Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Fit experts envision a future in which you'd carry your body scan in your cell phone or on a thumb drive, using… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Like the rest of the genetic lottery, beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short of perfection, but some are luckier than others. Real… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The goal of socialism is a fairer allocation of economic resources, which its advocates often claim will also be a less wasteful… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The innovative process is a fragile one, dependent on a complex, often messy interplay of imagination, competition, and exchange. Curbing new ideas… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness,… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fingertip. Importing polish was banned only in… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The history of the Internet is not, as some people have tried to make it, a libertarian just-so story. It is a… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,' replacing the neon extravaganza with a… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
'The Matrix' is a movie that is all about glamour. I could do a whole talk on 'The Matrix' and glamour. It was criticized… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
“Design is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
When credit is cheaper to use and easier to arrange, people do use more of it. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
Glamour is a beautiful illusion - the word 'glamour' originally meant a literal magic spell - that promises to transcend ordinary life and make… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
A standard 'well woman' checkup can last as little as 10 minutes, hardly time for any in-depth discussions. — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractical ambition, especially since the… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercials. The nostalgic cable channel TVLand features not only vintage… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
“Functionality still matters, of course. But competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that many manufacturers can no longer distinguish themselves… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popular hopes for a new era of technological achievement and commercial… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
When 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' premiered on the WB Network in 1996, American culture was in trouble. Americans were bowling alone, pursuing individual interests… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before its luxury did, dissipating as flying gradually became… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against markets, against consumers, against the dynamism of Western commercial… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share
