Chapter 1: About Luxury

Luxury is always proportioned to the inequality of fortunes. If wealth is equally divided in a state, there will be no luxury: for luxury is only based on the comfort one derives from the labor of others.

In order that wealth might remain equally divided, it is required that the laws award to each person only the physically necessary. If they possess more than that, some will spend, others will acquire, and inequality will be established.

Assuming the physically necessary to be equal to a given sum, the level of luxury of him that will only possess the necessary will equal zero. He who will possess the double will have a luxury level equal to one [one unit of luxury]. He who will possess the double of the latter's property will have a level of luxury equal to three. When someone will again possess the double he will have a level of luxury equal to seven. The result is that for the property of the succeeding individual, always assumed to be the double of the one preceding, the level of luxury will increase by a factor of 2 plus the unit, in the following progression: 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127.

In Plato's republic (a), the level of luxury could have been exactly calculated. There were four kinds of class established. The first was the precise point at which poverty ceased; the second was double; the third triple, the fourth the quadruple of the first. In the first class the level of luxury was equal to zero. It equaled one in the second, two in the third, and three in the fourth. Thus it followed the arithmetic progression.

In considering the level of luxury of differing peoples, in relation to one another, it occurs in each state by compound reason of the inequality of fortunes that exists among the citizens and the inequality of wealth of differing states. In Poland, for example, fortunes are extremely unequal. But the overall poverty makes it impossible that there might be as much luxury there as in a wealthier state.

The level of luxury is also proportioned to the largeness of towns, above all the capital. The result is that it occurs by compound ratio of the state's wealth, the inequality of individual fortunes, and the number of men that one may gather together in certain places.