Another concern I have is that, what you’re proposing could make net worth the most salient feature of an individual—this information is out there in a database, rather than something one needs to spend time and effort to get to know the person to find out. This could lead to a hyper-competitive environment where individuals’ worth is reduced to a number, and social status is done through rankings.
It seems like most social environments are already like this to some extent. People are ranked according to the school/job they are at, and the grades they got. The first thing is public information, and the second thing can generally be inferred by the first.
I agree that we shouldn’t try to make people feel like their social status is reducible to a single number. But if people already think that their social status is reducible to a single number, we might as well think about what number it ought to be, rather than just pretending that the number doesn’t already exist.
I also don’t know why it’s better that social status be reducible to a set of numbers rather than just one number.
In addition, much of the concerns about wealth inequality in today’s world still apply here.
I actually think my proposal should be enthusiastically supported by those concerned with wealth inequality. For one, it makes people’s wealth much more salient, which will probably make people more willing to redistribute wealth once they viscerally understand just how well some people are doing.
People are ranked according to the school/job they are at, and the grades they got.
Watch out for https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy in this. There may be some groups for which this is true, but it hasn’t been my experience in any of the US or UK work or social subcultures I’ve been part of. Those things are inputs to evaluation and discussion, but are only very weakly correlated with any dimension of ranking.
In my experience, there is a very wide range of jobs (and former jobs!) that contribute to high status, and outside of academia, I don’t know anyone who cares about schools a small number of years past graduation/exit. I don’t recall anyone EVER caring about grades after school is done.
There may be some groups for which this is true, but it hasn’t been my experience in any of the US or UK work or social subcultures I’ve been part of.
Sure, many different social environments use different measures for status. In the post I talked about how people rank themselves based on wealth. Here, I mentioned how some people use school and jobs.
My main point was that we already have status rankings. It’s true that we don’t have a total order, global status ranking. But locally speaking, I don’t see what’s wrong with introducing a new metric for ranking status. I’m reminded of something I saw recently as a response to social anarchists who want to abolish hierarchies: people will just create new hierarchies along different axes in response to the revolution. We might as well just ask which hierarchies are best to have.
It seems like most social environments are already like this to some extent. People are ranked according to the school/job they are at, and the grades they got. The first thing is public information, and the second thing can generally be inferred by the first.
I agree that we shouldn’t try to make people feel like their social status is reducible to a single number. But if people already think that their social status is reducible to a single number, we might as well think about what number it ought to be, rather than just pretending that the number doesn’t already exist.
I also don’t know why it’s better that social status be reducible to a set of numbers rather than just one number.
I actually think my proposal should be enthusiastically supported by those concerned with wealth inequality. For one, it makes people’s wealth much more salient, which will probably make people more willing to redistribute wealth once they viscerally understand just how well some people are doing.
Watch out for https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy in this. There may be some groups for which this is true, but it hasn’t been my experience in any of the US or UK work or social subcultures I’ve been part of. Those things are inputs to evaluation and discussion, but are only very weakly correlated with any dimension of ranking.
In my experience, there is a very wide range of jobs (and former jobs!) that contribute to high status, and outside of academia, I don’t know anyone who cares about schools a small number of years past graduation/exit. I don’t recall anyone EVER caring about grades after school is done.
Sure, many different social environments use different measures for status. In the post I talked about how people rank themselves based on wealth. Here, I mentioned how some people use school and jobs.
My main point was that we already have status rankings. It’s true that we don’t have a total order, global status ranking. But locally speaking, I don’t see what’s wrong with introducing a new metric for ranking status. I’m reminded of something I saw recently as a response to social anarchists who want to abolish hierarchies: people will just create new hierarchies along different axes in response to the revolution. We might as well just ask which hierarchies are best to have.