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# Diamond Buckles Metaphor

## Definition

Smith's illustration of how commercial wealth transforms aristocratic spending
from maintaining large numbers of dependents to purchasing trivial luxury goods,
showing that for the gratification of childish vanity, great proprietors
bartered their whole power and authority for frivolous items that provided
exclusive personal consumption.

## Source Chapter

Book III, Chapter 4

## Context

Used to demonstrate how the introduction of commerce gave landowners a method
of consuming their entire rent themselves without sharing it, leading them to
exchange the maintenance of 1000 men for a year for personal luxury items,
thereby destroying their political power.

## Economic Domain

Consumption

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