I’ve spent a significant portion of my winter break reading and listening to Robin Hanson and I have to say my views have been deeply affected on a variety of issues. Most disturbing to my wife, Robin has convinced me on the issue of Cryonics. More on that some other time.
However, I am puzzled by Robin’s treatment of status. Robin argues and I am tentatively convinced that much of what people do is in pursuit of status. Robin generally treats this as if first, it was an undesirable personal trait and second as a cost on society in general.
Yet, why should this be. If much of what people do is seek status then shouldn’t our concern as economists be about which systems efficiently allow people to indulge their status pursuits.
Perhaps, Robin is assuming that status is a zero-sum game. That I can only increase my status by lowering yours, but this is not immediately clear to me. Would it not be possible for me to believe that I am high status based on some criteria but for my neighbor to believe that she is high status based on some opposing criteria. What we need is to eliminate devices that would serve to decisively settle these status disputes.
As long as there is no public or official determination of status we can both live in our parallel worlds.
This might suggest for example a route through which income equality in and of itself is beneficial. I have always been skeptical of income equality in and of itself as a goal. Ultimately we should care about consumption and in particular raising the lowest levels of consumption rather than equalizing income.
However, suppose that high income is a source of unequivocal status. This implies that a society with lots of income inequality will make it difficult for citizens to establish their own status domains. Steve the factory working may not have the education of Bill the doctor but he may still feel high status because he is much better softball player for example.
However, if Bill earns a lot more money and everyone knows it, it will be difficult for Steve to sell his softball makes me cool story. A society with more income inequality then could be a society in which more citizens feel low status and thus have worse lives.
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Thursday ~ January 14th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
dWj
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/11/subjective-status-or-fooling-our-genes.html
I’m pretty sure he wrote a different post on the subject, noting “World of Warcraft” as a world in which some people seek (and find, on their own terms) status, but I can’t seem to find that one.
Friday ~ January 15th, 2010 at 12:31 am
Jacob Wintersmith
Within any particular group hierarchy, status is a zero-sum game. Creating lots of little hierarchies can help to a degree, but people are driven to compete on the inter-hierarchy level just as vigorously as they compete for intra-hierarchy status. Politics is just one arena for group vs. group status competition.
It’s a good idea to prohibit the state from explicitly conferring high status on groups, but there will still be abundant opportunity for groups to win status politically. And there are lots of ways for groups to compete for status besides politics.
I think Julian Sanchez’s piece on The Politics of Ressentiment illustrates this nicely. Heartland conservatives were extremely frustrated that political success in the Bush era did little to raise their status as a group. And now they’ve rallied behind Palin in an attempt to thumb their noses at educated coastal elites; Palin is ideal for this role precisely because she’s such a hideous failure as judged by the educated elite.
Educated urbanites became a higher status group than rural Christians independent of politics. And more generally, I don’t think there’s any way to prevent people from judging certain groups to be low-status any more than it’s possible to prevent intra-group status judgments.
Saturday ~ January 16th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
David
Does a high income confer status, or does high spending? I think it’s the latter and that is (imo) a problem. People don’t benefit from an arms race with the Joneses, especially if they have to go into debt to keep up. It also means you have to keep up your spending to remain where you are relative to others, since others will increase their possessions, too. However, I don’t think people give the status arms race enough thought. Are you really better off chasing the spending of others, or should you rather change who you compare yourself to?
If I buy a Ferrari and go to the meetings of Ferrari owners, I might feel inferior – the other Ferrari owners are likely much wealthier than I am. I could sell the Ferrari, buy a Volkswagen and go to those meetings instead (assuming they have them). Compared to these owners, I would feel better about my relative level of (material) success. Thus, I might derive more enjoyment/happiness from a cheaper VW than a more expensive Ferrari.
Tuesday ~ February 2nd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Robin Hanson
I agree that status is not obviously zero-sum, but they do seem to have some level of obvious negative externality. On average I am worse off when random other people have higher status. Ambiguity mixed with over-confidence might also mitigate this externality, but this also isn’t obvious to me – the effect might go the other way too. There is just so much we don’t know.