We need to invent something better than Machu Picchu

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but middle-class rules now require that every dinner party cheeseboard must contain at least two cheeses which aren’t very nice. Typically one will be a veiny French cheese which is not as good as Stilton; another may be that foreign thing with rind on it which isn’t nearly as good as Cheddar.

I was baffled by this for a long time, until I realised that these cheeses are not bought to be eaten, but to signal the sophistication of the occasion. Economists might call them Veblen cheeses. (One day someone should make an inedible cheese called Veblenne. They’d make a fortune.)

There are many forms of consumption today where — dress it up all you like — it is obvious the main value lies not in the intrinsic value of the thing itself but in signalling the refinement of your taste. This increasingly creates a kind of feedback loop where people are driven to absurd lengths to gain competitive bragging rights.

Take travel. A week ago, I asked for a show of hands in a London lecture theatre. As I suspected, more people in the audience had been to Machu Picchu than to Lincoln cathedral. What I didn’t expect was the ratio: over three to one.

I was once offered a trip to Machu Picchu myself, but decided it was one of those places Dr Johnson called ‘worth seeing, but not worth going to see’. Why endure a long flight and altitude sickness to see some rubble in the Andes when for £40 I could take a daytrip to one of the world’s architectural masterpieces where the only discomfort would be finding the tea shop had closed? It seemed a lot to pay for posting a photo to Facebook saying ‘Hey, I’m next to some stones’ before collapsing with hypoxia.