the diamond wedding ring is curious though. it seems to have evolved from a precious trinket you give to your loved one to a worthless, yet costly trinket you give to your loved one.
Exactly. Everyone has their own symbols of their status, whether they acknowledge that or not, and there’s a strong inclination to mock the status symbols of other cultures just because they have different tastes. The classic example is rednecks in lifted powerstrokes on 42" tires mocking black guys with their donks on 26" rims. They both look stupid to an outsider, but within each of those cultures they’re admired.
It doesn’t have to be physical stuff, either, as everyone who’s ever wanted to punch a hipster for bragging about not having a TV knows. But not having a TV is a terrible status symbol because it’s not flashy, so you have to go around telling everyone to get the same effect.
Well, its all relative. When I see someone with a LV or Coach handbag, I usually treat them worse because I assume they have to be shallow to spend hundreds of dollars on a handbag.
Are you in the position to make my life easier when selling me a car or jewelry? Are you my broker or seating me in a restaurant? If not, then you aren’t the person I’m carrying the purse for. If you are, then you probably need to make sure your assumptions regarding my shallowness don’t translate into worse service.
I think you’re misguided in doing so. This tidy little black purse retails for $358 according to the Coach website. Or you can go to any major city and buy something emblazoned with the Coach logo for $25 from a street vendor.
Which goes back to what I was saying about taste. You may have a problem with someone spending $358 on a purse, but that’s not what you’re acting out on. Rather, you’re judging people for carrying around tacky purses.
Status symbols are exactly what the name implies: a way of showing where you stand in the pecking order. The problem is that there’s more than one pecking order, and more than one idea of what constitutes higher status. So a Guido-style tan and gold jewelry looks silly to me, since those things are considered bad taste, not good, in my world. In theirs it presumably is attractive.
Eschewing status symbols can be a desirable trait in some circles. It shows that you have good sense and aren’t lured in by cheap flashy things. I’m among them - I love Coach purses, but carrying something with a designer logo is considered tacky by my circle. Given that it’s my circle, I naturally agree with that thought. No Coach purses for me unless they start making ones that don’t have a visible logo. So avoiding status symbols (and possibly bragging about it) can itself be a symbol of your status.
Either way, I agree that it’s not an accurate signal. I’m also having a hard time understanding what the end result is supposed to be, but I’m assuming it’s better treatment similar to what you said about carrying a Coach purse and wearing clothes from Nordstrom resulting in getting better tables and better attention from sales people. The clothes thing makes more sense somehow, but jewelry is just another accessory, so maybe it does all fit.
I don’t currently own that many status symbols (the nice watch I inherited from my dad is currently missing in my junk-pile), but I grew up around them and I like to think that I understand them.
By and large, people like what they like and there isn’t a whole lot of rhyme or reason for it. For myself, people wince at my horseradish-eating habit, and I find most fashionable clothes to be stupid-looking. (to my blackened heart, anything more formal than ‘wear whatever you want’ necessitates a tie, and there’s no point spending big money on any non tie-compatible duds unless it’s basically a costume, or designed for some special kind of work). But most people agree that for a certain thing that you like, there are better and worse grades of it.
Take beer. The world is drowning under beer; there are 1,760 breweries in the USA alone. The beer they produce is priced differently, generally reflecting the amount of effort it takes to make and the relative rarity of what goes into it. To be sure, the price of different beers is dependent on a number of external factors, such as import tariffs and short- or even long-term scarcities, but over time (in what we call a perfect market), the prices tend to level out as a more-or-less pure expression of the difficulty of making them.
There are people on this sweet planet who genuinely prefer the taste of the cheap shit. My father, for instance, was a huge whisky drinker. Even though he could afford the primo brands, he still drank the stuff that came in green plastic jugs - it was, for whatever reason, his favorite. These sort of people, I think, are rare, and human tastes are congruent enough that most people who like a category of good will concede that there is a hierarchy of the stuff, and that their hierarchies generally overlap. The majority of people who like beer will like it the same way, and moreover they will subscribe to a uniform theory of ‘this stuff is a better grade of stuff than that stuff’ that allows for the existence of different brands at different prices. Abita Amber costs more than Keystone Light, and I’ve researched them enough to say with confidence that it costs them more to make; enough people must genuinely prefer it that Abita can get away with charging more for it.
