In 1982, J. K. Galbraith critiqued contemporary American economic policy by comparing it to the ideas of the 1890s: what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. This idea is more popularly known as trickle-down economics. Keynes and Hayek, Democrat and Republican, Labour and Conservative have fought over this idea and its application for over a century, with no clear winner. One's adherence to, or disavowal of, this idea largely comes down to what you perceive are the best markers for studying an intangible.

Within historical and cultural studies, especially those dealing with identity, there is an equally long-standing and irreconcilable debate surrounding an intangible. One that is founded on similar mechanisms of interaction – that of the role of elite emulation in cultural change. Both ideas, economic and acculturative, are basically about how many usable oats the lower orders can harvest from horse-shit. It is taken as a given that the lower orders are picking through it in the first place.