I’m wondering if you are aware that such alternative symbols already exists in a way? It’s just not numerical, it’s not one number you can show off.
Many people achieve a lot of recognition, fame, power and influence without showing off wealth with things like jewelry, sport cars, yachts, or designer clothes.
For example, from what I’m aware, here in EA circles, almost no one cares about such wealth related signals. I think the people in circles like this would be famous and influential regardless of what kind of clothes they wear or how expensive their watch or car is. They are recognized for their ideas and for their contributions.
Also, stuff like titles, degrees, etc… this already exists. Academia has its own honors and hierarchy, so is the case for clergy, so is the case in politics, so is the case in sport, music, literature, and pretty much any other endeavor...
Now I see where the luxury might play a role: if you want to show that you’re successful, but you’re NOT actually famous or influential. You just made a lot of money and want this to be known. In this case luxury does play a role.
But, for a lot of people some desire for luxury is not to explicitly show off their wealth or success, but because they genuinely believe (which might be a mistaken belief) that more expensive stuff looks better on them or is higher quality, and they can afford it. Probably it’s true up to a certain point. But very soon you hit diminishing returns. The problem is in finding sweet spot.
There is a saying (which I don’t endorse, nor agree with, but maybe there is a grain of truth in it): “I’m not rich enough to buy cheap things”. The logic is if you buy the cheapest things, they will likely be low quality, and will break so often, that you’ll eventually spend more money buying such cheap things again and again, than if you bought an expensive thing once.
In general I disagree with this logic. I think if you buy standard, non-luxury items, you’re getting a very decent product. You don’t need to buy luxury to get quality. Maybe only if you bought cheapest, clearly inferior product, the logic could apply to some extent.
In general, I don’t know what to think about this.
Your idea, if it worked, and if people accepted it, would save a lot of money that’s wastefully spent on luxury. And that would be awesome.
But I have 3 fears:
That it would introduce another kind of race and psychological pressure, where people are chasing a high score.
That it could fail to eradicate luxury spending because some people, when they earn certain amount of money, simply want a yacht, a Ferrari, a Rolex, or whatever, regardless of status signaling.
It could send a message that “status matters” which could exacerbate the whole thing. I mean, we already know status matters to some extent, but existence of such system could give some sort of official endorsement to the idea that “status matters”.
So I’m afraid that in the end we could end up with 2 parallel races: chasing the number, and still chasing standard luxury. What do you think why celebrities buy luxury stuff? They don’t need to prove their success or fame or wealth to anyone. If you’re Taylor Swift whole world knows you and how successful you are. And they still spend on luxury nevertheless.
Who knows maybe you’re right. I’m not yet convinced it would work or be without side effects, but if people don’t like it, they will probably just ignore it, so probably there isn’t too much risk in trying. For my sensibilities it sounds a bit dystopian honestly, and kind of entrenches fundamental inequality between people in a very explicit way, tied to money.
Having more money doesn’t make someone a better person automatically. I think it’s better to have multiple different types of status, rather than just one generalized score that can ultimately be measured through money.
As I said, there is popularity, credentials, reputation, number of followers, influence, titles, all sorts of status. And I think it makes sense to be this way, because different types of status are not commensurable. They are apples and oranges.
If you have just one generalized number, then a drug lord can have high status due to money and rank higher than a scientist who gets a Nobel prize.
So here’s where it’s going: either you get a system where money can measure your value as human being, or if you avoid it, you get some sort of moral policing or social credit system, where you also take other things into account… which while dystopian, has some merits.
But it is dystopian for a reason, for a big reason: who gets to decide how much certain acts contribute to status? People have fundamentally different moral worldviews. Something that would count a lot in one system of values, might count very little in a different system (or even be considered negative).
IMO, a better way to reduce the consumption of luxury goods is not to validate that they are needed for status signaling and try to replace them with some digital score, but instead to raise the awareness of how wasteful they are and to convince people that they are stupid.
For example a French singer ZAZ has made a song with this message:
https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-zaz-je-veux-english-translation-lyrics
Now of course, this is just a song. But some sort of larger anti-luxury campaign might bring some more concrete results. The campaign need not just to be moralizing (while this can be a part of it—Peter Singer did well with moralizing and influenced a lot of people), but in addition to that, it can be plain and simple education. Teaching people that you can buy high quality goods without going bankrupt. Teaching people about diminishing returns once you are above certain price range. (but this could also backfire if companies decide to make products that used to be “standard” inferior—in that case you would also need to boycott companies who do it)
But, in the end, I’m also wondering if eliminating spending on luxury would really be good for the world? I mean, it certainly would, if people donated such money to effective charities instead. But there’s no guarantee they would do it. And then, you also need to consider effects on welfare, economy and environment.
After some discussion with AIs about this, my conclusion is that stopping spending money on luxury could have:
Positive effects on welfare - more utils. (Money redirected to where it can produce more utility)
Probably positive effect on economy—more jobs, more growth, more productivity, but certain industries would suffer. Another thing worthy of considering is that certain luxury industries are on cutting edge of technology, which can spill into mainstream products eventually.
Maybe negative effects on environment and resources. $10,000 spent on a Rolex buys you 100-200 g of stuff, $10,000 spent on something else could buy you hundreds of kilos of stuff.