This is what makes expensive beer - and expensive clothes, and expensive cars, and expensive food and so on - such a status symbol.
So, that brings us to status symbols. The damnable truth is that subconsciously, people cannot shake the belief that in a free-market system, the more money you have, by and large the more important you are to the continued function of society. (Take the total receipts of your profession, divide by how many people are in your profession, and that’s how important you are. Doctors are more important than athletes, but there are far fewer athletes; the total amount our society pays to doctors is far greater than to athletes, but each individual athlete gets a larger slice of the smaller pie.)
Unless they steal it or win it by gambling, people have money because other people give it to them in return for something - as a fee for working, or as a gift out of fellowship. If you have a lot of money, then that’s because lots of people have been giving it to you - or a few people with a lot of money have been giving it to you, but they got it just the same way, presumably as either a fee or a gift. Thus, owning expensive shit is a visible way of declaring to others and reminding yourself that, ‘hey, I am important.’
To return to the OP: For whatever reason, people tend to find the same things beautiful and useful. Ipads and Iphones are very useful devices, but other people find them useful as well; most other people will see you have an iphone and think, ‘dang, I, too, own one of those / would own one if I could afford it.’ they do so because they generally think the same way you do, and you as they do, about the relative worth and value of electronic goods. Hence, people by-and-large are willing to pay more for them, which makes them more expensive, which makes them symbols of wealth, and thus of status.
Looking back on this, I have no idea if that makes any sense whatsoever, but I feel strongly that I have something resembling an idea in there somewhere.
Like others said, almost very culture, sub-culture, and person has their own ideas about status symbols. If you are so dominant financially or culturally, it can even go full circle. Warren Buffet lives in a modest house in Omaha, NE despite being a billionaire and that is his personal status symbol because it basically flips the bird to all the lesser 100 fold millionaires out there. Sam Walton did the same thing. Bill Gates uses philanthropy as a status symbol. Those are actually examples of status symbols that are positive because there is such a thing.
Every other subculture from geeks, bloods, motor heads, rednecks, white trash, gang-bangers, academic nerds, fashion aficionados, foodies, and new age crackpots have their own too. It is all about fitting in within your own hierarchy.
The main time status symbols are bad are when they cost money that the person can’t afford and, even worse, don’t have the desired effect. There is nothing worse in yuppie life than overreaching to buy the 3rd most elaborate McMansion on the street and then losing it due to foreclosure. That doesn’t do anybody any good.
When you go to a job interview, what do you wear?
I bet you wear a suit. Is there anything about a suit that makes it particularly well-suited for office work? Not really. Certainly they are less practical than a nice sweatsuit, which is one reason why you meet a lot of work-from-home people who wear their pajamas to work and virtually none who put on a suit when working at home alone. Indeed, suits have some pretty heavy drawbacks- expensive, hard to clean, need to be ironed, offer few options for regulating temperature, etc.
But it’s what people expect, it conveys what you set out to convey. It’s also about what you enjoy having and owning.
Everyone has their status symbols. Ever bought a funny tee-shirt and thought “My friends will laugh at this?” Have any collectibles? Every buy a gadget just to mess around with it? It’s the same story, just different stuff.
In some cases (like, for example, hate for iPhones, good cars, or good-quality classic purses that happen to be made by Coach), ostentatiously eschewing "pointless"status symbols is a pointless status symbol all its own.
They do. Mine doesn’t. The label is inside the purse. I think the Coach logo bags are not at all attractive. I think mine came with a little tag on the outside of the purse, I don’t know that tag made it out of my house.
I find it amusing when people accuse me of buying an iPhone as a status symbol.
