Andy Warhol's quote is about aspiration and perceived attainment. The average person is not aspiring to drink a gold flake truffle-infused Coke.

The implication is the lack of a rigorous class hierarchy in America. Not that the rich don't live different lifestyles or consume more. But that niche luxury products were considered effete and un-American.

(Andy Warhol was almost certainly also being ironic - that the richest people in America publicly shared the same trashy taste as average Americans).

The closest analogue today might be an iPhone. Rich or poor, if you want the "best" phone you have an iPhone. Sure, there are gaudier and more expensive phones out there. But you're essentially using the same product as the richest Americans.

It's close to true about personal computers. The poorest can't afford Apple computers, but you don't need to be that rich to buy Apple hardware and what's up from that in terms of mainstream status? Nothing, as far as I can see. Specific groups might want a Framework laptop or System76, but those brands are invisible to most people, including, it seems, most rich people.

(And for servers and other business machines, well, other criteria apply, but owning something in the Top500 has to count for something in terms of prestige.)

> American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe.

I think it's important to call out that the "capitalism = more stuff" idea is a bit of historical revisionism.

Soviet leaders very specifically saw the goal of Communism was to create abundance and a post scarcity society. There are lots of quotes in particular from Khrushchev about this:

“The socialist system will outstrip capitalism in labor productivity. It will provide the people with more goods, more cultural benefits, and ensure a higher standard of living.”

“Communism is the highest form of organization of society for labor. On the basis of powerful productive forces, it ensures the highest productivity of labor and abundance of material and cultural values for the whole people.”

And it's worth pointing out that that this isn't a Soviet invention. Marx himself made it a central point that material deprivation was an ill (not a feature) of captialism:

"After the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety…”

“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially… but guaranteeing them the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here.”

When communist abundance failed to materialize, there was a concerted effort to reframe the promise of communism to be purely one of egalitarianism and turn overconsumption against the West as a criticism.

Sometimes on a hot day for the short period the kid's napping I find myself at Home Depot searching for this or that tired from the work week under pressure as the clock ticks down having no idea what I'm doing and I make it to checkout tired no exhausted and I see the ice cold cooler the Coke its last moments before it's soaked with condensation open the door scan it rush to the car twist it open it screams wow sometimes there's nothing like an ice cold Coke.