https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/

In my recent post about the article "Boys on the side" by Hanna Rosin, I had this passage to say about the dating advice being given to women.

Everything discussed here is typical for people who belong to the upper middle class or above, which is where most of the women showcased in the article belong to (This is not to say poor people are any better. We will get to that shortly). They exhibit the behaviors we can come to expect from people on this level. My belief on conspiracis is that there are not many true conspiracies. Most of them fall under the category of people behaving selfishly to get maximum benefits at the expense of others.

I remember seeing an article sometime ago which was talking about how highly educated women who got married in their late 20s to mid 30s were the ones to stick to a marriage long term as opposed to women who got married early. The actual reason for this is that her value has gone down and her potential to branch swing along with it. The advise in that article was not for all women to stick to their commitments and to take it seriously. The analysis was that these select people were doing something right and that they need to be copied by everyone. This is not possible. This is like asking an average Joe on the street to compete with Donald Trump. Trump is what he is because he had a huge headstart over a lot of people, owing to his family. We often see this mismatched advice being pandered as wisdom. Popular dating advice falls under this category. Most of the women showcased here are spoilt rotten. Whatever they consider is good for their situation and background is not going to be good for an average woman. Nor will it ever be attainable. Looking at Sex and City from this perspective, you see it for what it is. A fantasy for upper middle class women who were bored thanks to their secure life and lack of struggle. This is how a lot of average women completely ruined their lives. They were following an imperfect, impossible, impractical and unsuitable model to begin with. And as soon as they started blowing up their marriages, an industry formed around it, making it more lucrative and the situation even worse.

Rob Henderson's essay on the leisure class brings in a new perspective into this discussion. He posits that rich people virtue-signal impossible beliefs to distinguish themselves from the rubes. Women, being the social creatures they are, adopt these beliefs to associate themselves with the rich and wealthy in the hopes of faking it until they can make it into the upper echelons (top 10% men). It has always been my opinion that if a woman wants to marry the CEO, she will join the company. This article adds on the point that she will self-identify as a CEO herself (think of all the profiles of "I own my own company" we've seen in our main sub) in order to snag herself an Alpha bucks.

We all know why women hate subs like ours and TRP. Women love the finished product. They do not appreciate a product under development. They want the shiny, on display, brand name item which has a mile long queue right infront of it. While women expect this from the men they desire, they have been told repeatedly to imitate the same and to never show vulnerability to men if they want to attract a confident, successful man. Although the article is immensely quotable, I am going to highlight the following and would ask everyone to read it in its entirety. Please share your opinions below.

In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more affordable than before. And people are less likely to receive validation for the material items they display. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs.

It seems reasonable to think that the downtrodden might be most interested in obtaining status and money. But this is not the case. Inhabitants of prestigious institutions are even more interested than others in prestige and wealth. For many of them, that drive is how they reached their lofty positions in the first place. Fueling this interest, they’re surrounded by people just like them—their peers and competitors are also intelligent status-seekers. They persistently look for new ways to move upward and avoid moving downward.

A key idea is that because we can’t be certain of the financial standing of other people, a good way to size up their means is to see whether they can afford to waste money on goods and leisure. This explains why status symbols are so often difficult to obtain and costly to purchase.

Veblen proposed that the wealthy flaunt these symbols not because they are useful, but because they are so pricey or wasteful that only the wealthy can afford them, which is why they’re high-status indicators. And this still goes on.

The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer’s social class and education. Affluent people promote open borders or the decriminalization of drugs because it advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption of those policies will cost them less than others. The logic is akin to conspicuous consumption—if you’re a student who has a large subsidy from your parents and I do not, you can afford to waste $900 and I can’t, so wearing a Canada Goose jacket is a good way of advertising your superior wealth and status. Proposing policies that will cost you as a member of the upper class less than they would cost me serve the same function. Advocating for open borders and drug experimentation are good ways of advertising your membership of the elite because, thanks to your wealth and social connections, they will cost you less than me.

Unfortunately, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower down the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm. Take polyamory. I had a revealing conversation recently with a student at an elite university. He said that when he sets his Tinder radius to five miles, about half of the women, mostly other students, said they were “polyamorous” in their bios. Then, when he extended the radius to 15 miles to include the rest of the city and its outskirts, about half of the women were single mothers. The costs created by the luxury beliefs of the former are borne by the latter. Polyamory is the latest expression of sexual freedom championed by the affluent. They are in a better position to manage the complications of novel relationship arrangements. And if these relationships don’t work out, they can recover thanks to their financial capability and social capital. The less fortunate suffer by adopting the beliefs of the upper class.

This is well-illustrated by the finding that in 1960 the percentage of American children living with both biological parents was identical for affluent and working-class families—95 percent. By 2005, 85 percent of affluent families were still intact, but for working-class families the figure had plummeted to 30 percent.