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.

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.

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.