8 Comments
User's avatar
Razib Khan's avatar

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.

Expand full comment
Austin Krehbiel's avatar

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.

Expand full comment
Amina Green's avatar

Thank you for your thoughtful comment Austin!

Expand full comment
AngelCake's avatar

Interesting article.

I’d always aspire to do what actually interests me regardless if it’s classy or not.

Expand full comment
Amina Green's avatar

Yes, I'm the same haha :D

Expand full comment
Jeff Fong's avatar

second coming of Veblen

Expand full comment
Amina Green's avatar

LOL! Thanks Jeff :D

Expand full comment
Dexanth's avatar

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.

Expand full comment