art, but it's also far short of 150 artistically different watches. Almost everything is art at some level, but the amount that the artistry should affect price depends on production quantities and methods. Most of the artistry here is one piece.
I also think it's good that it's accessible to 150 people who maybe appreciate the artistry that went into it, as opposed to 1 super rich guy who maybe doesn't.
All I'm saying is charity is really important, arguably more so than art, but when they're created with skill and artistry; appreciated and not just consumed conspicuously as wealth/status objects, such things have value too.
Or to restate and elaborate on my original point: 99% of the time, it's fine to use art as a reason to buy something. You don't always have to be donating every dollar to charities. But for any level of justification you want to reach for the price of a piece of art, the dollar amount that fits under "justified" depends on how many copies are being made.
Whether 10, 50 or 100 or 100000 of these watches are made, is the process any different? Is it more like a limited edition print. High DPI printing is an example of technology magic but you can't argue that the choice to limit the output of a printer to a few runs means that the print itself is not mass produced
This is called batch production. It is not akin to a printer and even if it was, limiting the production quantity would, by definition, mean it is not mass produced.
Finally, quantity is irrelevant to whether something is classified as art. My point was that the fact that it was created at all is meaningful and valuable.
Of course not. It's just as much an art.
But those prints shouldn't be priced with the same premium that a single original often has.
You don't have to mock me for using the wrong word.
I hope you realize it's my vocabulary having a slight issue here, and not my understanding of the world, right?
It doesn't matter if they're both "bugger all" compared to some arbitrary threshold. It's a huge difference in scale and methodology. There's more than two categories here!
And I don't know why you think I'm trying to die on a hill, the only downvoted comment in the chain is your first one...
Why does the production process have to be unique for the result to be art? It's like saying Picasso wasn't making art because he used paint, brushes and canvass like everyone else.
Pass the extra liability beyond, say, $100k to the owner of the toy car. If some shitty driver plows into my crappy old car, they are out maybe $3k in property damage. If they happen to hit a supercar, then somehow the same action nets them a liability that could buy them a starter home?
Mind you, I live in BC, where there is only one liability insurance company, and they have a government mandate to insure everyone with a license, no matter how bad their driving record is. Which means that every idiot's risk gets spread onto my bill.
Hypercars are much better than regular/sports cars, and should be considered the atomic clock equivalent to the quartz watch - far more accuracy/performance albeit at a significant literal cost.
I do not know the real world implications of hyper cars on fuel consumption (I can't expect it to be very good, but I don't expect too many such vehicles either). For better or for worse there are many more mundane things that can have a much larger improvement for human life (eg reducing food waste).
Bring $50,000 in cash on a plane to another country and you're a drug dealer/criminal, or at the very least, the tax inspectors want to talk to you.
Bring a $50,000 watch on holiday or a business trip, and nobody blinks an eye. Your average customs/border/security person probably no idea what a $1,000 watch looks like compared to a $50,000 or $100,000 watch...or they're
The Chinese in particular are using luxury watches to get around money export controls (you can't export more than a fairly small amount of money out of China.)
Further reading:
Tax evasion: https://thetruthaboutwatches.com/2020/09/uk-kills-new-watch-...
Chinese wealth export mechanism: https://www.ft.com/content/a9a34f94-9a49-4938-ae9e-ec4e6d2f4...
I currently have a Seiko 5 mechanical watch. It doesn't hack or keep time particularly well (runs fast) but I love it all the same for its quirks.
The base argument of democracy is that because none of us knows the downstream effects we all share decision making.
In other words: “that’s just like, your opinion, man.”
So when consumers vote with their wallets, this vote isn't democratic at all. People that don't have money in their wallets don't get to vote.
If I order wings with my pizza tonight, as I have done, and I decide to consume both of those things, instead of donating the money on the wings to someone else, I've directed excess to myself instead of to the betterment of society. And obviously that's the reductive, logical conclusion of the argument. What I'm getting at is that it's an interesting mental and philosophical exercise to figure out where that line lies. Does it lie with $400M super-yachts? Sure, probably we don't need that wealth going directly to propping up the yacht industry, which, itself, doesn't need to exist from a utilitarian perspective. But I'm not sure how to define where that line lies. Is it the old "know it when you see it" line? If I buy a 26' sailboat, is that still falling into the ostentatious conspicuous-consumption-that-could've-been-spent-on-others? Of course it is. What about a jet ski? What about a $400 kayak?
I'm not sure the answer here. I agree with your core sentiment that "I wish people would flex their donations to effective charities" in that it sounds lovely. I struggle with the idea that charities have to exist to patchwork fix parts of society and government that are inherently broken. Creating a construct that inherently hyper benefits a small coterie of people and necessarily introduces some inequities, and then hoping that that same small coterie of people will feel just guilty enough to donate to others to try to whitewash some of those problems... is inherently flawed. Obviously.
But I also recognize that the downstream and upstream of the middle of the bell curve of capitalism is basically what powers almost all of our jobs. We work because we produce something that someone, somewhere wants. Or needs, sometimes. But a LOT of it is "wants." And if it was _just_ needs, the economy would be an even bleaker place. We've seen what that looks like too.
That being said, I personally feel like, you know, a clever tax policy helps with a lot of this, if it's underpinned with effective enforcement and effective oversight and efficient use of those funds. But boy are those tricky.
- you can be relatively certain it's not spying on you.
- you don't need to charge it every week.
- it probably has better water resistance.
And yeah, ideally charities would not need to exist. I also believe that government could become a lot more efficient. I think a luxury tax is a good solution, provided that those funds are put to good work. The nature of these ultra-rich toys can make them hard to tax, though. If America wants to levy a tax, I can just buy it the next time I'm in Geneva.
