Oh I’m not claiming that non-wasted wealth signalling is useless. I’m saying that frivolous spending and saving send very different signals—and that saving doesn’t send the kind of signal tEitB focuses on.
Whether a public saving-signal would actually help is an empirical question. My guess is that it wouldn’t help in most contexts where unwise spending is currently the norm, since I’d expect it to signal lack of ability/confidence. Of course I may be wrong.
When considering status, I think wealth is largely valued as an indirect signal of ability (in a broad sense). E.g. compare getting $100m by founding a business vs winning a lottery. The lottery winner gets nothing like the status bump that the business founder gets. This is another reason I think spending sends a stronger overall signal in many contexts: it (usually) says both [I had the ability to get this wealth] and [I have enough ability that I expect not to need it].
Thanks, I now better understand your point. There is something I don’t understand though; Most people have no such ability to just recreate wealth, and they can achieve a higher QoL if they do save. But what I see in society seems to be that a lot of people are trying to fake their level of wealth creation ability. I.e., it seems to me that the signal is indeed pretty costly, but somehow people are Goodharting it anyway without regard to the fallout. This is a point that makes me confused.
It’s not entirely clear to me either. Here are a few quick related thoughts:
We shouldn’t assume it’s clear that higher-long-term QoL is the primary motivator for most people who do save. For most of them, it’s something their friends, family, co-workers… think is a good idea.
Evolutionary fitness doesn’t care (directly) about QoL.
There may be unhelpful game theory at work. If in some groups where people tend to spend X, there’s quite a bit to gain in spending [X + 1], and a significant loss in spending [X − 1], you’d expect group spending to increase.
Even if we’re talking about [what’s effective] rather than [our evolutionary programming], we’re still navigating other people’s evolutionary programming. Being slightly above/below average in spending may send a disproportionate signal.
The value of a faked signal is higher for people who don’t have other channels to signal something similar.
Other groups likely are sending similar signals in other ways. E.g. consider intellectuals sitting around having lengthy philosophical discussions that don’t lead to action. They’re often wasting time, simultaneously showing off skills that they could be using more productively, but aren’t. (this is also a problem where it’s a genuine waste—my point is only that very few people avoid doing this in some form)
Of course none of this makes it any less of a problem (to the extent it’s bringing down collective QoL) - but possibly a difficult problem that we’d expect to exist.
Solutions-wise, my main thought is that you’d want to find a way to channel signalling-waste efficiently into public goods—so that personal ‘waste’ becomes a collective advantage (hopefully).
It is also worth noting that not all ‘wasteful’ spending is bad for society. E.g. consider early adopters of new and expensive technology: without people willing to ‘waste’ money on the Tesla Roadster, getting electric cars off the ground may have been a much harder problem.
Oh I’m not claiming that non-wasted wealth signalling is useless. I’m saying that frivolous spending and saving send very different signals—and that saving doesn’t send the kind of signal tEitB focuses on.
Whether a public saving-signal would actually help is an empirical question. My guess is that it wouldn’t help in most contexts where unwise spending is currently the norm, since I’d expect it to signal lack of ability/confidence. Of course I may be wrong.
When considering status, I think wealth is largely valued as an indirect signal of ability (in a broad sense). E.g. compare getting $100m by founding a business vs winning a lottery. The lottery winner gets nothing like the status bump that the business founder gets.
This is another reason I think spending sends a stronger overall signal in many contexts: it (usually) says both [I had the ability to get this wealth] and [I have enough ability that I expect not to need it].
Thanks, I now better understand your point. There is something I don’t understand though; Most people have no such ability to just recreate wealth, and they can achieve a higher QoL if they do save. But what I see in society seems to be that a lot of people are trying to fake their level of wealth creation ability. I.e., it seems to me that the signal is indeed pretty costly, but somehow people are Goodharting it anyway without regard to the fallout. This is a point that makes me confused.
It’s not entirely clear to me either.
Here are a few quick related thoughts:
We shouldn’t assume it’s clear that higher-long-term QoL is the primary motivator for most people who do save. For most of them, it’s something their friends, family, co-workers… think is a good idea.
Evolutionary fitness doesn’t care (directly) about QoL.
There may be unhelpful game theory at work. If in some groups where people tend to spend X, there’s quite a bit to gain in spending [X + 1], and a significant loss in spending [X − 1], you’d expect group spending to increase.
Even if we’re talking about [what’s effective] rather than [our evolutionary programming], we’re still navigating other people’s evolutionary programming. Being slightly above/below average in spending may send a disproportionate signal.
The value of a faked signal is higher for people who don’t have other channels to signal something similar.
Other groups likely are sending similar signals in other ways. E.g. consider intellectuals sitting around having lengthy philosophical discussions that don’t lead to action. They’re often wasting time, simultaneously showing off skills that they could be using more productively, but aren’t. (this is also a problem where it’s a genuine waste—my point is only that very few people avoid doing this in some form)
Of course none of this makes it any less of a problem (to the extent it’s bringing down collective QoL) - but possibly a difficult problem that we’d expect to exist.
Solutions-wise, my main thought is that you’d want to find a way to channel signalling-waste efficiently into public goods—so that personal ‘waste’ becomes a collective advantage (hopefully).
It is also worth noting that not all ‘wasteful’ spending is bad for society. E.g. consider early adopters of new and expensive technology: without people willing to ‘waste’ money on the Tesla Roadster, getting electric cars off the ground may have been a much harder problem.