This is a vibrant and yet superficial thesis rife with secrets which may not pay out.



Where one person will say that it is the measure of consumerism---including luxuries---which states most plainly economic advantage, there is a clear counter-thesis, that luxury goods indicate a reliance on borrowing money, as famously took place in the 1920's, and continues especially in the military branches of the government. It is one thing to say that a new military tank is a form of plumage, and still another to say that it has no expense.



More important to the resulting thesis or theses may be the need for conceptual tools beyond what I have heard criticized as meaningless Bayesianism, and towards the forthright support of luxury citizens; I have heard hints in Esther Dyson's posts at Project Syndicate that there is a need for crowd-sourcing the common denominator, whether this incidentally means government affiliates, small companies, college students, think tanks, or just about anyone. I don't find the idea unappealing, in fact I think there is more potential than is commonly believed to tap citizens even for advanced economics principles. Perhaps it is this kind of stratified, cognizant use of capital that you mean to reflect on in your reference to plumage. I'm not sure that your readers are likely to consider surfacial capital as something that is metaphorical at all.



Yet, surfacial characteristics are an interesting alternative to Darwinism, when it comes to that. Maybe this is not what anyone would intend, but if it were possible to create a complex surface, a complex value, perhaps that would pass as a financial principle that could make some contentions.



I describe a related principle in my blog post Precepts of Dimensional Economics, which can be found on Twitter and elsewhere.