I always think “Man, if I really wanted to buy myself a status symbol, I’d do a lot better than a $200 phone.”
My point exactly. 
Actually that doesn’t sound like a status symbol to me. Unless you’re only messing with it when you have an audience.
I wonder what we’d find if everyone were to list their 10 most expensive possessions, and declare whether each was a status symbol or not (for them)? I’d bet we’d see a lot of comical claims about various items.
I’d start the thread, but I don’t really care about board status. 
Buying expensive status symbols is a way of telling those people to suck it.
I tend to buy high quality stuff that is reliable. But I’m not completely utilitarian either. I’ll buy $900 Brooks Brothers suits because they look better than a $200 one you would buy at Today’s Man.
Thanks for the great responses so far.
Things I’ve learned (I think):
- It’s more about fitting in than showing off, except when it comes to purses and service
- The lack of certain objects is itself a symbol (definitely guilty of this… I have friends who’d outright shun me if they caught me wearing designer clothing or carrying luxury manpurses)
- Usually people are at least slightly attracted to their own status symbols, and it’s not just for others
Hey, do it here! That’d be very interesting to see.
My own list – feel free to challenge my assessments:
[ol]
[li]Standard sedan, $2000, I’d say definitely not a SS[/li][li]Fancy road bike, $1000, not really, but I do really like the way it looks… so…?[/li][li]Laptop, $800, no aside from the fact that it’s deliberately not a Mac, so maybe?[/li][li]Piano keyboard, $400, um… not a symbol of anything except incompetence so far :)[/li][li]Xbox 360, $300, definitely not… I’m ashamed of it and hide it more than anything[/li][li]The next few items are just random backpacking gear around $100-$200 each, so I’ll lump them together and say if they are, it’s only around other backpackers, and they’re really primarily for my own comfort/luxury[/li][/ol]
I’ve got a bunch of cool stuff, but it’s all for me. If other people think it’s a status symbol, then bully for them. It’s all stuff that gets used though.
This. In the progressive town where I live, the hippie/crunchy crowd has status symbols of their own. Maybe they’re not outwardly recognizable, but they establish a pecking order within the community, and they definitely serve as a signal to others within the community that you belong to it. They’re also a subtle sign that you’re financially stable; “subtle” being the key in a community that generally shuns open displays of wealth. For example:
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Everybody has a membership at the co-op. Having a CSA share, though, not only tells your peers that you’re “keeping it real”, but that you also have the $50 to $200 to spend on doing so.
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You might tell others that you drive an old, rusted Volvo because it’s a statement against rampant consumerism and waste, and that the environmental cost of manufacturing a new car is far greater than the smoke that belches from your elderly 240. Maybe, but the cost of keeping that old Brick running isn’t that much less than a payment on a newer car. DIY skills are also highly valued in the community, so you’ll have plenty of friends if you can fix that pesky blower motor in your driveway for far less than the $100/hour shop rate charged by Sven’s Autowerks or Olaf’s Garage down the street.
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Live in a beat-up house in town with a “natural” front yard, peeling paint, 1970s kitchen, woodwork that has been painted over 15 times, and so on? You’re not only down-to-earth, but it’s also a sign your herbal medicine practice or Tibetan handcraft importing business is bringing in enough to pay for the mortgage and taxes on a $250,000 house in the “hippie neighborhood”. Ironically, the cohousing developments and rough-around-the-edges neighborhoods preferred by the crunchy crowd has far higher prices per square foot than other better maintained or more conveniently located neighborhoods in town. Supply and demand is still the economic law of the land, even among the crowd with anti-capitalist leanings.
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Don’t own a television? That’s all fine and good, but because you own one or two thousand books on a variety of esoteric topics, prominently displayed in the living room of your drafty turn-of-the-last-century house, you’ll get both intellectual street cred, and the respect for having a library that cost as much to acquire as 10 to 20 high-end large-screen 3D LED sets. Or five to 10 1989 Volvo 240 wagons.