it seems to make sense from an evolutionary point of view (e.g. food before status, because if you run out of calories you die right there)
That’s not necessarily true—there are instances where people starve themselves (though rarely to death) as part of a status-seeking effort.
In the modern developed world, food is dirt-cheap as long as you don’t engage in luxurious extravagance, so that even if you could stop eating altogether, you wouldn’t save a significant amount of money. However, in the past, when even the cheapest subsistence diet was a very large expense relative to income, many people would cut down on eating well beyond the point of discomfort to be able to afford various status-seeking goods to show off. Some other examples of status-seeking behavior that comes at the cost of starvation are religious fasting and dieting to improve one’s looks. Hunger strikes are a peculiar extreme example.
Overall, Maslow’s model is a useful first approximation, but nowhere near fully accurate.
Roko:
That’s not necessarily true—there are instances where people starve themselves (though rarely to death) as part of a status-seeking effort.
In the modern developed world, food is dirt-cheap as long as you don’t engage in luxurious extravagance, so that even if you could stop eating altogether, you wouldn’t save a significant amount of money. However, in the past, when even the cheapest subsistence diet was a very large expense relative to income, many people would cut down on eating well beyond the point of discomfort to be able to afford various status-seeking goods to show off. Some other examples of status-seeking behavior that comes at the cost of starvation are religious fasting and dieting to improve one’s looks. Hunger strikes are a peculiar extreme example.
Overall, Maslow’s model is a useful first approximation, but nowhere near fully accurate.
I think “useful first approximation” is all I need here.