I see folks here in the non-pro market spending over a relatively short period many times the amount that I spent over many years in the pro market. Apart from a few high flyers the non-pro market is where the money is. But people who work hard really don't have to justify playing hard.
I - as someone making images for sheer pleasure and therefore now belonging to the non-pro market - find value and amusement in letting other folks in the non-pro market take the monetary hit and benefitting from buying their cast-offs. That said, an introduction to the Leica M series purchased new is not beyond the means of many: witness the success of Leica.
On a personal level my wife and I have led a comparatively frugal life, have paid our dues and ensured a comfortable 'retirement': no madness and eccentricity involved and certainly no justification needed.
There's frugal and there's frugal: my wife and I went through a couple of years or ten where lunch was always accompanied by a bottle of
Freixenet semi-seco where madness would have substituted
Dom Pérignon; in the end, we settled for common or garden
Viña Sol which I still, now and again, buy as challenge to the red that three cardios have insisted I must use. That's eccentricity with an undertone of Russian Roulette; puffing a revolutionary pack of Gauloises Blondes would complete the photo.
Anyway,
she made the best steaks in the world, bought from the local specialist butcher/deli who also stocked the finest smoked salmon ever. Boy, were those skinny bits of fish expensive, even fifteen years ago! Fact was, we eat out very infrequently - seldom more than perhaps twice a fortnight if left to our own devices, and usually as part of a drive to a distant beach where there used to be a cheap restaurant (now, second-generation, not cheap at all!) that served lovely, honest food, and where the lady showed Ann how to make paella. Today, it's almost impossible to find simple anywhere; even inexpensive can't manage to avoid faux sophistication, all of it a result of booming tourism and perverted tastes. Of course, there is also cafeteria fare where my own cooking compares not too badly - on a good day (mine!).
The snap below was made on that beach circa '84/'85.
Justification? It's need is a drive born of highland puritanism and doubts and bouts of conscience, something the last Baptist preacher I had to listen to called the "again bite of un-wit" whatever the hell the latter actually meant. (Considering I was fifteen at the time, and I can remember that, he must have been a powerful orator or just struck lucky, once!)
Observing our supposed betters, and how they justify nothing, not even their existence, I don't think you or I need give it a second thought, Keith.
;-)
Rob