Asymmetrical Information

Amen to that.

If we didn't have status seeking, we would not have politicians.

An excellent point. Probably explains a lot of the behavior that tends to go on in non-profit institutions.

I think Arnold should be penalized 10 yards for over-generalizing. Has he studied the phenomenon? What do the data say?

Quite to the contrary I see some status-seeking as another engine driving progress. The electronic calculator, personal computer, the luggable/portable/laptop/notebook computer, and the iPod have all been status symbols in their time.

Some status-seeking isn't zero sum--if it's showing off in a way that pleases people, it might even be positive sum.

Reminds me of the one good line from Smoky and the Bandit. From memory:

Burt Reynolds: Everyone's gotta be good at somethin'.
Sally Fields: So what are you good at?
Burt Reynolds: Showin' off.

Status is all about signaling that you are different from those around you. Since when is signaling zero-sum?

Would we all be better off if you knew nothing about the status of your doctor, or your college, or your next date?

Who is -he- to say what sorts of signals are important to -me-?

Now, I agree that -deceptive- signaling can be bad, but signaling itself is useful stuff.

I'm thinking of a middle aged fat bald guy driving a Corvette. This is definitely status seeking behavior. But in what way is it zero sum? The gentleman's behavior hasn't cost anyone anything - because nobody's buying it. Status isn't something you seek. Like wealth, it is something you earn.

“James Clavell's novel, King Rat, describes a World War II Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in which an American corporal reaches the top of the pecking order among the prisoners. However, once the war ends and the prisoners are freed, he suddenly reverts to low-ranking status.”

Arnold Kling mentioned the above novel. I also strongly recommend the movie version starring George Segal. This is one of the greatest movies of all time. It amazes me that most people have never heard of it.

Status is powerful human drive because in the distant past, status was the only form of wealth or security that existed. In hunter-gatherer times, material possessions were minimal and easily replaced. The greatest determiner of an individuals survival was the number of allies they could call upon when times got rough. We are probably all genetically programmed to try to get as many people to ally with us as possible.

In the modern age, status seeking looks more like mass marketing than building up networks of allies but its original purpose is very clear if you look back at the social behavior of our great-grandparents.

David,

Though there is often a positive correlation, rank and status are two different things. Many a military organization is effectively run by high status NCOs who are officially lower in rank than their Officers. People follow those they respect.

"If we didn't have status seeking, we would not have politicians. "

We wouldn't have a society either, and then where would the drive for economic gain be?

Status is all about signaling that you are different from those around you.

Status is all about signaling that you are *better* than those around you. In order for you to be better, they have to be worse. That's why it is zero-sum.

I'm thinking of a middle aged fat bald guy driving a Corvette. This is definitely status seeking behavior. But in what way is it zero sum?

Because it the man in the above scenario has increased his status by decreasing that of other people. He gained status by buying a much nicer-than-average car; they lost status because he raised the average for "car niceness", slightly lowering how nice their own cars seem, and thus the status they receive from them.

One man can increase his status by buying an expensive car. If *everybody* goes out and buys expensive cars, we all just end up back at whatever status we were at before all the car-buying started. That's zero-sum.

Dan,

Re; Because the man in the above scenario has increased his status by decreasing that of other people.

And what I'm saying is that this man has not actually increased his status, he only thinks he has. People don't see a guy with higher status driving a Corvette, they see a guy who is trying to buy status by buying a Corvette. The guy in the Honda hasn't lost a thing. The guy in the Corvette has spent a lot of money on an illusion, and the Corvette dealer has profitted by providing the service of fulfilling that illusion - but no one has lost anything.

The sender of a signal does not determine the content of the signal sent, the receiver does.

And what I'm saying is that this man has not actually increased his status, he only thinks he has. People don't see a guy with higher status driving a Corvette, they see a guy who is trying to buy status by buying a Corvette. The guy in the Honda hasn't lost a thing. The guy in the Corvette has spent a lot of money on an illusion, and the Corvette dealer has profitted by providing the service of fulfilling that illusion - but no one has lost anything.

