Beauty is something that humans are pre-occupied with in life. I say this not in just the few obvious facets we are all fully aware of. It took a few decades for me to make the recognition in how humans have diverted from a more pragmatic lifestyle to one that more or less opposes it. Of course the wealthiest have always had the ability to filling their lives with such but more recently the poor have been playing in the same sandbox and the wealthy get even more benefit when this occurs. Beautiful [shapely to some], young women share the top spot with rare antiquities, precious gems, metals, and man-made structures (art and architecture). We can all appreciate beauty but the compulsion of with the use of money has helped widened the wealth divide which hurts society. For the sexual desires of men, billions of dollars gets exchanged daily in chasing after this end and today a good deal of it is in the virtual space - on the internet via webcam sites that may have hundreds of performers. From a practical viewpoint, one may contend that virtual sexuality is efficient this way but it's salacious and not on a personal level. The men willing to part with their money and to many, money is no object relative to the average man and they get to enjoy the fruits in life. Sometimes, the fruits are forbidden such as underage girls [and boys]. You can almost hear daily in the news of a school teacher, whether it is a man or woman, having an affair with an underage student. There's also the hidden underground network the filthy rich and otherwise nasty men with less money are willing to pay whatever it takes to abuse the underage. I contend that though the same act is committed regardless of means, the ones having so much money to make a mockery of life is one thing but to more men get left but to those with this depraved behavior and willing to use a greater percentage of their much less wealth speaks of an additional corrupt reasoning. It's appalling to see who gets to play while being responsible but other than society changing this is how it is. It's not always the wealthy, however, as women today, at least in more emancipated cultures, are the ones choosing who gets to play and often it's the most horrible guys - the ones who play on the psychological weaknesses of women such as choosing an occupation that's admired, wearing the type of clothes that are admired, having the habits in drug/alcohol usage that's admired, having the type of car that's most admired, and sometimes, just certain physical make-up of the man without any untoward manipulation involved which wins the woman. So much for the sexual component... Then of course there's the artificial markets of coins, stamps, other collectibles, and unlawful possession of historically significant items (such as theft to own the Declaration of Independence). It was only a few decades ago when the highest price coin in the United States was $200K and very few were in the tens of thousands in value. Today many are in the millions of dollars and thousand upon thousands have attributed values exceeding $10K. Inflation plays a significant role but much more than this is the increase in wealthy persons to crowd the market along with a great number of those in the middle class joining in to be part of the hopeful appreciation of assets. This gaming of life corrupts society. Yeah, sure one could enjoy life with collecting a few trinkets, but so much these days is not for the purism of viewing but for the concerted reason of "investment". With the middle class involvement, the wealthy get their assets having little or no intrinsic value valued higher and from this, their credit expands to then own more substantial assets such as homes. Note, the same phenomenon with the middle class playing along with the wealthy in the sandbox of equities (stock market) hurts the middle class and yet the middle class does what hurts them because of propaganda that's it's good for them. I speak of this on my site, http://stockmarketrealities.blogspot.com/. So now for home prices, even with the increase in population, it makes no sense for the price of homes relative to annual gross salaries to have increased at a much more rapid pace. This goes deeply into some of what I mentioned above in how the middle class help make it worse on themselves but could be corrected a great deal with rightful legislation to retain a healthy proportion, ie living expense per income. Our ignorant leaders have failed us. The wealthy are getting coddled more today than ever before and they allow the Federal Reserve to run the show which was constructed to divide the wealth. In keeping with the title, I want to make it clear that this thing of beauty pervades society in even the most basic of things. For example, buying a tree that you'd think might be worth only $20 may be priced at $200. A cooking pan with $5 in materials might have a price tag of $100. In broadening the common definition of BEAUTY, it could be ascribed as those things which: 1) are scarce 2) have a substantial structure (sort of scarcity but points more to costly which few can afford) 3) visually appealing 4) appealing to other senses such as by taste or smell (consider wines, food in general, perfumes, to even detergents and air sanitizers) 5) appealing in some other nebulous notion such as having a popular brand name (consider Apple Computer brand items priced 2-3X higher than comparable competitor items) You see, it's this recent recognition of how beauty can be broadened that one can see human behavior basely characterized. Spending habits are based so much on beauty. A very ugly vehicle with great handling might not attribute as much value as one that is more "pretty". Of course scarcity and changing fascinations may flip items of little interest to having much interest (consider a car that was so unsightly that when used for it's typical life, it got crushed and not saved for restoration to then make the car a collector's item). Homes are priced differentially throughout the world for having similar construction. This goes into politics and economic policies. But the thing that can be stressed here is that what the house looks like, what the land surrounding it looks like, what kind of community it is (the beauty of being around other wealthy individuals - a bigger stretch in the word "beauty" but still applicable). I studied home price per income ratios in the San Francisco Bay Area from a young age and I can say that it's so perverse now, it's like that of a third world country. A small 2 bedroom 1 bath home that may have cost only $20K in 1970 may very well be worth more than $1 million today. This can only minimally be attributed to monetary inflation as inflation alone wouldn't get the home priced to $100K. I wouldn't be feeding into the game but a large percentage of the population does and as economic ratios get untenable the economy falls apart and wealth is stripped away from predominantly the non-wealthy. I wish the masses were attuned to artificial inflation of asset classes and to pull away when the games of life really make no sense but very few recognize for being drowned out in the propaganda pitched by the wealthy in doing things that claim to help the middle class when it doesn't in real terms and greatly helps the wealthy. Protectionism through patents hurts society. It helps drive capitalism but has been perverted like everything else going on today. Pharmaceutical companies have been getting much attention in recent times in this regard as pills costing a few dollars to produce, even considering the R&D expenses, may sell for thousands of dollars. Here, the beauty is more in scarcity. And so, next time you send money, think how much beauty is involved in your purchase.