I’ve always liked that quote. “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke,” Warhol wrote, and he was right. I thought of it recently and it led me to wondering. In today’s world—over fifty years after he wrote those words—which pleasures are already as good as they can be, and can’t be improved by paying more? Which pleasures are immune to luxury treatment?

Put another way, what is the point at which a given pleasure feels complete? You can drink your Coke from a luxury crystal glass. A waiter can pour it for you as part of an elegant dinner service. You can drink it at a table overlooking a particularly beautiful view. All of those things are nice. But do they change the taste of the Coke? No. Do they change the fundamental experience of drinking it? Again, no.

When I think of my favorite books of all time, one that always comes to mind is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. You read it and at first it feels like a traditional science fiction war-in-space story, humans versus whatever. Then you begin to realize it’s actually a powerful anti-war novel (which makes sense given that it was published in 1974 and that Haldeman served in Vietnam). And then finally, when you peel away the last layer, you come to the conclusion that what it really is, is a great love story. It’s so good that the ending makes me cry, every time.

I could purchase a signed first edition of The Forever War and read that. Or a special limited edition with leather binding, gold-trimmed pages, and commissioned illustrations. Or I could read it from the deck of an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora. All of those things sound nice. None of them would change my fundamental experience of the story. None of them would make me any more emotional as I read the ending.

I’ve written before about “luxury smartphones”, in which a vendor either takes an off-the-shelf smartphone and covers it in precious materials or actually makes their own smartphone with such materials designed in from the start. (I’m not a fan. Saved you a click.)

Back in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, James Bond could visit Q’s lab and be given all sorts of advanced technology unavailable to the general public—for example, a map-based tracking system built into a car in 1964. As unrealistic as that concept might have been then, it’s even less realistic now. Today, major consumer electronics firms spend hundreds of billions of dollars on research and development yearly. Apple alone is estimated to spend $44 billion (40 Md€) this year. No spy agency can match that, and no other entity in the world can match what the smartphone industry collectively spends on research and development. Today, you can’t get a better smartphone from any source, anywhere—not even Q Branch—than the state-of-the-art offerings from Apple and its major Android-based competitors, including Google and Alphabet. What the “luxury smartphone” vendors therefore do is slap a bunch of expensive stuff onto devices: gold plating, gemstones, and the like.

Let’s allow for a moment that you like the idea of an ultra-expensive smartphone adorned with upscale finishes. Fine. But even in that case, does that luxury treatment change what the smartphone can do? Does that treatment change your fundamental experience of the smartphone? No. A state-of-the-art smartphone delivers the same experience whether it’s encased in gold, or diamonds, or in a simple metal like aluminum.

As nice as private suites and other upgraded sports experiences are, if a team you love is playing a great game and you’re there in person with a good seat, I argue there’s no way to meaningfully improve on that basic experience. Yes, you can have a better seat—say, courtside at a basketball game. Yes, you can be in a suite with room to move around and all the refreshments you want at hand. But that thrill you feel can’t be improved upon. Let me explain.

Eleven years ago, I was fortunate enough to be there in person when the Seattle Seahawks (an American football team, for my overseas readers) hosted the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game, for the right to go to the Super Bowl. With 5:13 to play, Seattle was down 19–7 and our quarterback had just thrown his fourth interception of the game. A few fans started making their way to the exits. I looked at the person I was there with and we asked each other if we wanted to leave. In the end, we decided no. As disappointed as we were, and as certain as defeat seemed, the team had given us a great season and we wanted to show our appreciation and stay through the end.

Thank goodness for that, because over the next few minutes, Seattle staged one of the most improbable late comeback wins in the history of American football. The stadium where the Seahawks play is famous for its loudness. That game, on that day, in those last five minutes, was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. Even with earplugs in it was deafening. Everyone was hugging everyone. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I doubt I ever will again.

Here’s my question: would the thrill of watching my team come back from what seemed like an impossible deficit have been enhanced in any way had I upgraded my setting? I’m not talking about the game overall; I’m talking about my emotions on that day. I don’t think so. I could have been in an even better seat, with a better view. I could have been in a suite with a perfect view, a spread of food, room to move around, and the like—and I know from personal experience how enjoyable that can be. Those things would have been nice. But what I felt would have been the same.

I opened with the Warhol quote about Coke, and I stand by it, as I’m sure Warhol himself would were he still with us. But there’s actually a subtlety to this particular example that illustrates a larger point.

When Warhol painted his painting, and wrote his book, Coke was made with cane or beet sugar. This persisted through 1979. In 1980, though, in the US, Coca-Cola began replacing that sugar with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS): 50 percent in that year, rising to 100 by 1984. In subsequent years, the Coca-Cola bottler in México shifted back and forth between sugar and HFCS based on changing financial incentives.

In 2005, in response to unauthorized distribution networks that had sprung up, Coca-Cola began officially importing what everyone calls “Mexican Coke” back into the US: made with sugar, manufactured in México, packaged in glass bottles, and sold at a premium price. The ironic thing was that by this point, the Mexican bottler had settled on a blend of sugar and HFCS for its domestic soda, so the Coke they made for export back to the US wasn’t what Mexican consumers were drinking. It was an export-only product.

Fifty years ago, Warhol wrote that, “no amount of money can get you a better Coke”. But Coca-Cola changed its ingredients to save money, and what consumers back then took for granted—sugar—came to be seen as a premium ingredient. So actually, today, you can get a “better Coke”. In other words, occasionally a premium product can be nothing more than a reversion to something once considered ordinary.¹

Recognizing completeness can be freeing. When we believe that every experience we have might somehow be improved, then some part of us is elsewhere, thinking about how much better it might be. When, on the other hand, we look at a product, place, or experience and think that it’s good just the way it is, we’re able to live in the moment, not second-guess it.

Recognizing that something is complete allows us to enjoy it without mentally shopping for an upgrade.