No, I disagree. The fat, middle-aged guy (hey, keep those personal remarks to yourself! :-) ) driving a Corvette has higher status relative to the Honda-driving guy than he would if he too were driving a Honda. And it's not altogether an illusion. Corvette Man is broadcasting the fact that he can afford to buy a Corvette.

And what I'm saying is that this man has not actually increased his status, he only thinks he has

I concur with Chris; the guy probably has actually increased his status. If nothing else, he's more likely to get laid. :)

It is a cliche, but it does work. People who openly display wealth are perceived as being sexier and more powerful than those who don't. That translates to status.

Chris and Dan,

Okay, in some cases you may be right. In some cases an observer of our Corvette driver, perhaps a dumb blonde gold digger, may assign him a higher status. But a second observer, perhaps our Honda driver, may assign him a lower status, seeing nothing but a fat bald guy trying desparately to be a babe magnet, or an idiot driving a gas guzzler. The net effect is unmeasurable. "Status seeking" does not translate directly to "status" because status is in the eye of the beholder. The problem with Arnold's hypothesis is that we can't know the net sum of "status seeking" - and because "status" is a result of many factors other than status seeking.

Okay, in some cases you may be right. In some cases an observer of our Corvette driver, perhaps a dumb blonde gold digger, may assign him a higher status. But a second observer, perhaps our Honda driver, may assign him a lower status, seeing nothing but a fat bald guy trying desparately to be a babe magnet, or an idiot driving a gas guzzler.

A fat, bald, middle-aged guy is obviously not going to be a babe magnet, even with a nice car. He'd have to actually be rich to be a babe magnet. But a fat, bald, middle-aged guy who drives a used Ford Taurus isn't going to get sex without paying for it. A fat, bald, middle-aged guy who invests money in the visible trappings of success -- clothes, cars, etc -- gains status and the opportunities that go with it.

Granted, there are probably a handful of people who will recognize no increase in status. Far more common will be the sort of people who will resent his attempt to increase his status (at, as noted earlier, their expense) and attempt to counteract it through criticism and backbiting. The external trappings of success do matter; anyone who says they don't pay attention to such things is deluding themselves. If people really judged each other based on the wisdom with which they spent their money, the highest-status people in the world would be the ones living like Gandhi and the ones who drove BMWs and wore designer suits.

We're all dumb blonde gold-diggers, genetically. Let's not kid ourselves.

The fat bald guy will definitely gain status by upgrading from a Honda to a Corvette. Will he now have more status than a fit, handsome man driving a Honda? Maybe not. But he certainly will have closed the gap quite a bit.

Of course the fit, handsome man may become quite angry about the whole thing -- because he used to feel much more superior to the fat bald guy and now he doesn't feel quite the same way. The fit, handsome man may even gripe a little bit about "pathetic guys trying desperately to be babe magnets" -- but that's basically sour grapes.

For the record, fat bald middle-aged guys who drive used Ford Tauruses may do surprisingly well in the sex department. Women are odd creatures -- they often are attracted to guys who are smart, funny, charming or nice, even when those guys don't have much in the way of looks or money.

If we buy into Kling’s premise that the conferral and removal of status is a “zero-sum game” (i.e. the amount of “status” in the world is static, and any personal gains/losses of such must flow from/to others), then:

1) Since most status is achieved through economic activity of some sort (or does anyone suppose our hypothetical middle-aged guy won his status-symbol ‘vette in a surfing competition?), and economic activity is positive-sum, on the whole isn’t the status-seeker making a net positive contribution to the world at large? Zero (status) + positive (economic) = net positive. If the needs of society are met by the “invisible hand” of productive individuals working for their own material gain, why aren’t they also met by the “invisible hand” of productive individuals seeking primarily recognition and accolades? Who cares what the motivation is?

