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RE: Status Competition, Virtue Signals and Moral Markets (preview post)
There was social status and status competition already prior to social media and its rankings and it was not only about physical handsomeness. So it is in fact way more complicated than you describe here.
And I agree I didn't cover every angle. It's a preview post. I'll make a real post when Steemit has enough of a reward mechanism to make it worth the effort. At this point I don't get any real rewards for these posts.
Tell me about it. I also to try to avoid time-consuming work right now.
Of course, but the more connected people are and more transparent the world gets (as privacy is reduced), the more intense the status competition will be.
Agree, but at the same time the people are more "equalized" than in earlier times. Even the "poor" people enter the competition if they are smart or lucky. In the past, if you e.g. couldn´t afford fancy clothing, you couldn´t even enter the interesting places.
How far in the past are you talking about?
I think poor and rich are relative. In The United States it's true that there is a lottery of opportunity which doesn't exist in most other places. Anyone in the USA can win the golden ticket.
But the USA is also much more competitive than other places. In other parts of the world people aren't as intensely competing so there isn't the same urgency to win that golden ticket like there is in the USA.
E.g. 19th century.
If you are talking about in terms of GDP then of course everyone is richer in material ways than they were in the 19th century. That isn't debated. But I do not think people are all richer in social ways. We lost community, we lost purpose, we lost the social fabric. We gained material wealth.
And "we" is subjective. I'm speaking of humanity as a whole, not Americans or Europeans or any specific demographic. While more people have air conditioning and other comforts it is also true that people have smaller families, have to work longer hours, have more complex lives.
Very true.