Or the purpose of the blurb.

An art historian writing for benefit of visitors at a public gallery, vs the artist trying to pump their piece to well heeled patrons in a contemporary art market have different goals.

Concrete details like info about technique, similarities across the artists work, peer relations or the context of their art, all of which can give meaning to the piece and make it more approachable to casual audiences.

Pseudo-academic blather may be more intentionally obtuse for an elite contemporary market... "You get it, right?"

BIFL community walks a tricky line between "good value" and "status symbol" goods, sometimes.

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My interpretation of an ideal BIFL item boils down to this:

-The item costs you more in the short term, but you are saving money/avoiding waste in the long run.

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For instance, quality boots which can be resoled repeatedly and last much longer than cheapo's, are a great BIFL. Stuff which is modular, and allows for self-repair with low cost, commonly worn sub-components are great for this.

On the flip side, rare/elite goods sometimes have a cost well beyond what most of us would ever spend in their entire lifetimes on moderate quality alternatives. Such things have allure for enthusiasts, in part because the detailing brings them joy, possibly beyond the raw utility of the item.

Also, if an item dramatically changes your behavior such that you have to be really cautious or paranoid of people borrowing, stealing, damaging or losing the item, I feel like those aspects need to be considered too.

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Stuff like Montblanc or Rolex can be fine items, but sometimes a LAMY or Casio will suit the needs of many as a durable value.

That said though, with inflation it's probably a toonie idea now.

The business model of extractive industries helps explain why this is a no for the forseeable future, and very very likely forever.

Mining and Oil drilling operate based on constraints of physical reality which drives costs(e.g. cost of equipment, workers, etc). Reserves of resources exist in a bunch of places which are simply impractical to extract based on present prices and technology.

The key point is that extractive businesses don't go everywhere and extract everything- they add projects which have the best potential for profits. As more material is extracted, market demand would fall, and make costlier extraction less profitable.

The moon is pretty massive for any forseeable timescale- by the time lunar mining is of any noticeable scale, humanity would likely have spread out a lot more mining activities to the asteroid belt (assuming of course human civilization can reach such a point), and most resources would have cheaper sources(sitting even closer to 0 g environment).