2) Even if elevated status is achieved through actions and behaviours which don’t generally lend themselves to categorization as “economic activity”, so what? Returning to the surfing competition example, say I’ve been the Big Kahuna for years, but suddenly everyone on the beach is raving about some new hotshot who can brave bigger waves and do more acrobatic stunts. Well, tough luck for me. The harder my loss of status hits me, the more it means that’s all I was ever in it for anyway. Those who place high emphasis on status within a community, and deign to compete with others for this precious commodity, must be prepared to accept the fact that they may either never achieve it or eventually lose it to someone better.

But having made these points, I have a real problem with Kling’s premise that status is “zero-sum” anyway. Except in very simple situations (e.g. competition in games/sports that are unarguably zero-sum), I think this is a gross oversimplification. Status is difficult or impossible to quantify, and is not usually very fungible anyway (e.g. a balding Wall Streeter won’t get much respect from the surfer set, and being Big Kahuna + $1.50 will get you subway fare in Manhattan). Consider the following:

1) Say we live in a tribe with 100 other cavemen, and none of us is distinguished in any way. Suddenly one day, Fred invents the wheel and becomes a celebrity. Does his elevated status lower whatever esteem I hold for my other 98 fellow tribesman? Probably not.

2) In the same tribe, next week Barney discovers fire. Does his newfound status reduce that of either Fred or the other tribesmen? I don’t see why it would. Obviously, if more and more tribesmen continued to distinguish themselves, at some point the status of the rest of us would begin to suffer by example (even while our lives were improved immeasurably by the class of high-achievers); we would go from being regarded as “average” to being regarded as “mediocre”. But attempting to quantify this slide in status would be a challenge best left to psychologists and/or anthropologists, and summarizing it as simply a “zero-sum game” is not likely to be accurate at all.

3) Say I’m walking with Barney one day, and some guys from another friendly tribe come up and start lavishing attention on him (requests for engraved autographs, et. al.), completely ignoring me (which they would have done in his absence anyway). Ok, so he’s got lots of status and I don’t. Big deal. He deserves it and I don’t, and lack of status is not exactly something to throw a hissy fit over. Have we so little to worry about these days that we need to fret over the tender feelings some in the lumpen masses might suffer for not being great?

DRB, You describe the negative feelings toward the guy in the corvette as "sour grapes". Dan, you say that we are all gold diggers. The assumption here is that an objective standard of status exists. That the Honda driver is reacting to the "fact" that a Corvette ranks higher on the status list than a Honda. That the blonde is reacting to the "fact" that guys with more money rank higher on the status list than those with less money. There is no such standard. We do judge each other, and we do assign status. But we do it subjectively. Our judgement precedes our assignment of status.

So how can the idea of "zero sum" be applied to a subjective system? There is no sum to measure.

Since most status is achieved through economic activity of some sort (or does anyone suppose our hypothetical middle-aged guy won his status-symbol ‘vette in a surfing competition?), and economic activity is positive-sum, on the whole isn’t the status-seeker making a net positive contribution to the world at large?

Status can be achieved through a variety of means. For example, the left-wing approach to status-seeking is to confiscate wealth from the people who actually earn it and use it to increase their own influence. That's not good for the economy at all.

Look at all the obsessing over the "widening gap between rich and poor". Since the gap is widening because the poor are growing richer while the rich get richer even faster, there is no rational economic reason to care about the gap. Yet millions of words and cubic miles of political hot air are spent bemoaning the gap. Why? Simple: status. It isn't enough the the situation of the poor improve; the situation of the rich must also be made to worsen, so that people can stop feeling left out.

That the Honda driver is reacting to the "fact" that a Corvette ranks higher on the status list than a Honda.

It is a fact that people are, on average, much more impressed with Corvette drivers than Honda drivers. They are similarly more impressed by people who wear nice suits vs. shorts and a "Who farted?" t-shirt, nice watches vs. plastic crap from Walgreens, and styled hair versus raggedy, uncut hair. So, yes, it is an objective fact that a person who shells out for the trappings of wealth increases their status by doing so.

