What for heaven's sake is the sence of testing two carts a day? What possible sence is in owing 100 different carts? This whole fuss has nothing to do with music but with some egos who want to be 'super egos'.
What sense is there in watching sports or tv or having a cocktail or any of the other countless activities undertaken by citizens in a pluralistic democracy? Unless one is a devotee of Plato or Aristotle and gazing at the Forms all day, push pins or poetry: whatever (to butcher Bentham).
Perhaps the intention is to achieve super ego status (who really knows?; who cares?), but nevertheless the MM thread and hopefully this one has helped a lot of people acquire information that would be otherwise lost or relegated to the chosen few. Where else am I going to get opinions (for free!) on relatively obscure headshells but through threads such as these? One shouldn't confuse the value of a practice with the value of the original intent (cause).
But you are probably right, Nandric, that all this is but a symptom of the West's decadence and decay. But we knew that already when 100 million votes were cast to pick the winner of American Idol :-).