patrick.net

Elites adopt trends early to distinguish themselves from the masses. This imbues the trend with prestige, which soon attracts imitation from below. Elites cannot associate with lowbies, and so they abandon the trend. No matter how much they once cherished a piece of fashion or furniture, they will discard it the moment it fails to demarcate them from the vile hordes.

The internet now enables elite conventions to diffuse rapidly through every layer of society. It doesn’t take long for the proles, and even the lumpen-proles, to copy and counterfeit elite trends. This creates a frantic chase and flight dynamic: low-status individuals chase high-status individuals by imitating their conventions, which forces high-status individuals to take flight. ...

There is, in other words, an inexorable tendency for everything to become proletarianised in advanced industrial society. This tendency can be called ‘Prole Drift’. Just as entropy condemns all ordered systems to disorder, Prole Drift condemns all status symbols to proletarianisation.

Now, you’re probably thinking: This status stuff is so complicated. How do I demarcate myself from the vile hordes without having to constantly adopt new trends? How do I make sure I’m not doing anything proleish, vulgar, déclassé, or tragically middle-brow? ...

In short, the upper-upper favour inconspicuous rather than conspicuous consumption. They practice deliberate restraint, choosing items that whisper rather than shout wealth. Their houses are hidden behind large hedges, and their clothing bears no visible logos or branding. This ‘quiet luxury’ countersignals the nouveau riche, who engage in money-drenched boasting. ...

The third characteristic of the UMC worth examining is their luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson defines luxury beliefs as ‘ideas held by privileged people that make them look good but actually harm the marginalized.’

Luxury beliefs, like luxury goods, are expensive. A consultant in the Harris Farm Halo can afford a 2-year lockdown; a small-business owner cannot. A lawyer living in Berkeley Hills can afford to defund the police; someone living in South Chicago cannot. An ‘artist’ (i.e., the son of rich parents) in Fitzroy can afford to reject monogamy; a stay-at-home Mum with three kids cannot.

In short, luxury beliefs signal both cultural capital (familiarity with trendy academic ideas) and economic capital (insulation from their consequences). ...

Mids tend to parrot the luxury beliefs of the upper–middle class. They talk about things like ‘white privilege,’ oblivious to the irony that they themselves aren’t particularly privileged.

Unlike the UMC, the mids aren’t economically insulated from the consequences of their luxury beliefs. The middle class girlboss, for example, will girlboss too hard to be marriageable, but not hard enough to actually be successful. She ends up as a childless thirty-something, clinging to a middle-management post in a government bureaucracy.

Luxury beliefs, like luxury goods, are subject to Prole Drift. Middle class emulation has severely reduced their cachet. As DeepLeftAnalysis observes:

"If you tracked the average parental income of women with blue hair, it probably peaked around 2007, when it was associated with above average ‘privileged’ parents, and now it has crashed to the point where women with blue hair are decidedly part of the underclass. No luxury left in that signal."

The mids are expected to be inoffensive and characterless. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or even the milder forms of eccentricity. The proles, by contrast, can say and think what they like. This is perhaps best demonstrated by their choice of bumper stickers. Drive past any building site in Australia, and you’ll see utes adorned with ‘Mud Slut,’ ‘CUNT,’ and ‘PatrolHub’ (styled after the Pornhub logo). Suffice to say, if a mid adorned their Subaru Forester with such stickers, they’d quickly be contacted by HR.

Furthermore, the proles aren’t expected to use corporate gobbledygook. When someone wastes their time, they can say ‘I’m not here to fuck spiders’, instead of ‘let’s prioritize activities that align with our core objectives.’ When someone makes a mistake, they get called a fucking idiot, instead of receiving a passive-aggressive email about ‘opportunities for improvement.’ And perhaps best of all, they don’t need to live in constant fear of saying something ‘culturally unsafe.’ They are free to think and say what they like. Why are the proles granted this freedom? I think George Orwell provided the answer in 1984.

In 1984, the Party makes no attempt to indoctrinate the proles. This is because they do not fear them. To quote Orwell:

"What opinions the proles hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated." ...

In the past, high status and fertility were positively correlated. Only the wealthiest could afford to have large families. Large families were, therefore, upper-class coded. Today, high status and fertility are negatively correlated. Why is this?

Johann Kurtz argues ‘that in a modern liberal paradigm, having children provides a lower status payoff than competing pursuits.’ In other words, women prioritise career advancement, travel experience, and educational achievement, because these confer more status than motherhood.

Kurtz convincingly argues that the fertility crisis can be explained by status. Or rather, lack of status. Being a stay-at-home Mum is increasingly seen as embarrassingly low-status. Even if one finds this analysis unconvincing, it is difficult to deny the immense influence that status dynamics exert over our decision making.