We do judge each other, and we do assign status. But we do it subjectively. Our judgement precedes our assignment of status.

Actually, our judgement happens after our assignment of status. We react positively or negatively to a person and then rationalize why we did it after the fact. Nobody consciously thinks "hm, that person drives a nice car, so I shall treat him better". We do it without thinking about it; it is human nature.

"Status can be achieved through a variety of means. For example, the left-wing approach to status-seeking is to confiscate wealth from the people who actually earn it and use it to increase their own influence."

It's far worse than that. Left-wingers also gain status by taking government positions and bossing other people around. And so do right-wingers, if they are the type to be drawn to government. This is why we get unreadable laws and regulations - they give bureaucrats the power to make subjective and arbitrary decisions and enforce them upon other people, preferably smarter and richer people who would otherwise be their superiors in status. And this is why we can elect "small government" candidates and the government keeps growing.

Another way to seek status is by assuming a pose of moral superiority. I could spend all day listing examples of that from the left, the right, and elsewhere. (E.g., doctrinaire big-L Libertarians seem to specialize in achieving moral and intellectual superiority, but only inside their own heads.)

More to the point, status is far better correlated with happiness than economic state (beyond a base minimum level). In fact, I would say that (at a unconsious level) the only reason we seek economic gain *is* status. If a man who in 1950 would claim to be happy with his economic circumstance were transported to the present, he would be considered near poverty level. Moreover, he'd be heavily motivated to improve his circumstance for no other reason than the fact that modern prosperity would have reduced his status to that if the poor.

We seek economic gain not because we want more stuff, but because if we don't, we'll be left behind and lose status (and thus happiness).

Dan,

Re; "Actually, our judgement happens after our assignment of status."

I think you're on to something here. You may be right that many don't think before assigning status. Perhaps the problem isn't status seeking at all but rather, like most problems, not thinking. Perhaps it is truly fortunate then, that many of us do think before assigning status.

When I see a politician espousing some social good for which he or she wants to raise taxes, I do not automatically assign that person a positive status for the claim of wanting to do "good", in fact I am likely to assign them a negative status for being an idiot and a panderer who takes no notice of the unseen.

I don't assign my boss a positive status because he wears a suit, but because he's a damn good manager. If he wasn't, the suit would just make me lower his status even more.

When I see a Corvette, I think "nice car". I don't assign status to the driver at all, because when I think about it, hey, I don't know the driver.

So let's say that Arnold Kling is right, that there are problems created by status seeking (and he probably is right). Well, the solution is simple. We just have to think.

Can anyone give me an example of status seeking behaviour that would cause any kind of problem if the observers of the behavior would simply think before assigning status?

Perhaps the Corvette guy really likes cars, and can finally afford one. Not status, just enjoyment. Seems to me the person worrying about the guy driving the 'vette is the one conferring status upon him. He would not be seeking it. Excuse me while I go wash my Porsche.....

I used to ascribe the failure to see specific status-seeking gestures as a "failure of brains". I know realize that it's me that is the odd one. We've probably a million years of training that goes into this (both seeking and recognition) and it's mostly the borderline Asperger types like myself that don't "get it".

More to the point, failure to recognize and participate in status seeking can result in heavy real penalties. Low status people are denied jobs, aid from police, and general consideration from society. Even those who are unconcerned about status do so at their peril.

Tom,

Re; "More to the point, failure to recognize and participate in status seeking can result in heavy real penalties."

Good point. But I think a slight modification is necessary.

It isn't failure to participate in status seeking that has penalties, it is failure to have status. Status seeking is not the only way to achieve status, and not even close to the best. The best way to achieve status is to be a person who is valuable to someone else. There are many perfectly honorable ways to do this. Status seeking, on the other hand, is often a lie - doing things that make a person appear to have value when they really don't. And again, all we have to do to put an end to the negative consequences of status seeking is to think - to distinguish between the true value and the lie.

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