Puling out the fine china for a gathering used to be a big deal. Nowadays, gatherings are less common, the cachet of owning a set of fine china is less, and when we do gather, many probably use paper plates and the like for easier cleanup.

The act of cooking for guests is considered sufficient effort, I think. And we typically value other posessions more - may I even suggest that most people already have too much stuff, so instead of a sparse house and tales of people holding on to string from packages and that string proving valuable (a tale I remember reading in a childhood schoolbook), today we have too much stuff.