Why? Are watchmakers not people who deserve to have an income? Do they not then spend their income on goods and services that help the economy?
Are they using the surplus to better society or only to enrich themselves?
Also watchmaking is blue collar work.
Why? Just because they're good at something that takes effort? By that logic everyone who has a challenging hobby - and most hobbies are ultimately challenging - deserves an income from it. Would you say that anyone who's good at any sport, or any craft, or any game, or even knowing celebrity trivia, deserves an income?
IMO at most people who produce real value for others can be said to "deserve" an income. And while watchmakers produce something that a small number of people are willing to pay a lot for, it's hard to say that they're producing real value as opposed to some kind of Veblen status display. (Contrast that with something like a mansion or a sports car - although it's a luxury good, there are tangible ways in which it's objectively better than the "cheap" equivalent, in a way that a mechanical watch is not)
So value (in this sense) is not really between buyer and seller at all, but a common agreement between a large enough number of people.
What OP in this discussion did was shine a spotlight on that fact, maybe in the hopes of getting at least one person to change what they think is valuable, to ultimately help society redirect money to more needed things.
Rolexes are a status item. They're cheap in the world of watches. Many brands you've never heard of command far higher prices.
The value is in the fact someone who studied horology their whole life devoted a certain amount of hours and effort into creating something. People who love watches love the craftsmanship.
So "hours of craftsmanship and effort" is not what makes something valuable. It takes something else -- in this case that it's a status symbol. A long time ago it would have been certain tulips. Now it's watches.
Owning an actual luxury item is pointless if there's nobody to brag about it to.
This is a terrible take. So you're saying restaurant workers in high end restaurants don't deserve income, neither do musicians, or any number of artists and artisans based on what YOU think is valuable to society.
The value isn't in what they produce, the value is in the fact that someone will pay them for it and the worker will then contribute to and participate in the economy and society.
Good service or entertainment definitely has real value. But yes, IMO if people are producing something whose value is fake (e.g. artificial scarcity) then they don't "deserve" income; if they can get someone to pay them for whatever they're doing then more power to them, but they shouldn't feel entitled to it.
Which is exactly the situation
> they shouldn't feel entitled to it.
It's more that others shouldn't feel entitled to take away their profession for "reasons" when they very clearly are in demand...
Everyone is entitled to try to change fashion. If your profession is only in demand because of fashion rather than real value creation, you should make peace with the possibility that fashion will change, or find a different profession.
(I say this as an owner of several mechanical watches. I love them, but they are strictly worse than anything decently priced in any watch store.)
Woman can wear gold and diamonds on the neck, in the ears, on the wrists, on the lapel. She may carry a bag which costs thousands. Man can't wear any gold at all, except he is a rap star. He can't even wear cufflinks outside formal attire. Not sure about even a ring with stone. Maybe steel one with small diamond will not look extremely kitsch, but it is a big maybe.
Expensive low-key watch on steel or leather wristband is totally okay in almost any social situation. In case someone suddenly recognizes the brand - you always may say that it is a Chinese replica.
Not that I endorse that, just pointing out.
... and that's my cue to pimp one of the most practical watch of all time - Casio Oceanus, the 100 series.
https://www.google.com/search?q=OCW-S100-1AJF&tbm=ischI don’t think this format is antiquated at all
24-hour ones are even better, but sadly rare.
Given how much we read numbers in everyday life, we have more practise at reading numbers and it requires fewer steps. Analogue clock faces are only really used for time, we do that less often and it requires more work. How could it be quicker?
... how?
The beauty of an analog watch is that it is a graphical display of time that doesn't even need numbers.
The hands indicate both a numeric time as well as a representative of how far through a day, hour, or minute you are.
This is the same reason that cars still have dial style gauges. The brain can parse the relative location of a rotary dial faster than it can parse 4376RPM.
Once you teach your brain how an analog clock works it reads as fast or faster than a digital clock.
Back here in the real-world, you're a deskjockey.
Interesting to see these prices "all over the place" but yours is indeed a good average.
I am actually fine with these 'vanity jewels' for high end buyers so long as they don't end up being a tax haven like art market. its all a way for the money to flow back into society and some more productive good in subsequent iterations. I mean after all its better than a NFT of picture that watch.
As a daily wear of a “dumb watch“ I somewhat agree with this statement. Having a watch that matches my shoes and belt certainly makes an outfit look both more professional and well coordinated (RE jewelry/style).
However, I find that when I don’t wear my watch and just have my smartphone it is a significantly diminished experience.
Having to pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time is both socially less acceptable (am I checking the time or am I just bored with our conversation?) and far more likely to pull me into some rabbit hole and off of what I was currently doing.
So… it’s actually kind of nice to have a watch around, even if it only cost ~$100 (Skagen are amazing value for the price).
I have had a minor hack for WFH for last 2 year. Just to feel a bit of formalism I rotate through my watches every day of the week. also its a good vanity decision at the start of the day.
To generalize hugely, women buy designer handbags and men have watches. It took me a while to work out, but it makes perfect sense once you think it through. It's so hard to get yourself a BMW 3 Series so you spend $20K on a watch instead.
How it should be everywhere.
Richard Mille watches are priced like Ferraris lol...
[1] https://www.wired.com/2012/09/william-gibson-part-2-twitter/
Citation needed (as in measurement report). AFAIK some years ago electronic watches had some problems with the time reference.
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
I did just this a couple years ago and got hooked on horology, although I actually moved the other direction and now have a big collection of 18th and 19th century clocks.
Source: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/richard-mille-sets-a-new-r...
very crude demo (running in the wrong direction :P)
https://jsfiddle.net/s1cwze3d/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
(Designing the correct pattern is left as an exercise for the reader)
The word allusive was just interesting to me since it wasn't elusive or illusive .. had to look it up.