A few years back, I stumbled on a blog post on San Francisco’s dating scene with the headline: “Women Should Date Carpenters the Way Men Date Yoga Instructors.” The piece attempts to advise women who are over-optimizing dating in San Francisco, and while I have opposing views about solutions to that than the author, I will save them for another post.
the yoga teacher/hair stylist thing is a great contrast. when you hang with exited founders or billionaires you see patterns and you see how ppl talk. eg i know a very wealthy man (almost a billionaire, but just short) who married a very attractive women who was an entertainer at a club (being vague here to protect the innocent). this comes up regularly in conversation in subtle and not so subtle ways, and it's not a positive vibe. i also know another guy, a billionaire, who married someone from a teacher-adjacent profession (again, to protect the innocent being vague). this comes up as a "oh that makes sense" or "good complement to him."
there are rich men i know who marry in a way to maximize their own personal hedonic value. pull the hottest and youngest woman you can. they are not craving status. those who crave social status and an impact beyond just $ tend to marry and date very differently; it's obvious
finally, the economic historian greg clark has shown that social status is substantially heritable. and, it is seems ppl can sense the bundle of personality traits that go along with it, because the correlation between partners of the polygenic score is high.
Great article on class and how conspicuous consumption can be more of a signal of it than something like net worth. It's not how much money you have, but using money to highlight your taste.
Definitely one of your strongest pieces to date! I really wish we did speak on cultural capital more, because I think a lot of our ills today come from failing to train a generation in how to build cultural capital, and so they resent that they can't do it and don't know why they cant.
the yoga teacher/hair stylist thing is a great contrast. when you hang with exited founders or billionaires you see patterns and you see how ppl talk. eg i know a very wealthy man (almost a billionaire, but just short) who married a very attractive women who was an entertainer at a club (being vague here to protect the innocent). this comes up regularly in conversation in subtle and not so subtle ways, and it's not a positive vibe. i also know another guy, a billionaire, who married someone from a teacher-adjacent profession (again, to protect the innocent being vague). this comes up as a "oh that makes sense" or "good complement to him."
there are rich men i know who marry in a way to maximize their own personal hedonic value. pull the hottest and youngest woman you can. they are not craving status. those who crave social status and an impact beyond just $ tend to marry and date very differently; it's obvious
finally, the economic historian greg clark has shown that social status is substantially heritable. and, it is seems ppl can sense the bundle of personality traits that go along with it, because the correlation between partners of the polygenic score is high.
Great article on class and how conspicuous consumption can be more of a signal of it than something like net worth. It's not how much money you have, but using money to highlight your taste.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment Austin!
Interesting article.
I’d always aspire to do what actually interests me regardless if it’s classy or not.
Yes, I'm the same haha :D
second coming of Veblen
LOL! Thanks Jeff :D
Definitely one of your strongest pieces to date! I really wish we did speak on cultural capital more, because I think a lot of our ills today come from failing to train a generation in how to build cultural capital, and so they resent that they can't do it and don't know why they cant.