The Economics of Status (2006)

I'd like to offer the viewpoint that seeking status is a way to unfortunately waste one's life and brain cycles. Not sure how economists model for the certain amount of people that "don't play the game" simply because there's more interesting things to do than compare themselves to others? There's a tradition amongst some Christians (and probably other religions too), that "we're all equal in the sight of God". Therefore, everyone is a somebody, and simultaneously, a nobody. People that contribute a lot, sure, in some sense they're more "valuable" to the rest of us. They've got a status worth having, but ironically, that's not what those people are seeking, usually its those who seek to help others and are fairly ego-less, that have the best status in other's eyes. I think what everyone should be doing is forget about status, feel happy in yourself, and try to do good for others. ;). Just my 2p.

This idea that everyone is at the top of a different status ladders appears to be the same basic thesis as the essay &quot;Melancholy of Subculture Society&quot; written by Gwern [1], which fleshes out the idea further and presents this as an ever-powerful force in the world driven by the Internet. I&#x27;m not sure I agree with it fully, but it&#x27;s an interesting idea. I especially like the way the author wrote this paragraph:<p>&quot;... Harvard had, in at least one interesting way, the perfect social system: Everyone at the top of his own ladder. The small minority of students passionately interested in drama knew perfectly well that they were the most important people at the university; everyone else was there to provide them with an audience. The small minority passionately interested in politics knew that they were the most important ones; their friends were there to be herded into meetings of the Young Republicans and Young Democrats in order to get them elected to positions in those organizations that were the stepping stones to further political success.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;subculture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;subculture</a>

Paraphrasing anonymous&#x27; comment. The article mixes two different concepts about status:<p>self-esteem — how highly you regard yourself<p>reputation — how highly others regard you<p>Reputation is more of a pecking-order which implies zero-sum.<p>By choosing to belong to a group, then perhaps your status within the group is also more about how reputation is scored within the group. How you rank yourself can be rather different from how the group ranks you.

Most of the consumption in the western world, is done to increase status in some form or another. Conspicuous consumption of clothing, hand bags, housing, cars and travel, is literally destroying our planet. Increasing the number of dimensions people can use to seek social status, is of vital importance to reduce damaging conspicuous consumption. Research in the field of social status and happiness, is just as important in order to reduce co2 emissions, as research in green tech.

David Friedman runs interesting slate star codex meetups periodically, where I&#x27;ve met a lot of interesting people. Recommended to attend if you would like to meet well-read people with all sorts of new ideas.

&gt; How much one employee is paid is often less important to him than how his pay compares with that of other employees.<p>Is this actually true of most people?

Isn&#x27;t the Guinness Book of World Records like this? in the sense that it gives people the opportunity to find something nobody else has done and gain some kind of status that didn&#x27;t really exist before.<p>I absolutely loved watching the show &quot;Record Breakers&quot; as a kid, we should try to expand opportunities in this way it seems very positive for society.

The OP has a useful framing of status being attributed in verticals but we&#x27;ll still (illogically) struggle with this logic. Inwardly we&#x27;ll compare the status of a doctor, lawyer, or software engineer vs. our profession like a game of Top Trumps.<p>Status games are fundamental evolutionary behaviours however much we want to believe otherwise.<p>Here are a couple of relevant pull quotes from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robkhenderson.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;what-is-social-status" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robkhenderson.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;what-is-social-status</a>:<p>&quot;Research indicates that our brains spend about 50% of the time mind wandering. Researchers find that the areas of the brain that are active during mind wandering overlap with the areas of the brain that concentrate on our social lives and ourselves. Left to your own devices, with no task demanding your immediate concentration, you tend to spend a good deal of time thinking about other people—your judgments of them; their evaluations of you.&quot;<p>&quot;So what did status get our human ancestors? Resources, allies, territory, mates, and, most importantly, offspring. The idea is that humans who cared a lot about status were more likely to win romantic partners and thus had children who also cared a lot about status. It’s possible that there were early humans who didn’t care much about status or reproduction. They might’ve only cared about safety, survival, and didn’t concentrate on attracting mates or having children. They didn’t reproduce. Those early humans are not our ancestors.&quot;

Interesting read. I’ve thought much of this myself. Living in a consensus &#x2F; conformist culture (Sweden) one of the things I dislike the most is that it’s very much “single ladder” and zero sum oriented. But hopefully that’s changing to some extent now.

What annoys me most is how status and one&#x27;s ability to earn money have become intertwined. It would be great if they were separate; then those who seek money without status wouldn&#x27;t have to compete with so many reckless, cheating, psychopathic status-seekers.<p>I guess the silver lining is that one&#x27;s ability to spend money efficiently (to maximise satisfaction per unit of currency) runs opposite to one&#x27;s desire for status. There are so many ways to get great value from little money nowadays... Precisely because rich status seekers aren&#x27;t interested in high quality no-name goods, services and destinations. That&#x27;s where all the real value is.<p>Real value is essentially wherever the rich people aren&#x27;t.<p>Everything rich people want most is overpriced by definition because they create inflation in the markets they participate in. Then they stay trapped in those markets because of social peer pressure. &#x27;Decreasing marginal utility&#x27; is a euphemism for inflation. That&#x27;s why I try hard not to participate in the same markets as rich people when buying stuff. I want to earn my money working for rich people and spend it buying stuff from poor people.

This article appears to be setting up debate over the meaning of a word without defining the word or outlining tests to tell what the word means to the author. The points being made are meaningless without more foundational definitions. Knowing whether status is a zero-sum or positive sum game requires knowing what the rules are. Unfortunately the word is so fuzzy that I don&#x27;t think a HN comment can usefully outline what it means. And in some sense, useful discussions of status mechanics are taboo, people get uncomfortable and high-status people tend to dissemble on the topic because nothing good can come to them from more people understanding the game.<p>Friedman explicitly acknowledges the lack of definition with: &quot;One conclusion is that the last thing we want is a system for objectively ranking people, for defining status in a way that everyone agrees on&quot;. That is the sort of thing I mean about dissembling. Society is actually quite cruel to delusional people who misjudge their own status or don&#x27;t bend to the commonly accepted status tells. Status is communally held and not just in one person&#x27;s head; individuals <i>will</i> be given hard feedback until they conform to the externally developed status hierarchies. Their beliefs do not overrule the collective belief of their status. Evolution has also made humans remarkably sensitive to status signals and hints from the people around them to try and stop misalignments.

I completely disagree that status is not a zero-sum game. It definitely is!<p>Think about an individual&#x27;s status as positive attention given to them; total number of person-hours dedicated to thinking positively about that specific individual. The amount of attention of all people on earth, especially positive attention, from which status is derived, is a limited resource. If current online celebrities are capturing 90% of all online traffic and consumers are already glued to their phones, then if I want to capture 20% of all online traffic, it means that I MUST steal some traffic from current celebrities. Existing consumers cannot create more hours in their days and they need to work for a living. The only way to get their attention is to redirect it away from other people&#x2F;things towards me. Zero-sum game.<p>Suggesting that status is not a zero-sum game is laughably wrong. Does anyone actually believe that every person on earth could be famous? Is your own brain capable of even memorizing the names and faces of 8 billion people? Most people can barely remember 1000 people&#x27;s names. Celebrities have to compete for these limited slots.

Look at that, a mini HN with comments on a blog post.

Who defines status?