Sorry, to be clear, I was contesting that you can leap from (1) and (2), which I generally agree with, to (3). And to make that point, I was proposing that at higher income levels, the relationship from (1) and (2) may not (and in my opinion, does not) hold.
I did some more research & thought about your points. Although my own experience doesn’t suggest any relationship between conspicuous consumption and life satisfaction (arguably, for me, a negative one), a handful of low-citation papers (example) seem to suggest the relationship might be causal and not merely correlative (I agree it is clearly correlative). So I agree, in principle, it is probably true that in a clear-cut case such as Jeff Bezos (providing goods and services directly to customers in exchange for money where no counterfactual service likely would’ve appeared on a similar time frame), his work might have an immense impact on life satisfaction. (I tend to agree with your point (3) on if Elon switched to a more clearly-attributable business model).
I do have to wonder, though, if conspicuous consumption is fungible in a way that survival goods (food, medical, etc.) are not. I can’t shake the intuition that everyone would be just as happy if Amazon never existed; that when all of your peers have bought iPhones it becomes a table-stakes purchase and you have to get the iPhone Pro to stand out. I will think some more.
Thanks so much for steelmanning my argument and looking for some research yourself! And I share your intuition that some consumption seems zero-sum around status. I do think though that my smartphone is giving me tons of value but that’s a different discussion probably haha
Sorry, to be clear, I was contesting that you can leap from (1) and (2), which I generally agree with, to (3). And to make that point, I was proposing that at higher income levels, the relationship from (1) and (2) may not (and in my opinion, does not) hold.
I did some more research & thought about your points. Although my own experience doesn’t suggest any relationship between conspicuous consumption and life satisfaction (arguably, for me, a negative one), a handful of low-citation papers (example) seem to suggest the relationship might be causal and not merely correlative (I agree it is clearly correlative). So I agree, in principle, it is probably true that in a clear-cut case such as Jeff Bezos (providing goods and services directly to customers in exchange for money where no counterfactual service likely would’ve appeared on a similar time frame), his work might have an immense impact on life satisfaction. (I tend to agree with your point (3) on if Elon switched to a more clearly-attributable business model).
I do have to wonder, though, if conspicuous consumption is fungible in a way that survival goods (food, medical, etc.) are not. I can’t shake the intuition that everyone would be just as happy if Amazon never existed; that when all of your peers have bought iPhones it becomes a table-stakes purchase and you have to get the iPhone Pro to stand out. I will think some more.
Thanks so much for steelmanning my argument and looking for some research yourself! And I share your intuition that some consumption seems zero-sum around status. I do think though that my smartphone is giving me tons of value but that’s a different discussion probably haha