september 19, 2021
it's my staunch belief the final end-stage perversion of capital isn't to force resources into producing things that exist solely to speculate on - loot crates, ape jpegs, collateralized debt packages consisting of subprime loans - it is to make useful objects assets, and therefore destroy their utility.
that is what appears to be a 1990-ish Mercedes Benz 190E 2.3-16, a sports variant of the company's W201 small-sedan platform outfitted with slight aero upgrades and a 2.3-liter inline-four Cosworth powerplant. It is not rare, with around 20,000 produced; it is valuable, because the market said so.
It is valuable because we have a glut of men who have more money to spend than they have time left to live, once all the workweeks they still have left are accounted for. Those men collectively decided that in an absence of time, the next best thing to usage is ownership, and they will collect every childhood dream like they are funko pops, complete uselessness and all.
As a car, this Mercedes is stirring, I'm told. Handles excellently, revs to the moon, incredibly well-balanced torque curve. These characteristics are likely why it was purchased and sought-after by wealthy men.
Unfortunately, an asset cannot be used for its purpose, if it originally had one, and so those attributes might as well be video-game statistics now. A broken Hasselblad, a worn-out record, a blown-up Cosworth - those cannot be valuable anymore, so they must not be used, and they sit on a shelf to safely collect monetary value, and they collect dust as they do it, and they lose all their utility, and the entire world is a shittier fucking place for it.
