Though less openly contemptuous of the spendthrift masses than many of
his fellow scolds, [Baylor marketing professor James A. Roberts] still exudes that particular sanctimonious
anti-materialism so often found among modestly remunerated professors
and journalists.
Here are some of the things that upset him and that "document our
preoccupation with status consumption": Lucky Jeans, bling, Hummers,
iPhones, 52-inch plasma televisions, purebred lapdogs, McMansions,
expensive rims for your tires, couture, Gulfstream jets and Abercrombie
& Fitch. This is a fairly accurate list of the aspirational
consumption patterns of a class of folks that my Upper West Side
neighbors used to refer to as "these people," usually while discussing
their voting habits or taste in talk radio. As with most such books,
considerably less space is devoted to the extravagant excesses of
European travel, arts-enrichment programs or collecting first editions.
One of the running themes of the economist Robin Hanson's excellent blog
is that arguments like the ones found in these books are actually an
elite-status proxy war. They denigrate the one measure of
high-visibility achievement—income—that public intellectuals don't do
very well on. Reading "Shiny Objects," you get the feeling that he is
onto something.
Consider the matter of status competition. Mr. Roberts, like so many
before him, argues that conspicuous consumption is an unhappy zero-sum
game. But this is of course true of most forms of competition: Most
academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional
conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles. Any
competition, from looks to money to academic credentialing, both
consumes a lot of resources and makes many of the participants feel bad
about themselves. Why, then, does the literature on status competition
always tell us that we should redistribute capital gains or inheritances
and never tell us that we should redistribute academic chairs or book
contracts?
--Megan McArdle, WSJ, on the need for a more coherent philosophy of good consumption
