If you default on your Visa bill, nobody comes to repossess your refrigerator or auction off your shoes. The biggest penalty you'll… — Virginia Postrel Auction Copy Share Image
We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Through the 1990s, 'Reason' was a voice of 'dissident feminism,' upholding the equal dignity of both sexes and supporting the rights of… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Scientists appear most often in horror movies. Through childlike curiosity or God-defying hubris, they unleash destructive forces they can't control - 'Forbidden… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own. — Virginia Postrel Authority Copy Share Image
Bill Clinton has done some incredibly reckless, irresponsible things as president. But his campaign to expand Medicare entitlements has to rank among… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
We know we need bosses and deadlines to help us get work done. But sometimes we can also use an external push… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.' — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law established federal… — 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 Beauty Copy Share Image
The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for… — Virginia Postrel Actor Copy Share Image
Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Neon signs don't consume much power, but they look like they do. A cousin of fluorescent lighting, neon is actually quite energy… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
“Functionality still matters, of course. But competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that many manufacturers can no longer… — Virginia Postrel Aesthetics Copy Share Image
Grassroots techies - the mostly unknown people who write code and start companies that don't make the headlines - hate, loathe, and… — Virginia Postrel Business Copy Share Image
In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
The Internet ethos of diversity and competition runs exactly counter to uniform, gatekeeper-oriented medical culture - the technocratic philosophy of the 'one… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
In the fall of 1978, I left the religious, conservative, biracial, slow-paced culture of South Carolina for the secular, liberal, multi-ethnic, intense… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much… — Virginia Postrel Beliefs Copy Share Image
The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against markets, against consumers, against the dynamism of… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Glamour invites us to live in a different world. It has to simultaneously be mysterious, a little bit distant - that's why,… — 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 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
Cinema isn't just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It's specifically a good medium for superheroes. On a fundamental, emotional level,… — Virginia Postrel Age Copy Share Image
The Internet's abundance - of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority - creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what… — Virginia Postrel Abundance Copy Share Image
“The future we face at the dawn of the twenty-first century is, like all futures left to themselves, “emergent, complex messiness.” Its… — Virginia Postrel Future Copy Share Image
From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour. Aviators have personified national ideals,… — Virginia Postrel Admiration Copy Share Image
The mere existence of 'Buffy' proves the declinists wrong about one thing: Hollywood commercialism can produce great art. Complex and evolving characters.… — 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 Audience Copy Share Image
Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration. It evokes… — Virginia Postrel Admiration Copy Share Image
The Y2K bug is a genuine technical concern, consuming the energies of many specialists. But the prophecies of doom represent a broader… — Virginia Postrel Ambition Copy Share Image
More than two decades after the birth of Louise Brown, and all the hysteria that surrounded her 'test tube' conception, we should… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses… — 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
European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the… — Virginia Postrel Battle Copy Share Image
Y2K hype taps our native discomfort with the realities of a dynamic, evolving social order. It elevates personal, local contact over the… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When… — Virginia Postrel Advantage Copy Share Image
The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s and accelerating in the 1990s, type… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
Abundant choice doesn't force us to look for the absolute best of everything. It allows us to find the extremes in those… — Virginia Postrel Copy Share Image
