There is a category of luxury that resists the receipt. It cannot be wrapped, insured, or resold. It is the hour that stretches because nobody wants to leave the table.
Objects cannot manufacture that hour. What they can do, when made with enough intention, is frame it: hold the fire at the right height, put the food within the host's reach, seat the guests where the light is kind.
This is the quiet argument against the transient. A table built for decades changes the mathematics of an evening. Nothing about it asks to be replaced, so nothing about the evening feels provisional.
Togetherness, perfectly framed, is the only luxury whose value compounds. Every gathering deposits something the next one inherits.