Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“It seems obvious that, if one’s concern is status rather than real income, we are in a zero sum game, that if my status increases relative to yours, yours must have decreased relative to mine. That point of view seems to support the approach to politics that sees it mainly as a question of who gets to benefit at the expense of whom, of which side who is on. Like many things that seem obvious, this one is false. It is true that my status is relative to yours. It does not, oddly enough, follow that if my status is higher than yours, yours must be lower than mine, or that if my status increases someone else’s must decrease. Status is not, in fact, a zero sum game.” (07/27/26)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-status