Yes but the punishment for doing very poorly along the wealth/income dimension for status (as opposed to tetris playing ability and other competitions) seems to be particularly severe; namely, poverty, homelessness and even starvation. Additionally, if you are doing poorly on your Tetris game for whatever reason, you ought to recover in the future. But once you are desperately poor, reversing your fortunes seems incredibly difficult.
So I always thought maybe a safety net for poverty is helpful.
The real trick is being able to shift which dimensions of status matter to you based on context so you always come out on top.
When I am at a philosophy conference i can pretty much always think to myself, with justification, that I could beat up anyone in the room. When I'm at a brazilian jiu jitsu tournament, I can't think that. But I can think "none of these guys are philosophy professors."
More generally, as long as you specialize in two negatively correlated dimensions of status, it's highly likely that for an arbitrary person you'll be able to find a dimension of status you care about on which you rank above them.
One related critique, which I'm sure you've heard, is that, unless the politburo engages in some serious Brave New World-type engineering, some hierarchies will persist even in a communist country. Some people will be better looking, more charismatic, funnier, more athletic and/or more creative than others, and that will inevitably create hierarchies.
Very good read, but I think cross-status mixing (rather than rectifing) is equally important like what happens in Europe. Of course, this comes against backdrop of a welfare state, but generally, I think it is replicable if a certain level of civil society/civility is agreed upon/maintained within a republic/democracy. I am more on the side of Rousseau regarding this issue (a man in civil society always looks outwards), but I think Nozick's critcism is warranted and vindicated in real time (with current identity politics). However, spreading status across creates ghettos, I am not sure this can creates a better chance at social positioning for people at the lower end of the strata in each domain (or the newly wide domains end up more inaccessible than when the domains are narrowed?).
Yes but the punishment for doing very poorly along the wealth/income dimension for status (as opposed to tetris playing ability and other competitions) seems to be particularly severe; namely, poverty, homelessness and even starvation. Additionally, if you are doing poorly on your Tetris game for whatever reason, you ought to recover in the future. But once you are desperately poor, reversing your fortunes seems incredibly difficult.
So I always thought maybe a safety net for poverty is helpful.
I would put the point differently: being low status is not the only (or even the most important) bad thing about being poor. I don't disagree.
I would say that as long as you are not so poor that your physiological needs are not met, status is all that matters.
The real trick is being able to shift which dimensions of status matter to you based on context so you always come out on top.
When I am at a philosophy conference i can pretty much always think to myself, with justification, that I could beat up anyone in the room. When I'm at a brazilian jiu jitsu tournament, I can't think that. But I can think "none of these guys are philosophy professors."
More generally, as long as you specialize in two negatively correlated dimensions of status, it's highly likely that for an arbitrary person you'll be able to find a dimension of status you care about on which you rank above them.
Yes I also find these psychic accounting tricks essential.
One related critique, which I'm sure you've heard, is that, unless the politburo engages in some serious Brave New World-type engineering, some hierarchies will persist even in a communist country. Some people will be better looking, more charismatic, funnier, more athletic and/or more creative than others, and that will inevitably create hierarchies.
Nice note. But there could be only hundreds or thousands of status silos at best, and there are billions of people out there.
How do you calculate that? I would think the number was unbounded.
I noticed when living in Britain, the working class saw themselves as lower class and didn't value themselves
Very good read, but I think cross-status mixing (rather than rectifing) is equally important like what happens in Europe. Of course, this comes against backdrop of a welfare state, but generally, I think it is replicable if a certain level of civil society/civility is agreed upon/maintained within a republic/democracy. I am more on the side of Rousseau regarding this issue (a man in civil society always looks outwards), but I think Nozick's critcism is warranted and vindicated in real time (with current identity politics). However, spreading status across creates ghettos, I am not sure this can creates a better chance at social positioning for people at the lower end of the strata in each domain (or the newly wide domains end up more inaccessible than when the domains are narrowed?).