It's exceedingly rare for people to dedicate their lives to creating something both affordable and beautiful. Those prioritizing affordability see beauty as eroding their margins, while those prioritizing beauty aim to maintain its exclusivity. Those who seize it rarely redistribute it. In the Paris Commune of 1871, left-wing revolutionaries toppled the Vendôme Column and burned public buildings rather than opening the city’s existing beauty and craft to wider use. During the French Revolution, radical factions dismantled churches and melted down royal silver and artworks, not to spread refinement but to erase it. The result was not wider access but the deliberate elimination of beauty itself, leaving luxury—if any remained—only for those who held power.