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Median cost of common middle-class identity goods: House: $270k College education: $25k New car: $20k* (guess) Phone: $580** Video game: $60 TV/movies/music: $50/mo Novel: $10 News: $0 * mean is actually over 40k now 🤯 ** also mean, but here reasonable to assume mean=median
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Uncommon identity goods Pickup truck/SUV: $50k? Gun: $500 (median =1? mean is like 4, and 3% own most of them) Gender reassignment surgery: $30k Boat: $20k
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Many medical conditions/disabilities could also be called identity goods, but out-of-scope for this comparison because the identity effect is incidental and presumably nobody would choose to have them, though I’m told many with conditions often refuse treatments seen as “fixing”
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Others I won’t bother to lookup: eating out, live music, travel, there’s a long tail here. The reason I went down this bunnytrail is that it struck me that most culture war revolves around fairly low-priced identity goods. That has causes and consequences...
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Hypothesis: inequality leads to identity anchoring around cheap/free goods, which in turn leads to formation of much larger and more homogenized/flattened identity groups. Think TV show fandoms vs neighborhood Christmas decorations as identity contest grounds.
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To solve the culture war, give people enough discretionary income to build identity around more expensive, material stuff. That fragments identity groupings into much smaller, more localized groups. Interactions necessarily get unflattened in richer media or meatspace.
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For eg: imo Instagram is far less of a culture war hot-zone than Twitter. Because identity signaling is through rich images, not flattened text. If I’m right culture war intensity should track mcluhanesque coolness which should track materiality which should track cost.
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Forgot another huge one: sports. Like Meek Mill getting kinda canceled over Kobe lyrics. Sports identity eats music identity I think.
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Universal non-basic income is actually key. UNBI.
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If I gave you 100k to spend on visible identity stuff how would you spend it? (you *must* spend it on visible identity, not basic expenses — so rent doesn’t count, but moving to fancier neighborhood for 2x makes 1x of it count; plastic surgery counts, cancer treatment doesn’t) twitter.com/vgr/status/136…
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Quite possibly Waldenponding works to unplug from culture wars simply because it retreats to costlier identity goods. A cabin in the woods costs way more than a phone and a streaming subscription. If you retreat to unplug and make hand-built furniture you’re just rich, not wise.
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The only new car I ever bought was a <13k Corolla CE in 2000 🤔 Remains the most expensive thing I’ve personally bought, though wife has since bought a more expensive used Volvo that’s now a decade old... I’m not cheap, but I’m not practiced at spending big amounts at once.
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