If beach volleyball is made an Olympic sport, does that lower the status of Usain Bolt? No probably not, but it does raise the status of beach volleyballers. What evidence is there that status is zero sum?
Within each status game, it is zero-sum. The 100-meter race can have only one winner.
But what about multiple status games? Does adding a status game lower the status of existing games?
I hope instead that with multiple status games, more people can be winners. I recall Tyler Cowen arguing that having multiple status games would be more conducive to social peace. Instead, if there is only one ultimate game, so that “status” can be reduced to a single dimension along which everyone has a rank, then conflict seems inevitable.
This is a profound topic.
Status is not the only concern, as frequently there are issues of
“honor”
and also of
“fame.”
Somewhere (probably in )Outgrowing Democracy_) the historian John Lukacs said that Americans seem to have confused honor and fame. Or that there were so much emphasis on fame that it was crowding out previously valuable social notions of honor.
= – = – = – =
Another obvious topic is how do you increase your own status? Is it by improving your own performance, or is it by showing aggression toward others?
A few decades from now, all cars will have “My Child is an Olympic Medalist”.
More olympic medals absolutely reduces the status value of each medal. Beach Volleyball may not significantly impact the status of “world record holder in long-established contest”, but it probably does take away a little of the status of the Snowboarding or Trampoline.
That said, it’s not linear, and it’s quite likely that there’s more overall status even when split between more people, and that it’s not distributed evenly among participants and watchers.
The poker world has seen this over the last 25 years pretty clearly. The rarity of a World Series of Poker bracelet has plummeted (there was 1/year for a long time, then ~10, and now many dozens), but the popularity of the event has also increased 100x, so it’s less prestigious among players, but much more so among the general populace.
“… with multiple status games, more people can be winners. I recall Tyler Cowen arguing that having multiple status games would be more conducive to social peace. Instead, if there is only one ultimate game, so that “status” can be reduced to a single dimension along which everyone has a rank, then conflict seems inevitable.”
This idea is further studied on “Cool: How the Brain’s Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World, by Steven Quartz & Anette Asp.
There are two kinds of fame capital: specific and general. There is only so much psychological room available for personalities on any A-list. Every little activity has its own specific A-list, but then there is the society / infosphere-wide, general ‘celebrity’ A-list.
Specific is mostly in-group. If you are the world’s top kazoo-player or curler, (Brad Gushue), well, that’s impressive to people who follow curling, but not really to hardly anyone else. Yes, one feels good being a big fish in a small pond (or more aptly, a famous fish in an unknown pond), but not nearly as good as being a famous fish in a famous pond, and arguably not even as good as being the least famous fish in a really famous pond. Would one rather be the world’s top curler, or least famous NBA player? Depends what one is after. There are usually more benefits to general fame than to specific fame. But if general fame is out of the question, the more opportunities for specific fame, the better.
So that tells us that there is a meta-A-list of activities in which that activity’s specific A-listers are also on the general A-list. That is, you would be happy to name-drop your acquaintance or affiliation with them to practically any random person, without having to inquire much about that person’s specific knowledge or interests. The fact of those A-listers being society-wide celebrities is Aumann ‘common knowledge’.
In that sense, curling is not going to hurt Usain Bolt. That because curling is way below sprinting on the meta-A-list. The top curler is not a matter of common knowledge, but the top sprinter is. “World’s fastest man” is a special designation.
Now, while more events could mean less competition for specific status on the individual level, it could mean more competition at the meta level, between activities, trying to leap-frog each other in the ranking of the hierarchy of the meta-A-list. Maybe lucrative endorsements don’t just chopped up evenly between events, because advertisers really care about that meta-A-list ranking for ratings and Q-scores. Maybe steeplechasers band together and try to out-market discus throwers for those endorsements, and also for recruiting athletically talented individuals and general social prestige.
Speaking of the distribution of talent, one could expect it to be allocated according to the meta-A-list (combined with other forms of compensation) for any kind of activity characterized by a ‘tournament market’ and for individuals who could potentially perform at a high level in multiple fields.
Sports is one example of course. Maybe most individuals with that particular ability could be expected to perform at the top-tiers of both racquetball and tennis. Well, given the option, they are going to pick tennis. That means that all the top tennis players are really the top in the world, and that the sport of racquetball will be like a ‘minor league’ which will have to make do with the lesser talents that trickle down after tennis talent-drains the cream of the crop of potential competitors. And maybe squash is racquetball’s minor league in turn. (That’s why tournament market Hollywood uses terms like A-list, B-list, etc.)
And of course academia is also a kind of ‘Malthusian’ tournament market, with many fewer tenured positions than aspiring candidates. And certainly plenty of people perceive the prestige hierarchy in terms of intellectual capability and exclusiveness. Indeed, that status ranking may be part of the reason why so many people down the academic meta-A-list want to imitate the appearance and procedures of the mathematics and the hard sciences.
I think of Monfils beating the #1 paddle ball player in the world a few days after learning of the sport
http://www.tennis-x.com/story/2006-03-03/c.php
“… the man tournament officials referred to as “The Roger Federer of paddle tennis,” world champion Scott Freedman.”
Heh. And the very use of this common expression just reinforces my explanation of how the meta-A-list works.
There’s another phenomenon that is potentially related to this ‘meta-pond of ranked ponds’ theory, though I admit it’s much more speculative.
Maybe it’s best to introduce the guess with a bit of a mystery. “Who goes Libertarian?” (Or you could replace ‘Libertarian’ with some other unconventional ideologies) That is, what accounts for the demographic character of the group of people who identity as libertarians, or going more upstream, what determines the self-selection of those individuals?
I’ve been at my share of libertarian gatherings, and it is a common observation that they are, compared to the general population, disproportionately smart white males. Why?
There are plenty of Nozick’s ‘normative sociology’ explanations for this out there, both self-flattering and other-disparaging narratives from people who think it’s a good thing, and vice versa for detractors.
But there is also the possibility of an ‘economics of status’ explanation, as a subconscious motive and in line with the meta-A-list explanation above.
That is, just like there are too many talented tennis-players to all fit into the tennis A-list, and so some decide to abandon that tournament and try their luck at paddle tennis or racquetball, there is also just not enough room for the supply of talented white males at the top levels of status in the conservative and progressive social groups. Maybe that subconsciously encourages a certain number of them to flee as refugees to a new ideological status pond where it is comparably easier to earn prestige capital.
Like I said, highly speculative.
Of course adding more status games lower the status of individual winners. Elevating volleyball to an olympic sport does lower Usain Bolts status by a small amount.
According to Google, in 2012 there were 26 olympic sports, in 2016, there were 28. Not a big difference. If there were a million olympic sports, and large fractions of the population regularly wins dozens of olympic gold medals without much effort, it would clearly reduce their value.
If there were only one single olympic sport of relay races, it would be more important. This isn’t completely zero sum, having more status games, increases the types of status available.
Average is Over is often though of as economic, but perhaps its even more important that Average is Over for status.
Let’s imagine two worlds:
1) Being an average person is high status. Usually someone wants to start a family with you, you have some respect from friends/community, have self respect.
2) Being an average person is seen as being kind of a loser. It’s hard to start a family, you don’t get much respect in the community, you think of yourself as a loser.
Let’s leave aside income levels, wouldn’t you say that in 1960 #1 tended to be true and in 2016 #2 tends to be true. If your living in a #2 world, what incentive structure does that create.
Isn’t status like a currency? There is a lot of ruin in a currency – and then you issue a new one, ie new words that signal status. All single mothers are heroes…