Perhaps, for example, you've noticed that the Antique Road Show has turned arts and antiquities into crude commodity fetishism.

Expert antiquarian: "This spittoon embossed with the crest of the House of Summersoft is worth $4,000, top dollar at auction."

Pallid owner: "Ooh! I had no idea!"

Pallid owner thinks: "I could sell this now and have that money, but
then I wouldn't have the spittoon, and I'd probably just spend the money on some sort of crap, and after a while the thing I bought will be indistinguishable from all the other things I've bought, things I didn't buy with this special free money from the implausibly valuable spittoon, and then I won't remember it was special at all, because I bought it with this money, this spittoon money, and so I'll have nothing, really, not even the spittoon, but what's the point of keeping the spittoon?  Is it the pleasure of knowing I could turn it into cash any time I liked, if I wanted?  Or maybe I should actually spit in it once in a while.  This smart man says that Queen Victoria probably once spat in it.  Or is it spit?  Spitted?  No.  Ooh, I'm so confused."

Curtis White, Professor, U.S. author, Center for Book Culture.