<story><title>Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)</title><url>https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peyton</author><text>I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.</text></item><item><author>indigo945</author><text>Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot;  from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded.&lt;p&gt;My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about &amp;quot;luxury&amp;quot; beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist positions. He intends to delegitimize these positions by painting them as an upper-class fringe (&amp;quot;luxury&amp;quot;) concern. Once this angle of attack is found, the author never stops to see that the same attack could be levied against any number of political positions that he himself might agree with, because he was never interested in a real debate to begin with: he only wants to smear and ridicule.&lt;p&gt;The point is not that the examples are also &amp;quot;correlated&amp;quot; with something else, it&amp;#x27;s that they&amp;#x27;re carefully cherry-picked and made a target for an attack that would work against conservative positions, carefully excluded by the author, just as nicely as it does against liberal positions here.</text></item><item><author>lelanthran</author><text>&amp;gt; I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author&amp;#x27;s examples for &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot; would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t the author&amp;#x27;s point that the examples correlate very highly with affluence? The fact that it may&amp;#x2F;may not be correlated to something else might be relevant, but I&amp;#x27;m not seeing the relevance.</text></item><item><author>indigo945</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a 
    &amp;gt; dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural 
    &amp;gt; appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.”
    &amp;gt; 
    &amp;gt; Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you 
    &amp;gt; visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will 
    &amp;gt; eagerly explain them to you.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author&amp;#x27;s examples for &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot; would &lt;i&gt;just so happen&lt;/i&gt; to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; But unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can have long term detrimental 
    &amp;gt; effects for the poor and working class. However costly these beliefs are 
    &amp;gt; for the rich, they often inflict even greater costs on everyone else.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is certainly true for a high number of luxury beliefs, such as &amp;quot;trickle down economics&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;small government&amp;quot; advocacy and &amp;quot;catallaxy&amp;quot;, none of which come up often among dishwashers; and all of which freshman students at Yale, who just read their first essay on Friedrich Hayek, will gladly explain to you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sangnoir</author><text>&amp;gt;  dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff&lt;p&gt;The fiercest culture warriors I know are working-class folk. They do in fact, give a shit about this stuff, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. I blame the increased polarization.&lt;p&gt;The irony is that people who claim to be against culture wars - like the author - are they themselves actively engaging in a culture war while feigning neutrality. The truth is that they are simply against one perspective, which betrays either a lack of self-awareness, or bad faith.</text></comment>
<story><title>Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)</title><url>https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peyton</author><text>I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.</text></item><item><author>indigo945</author><text>Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot;  from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded.&lt;p&gt;My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about &amp;quot;luxury&amp;quot; beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist positions. He intends to delegitimize these positions by painting them as an upper-class fringe (&amp;quot;luxury&amp;quot;) concern. Once this angle of attack is found, the author never stops to see that the same attack could be levied against any number of political positions that he himself might agree with, because he was never interested in a real debate to begin with: he only wants to smear and ridicule.&lt;p&gt;The point is not that the examples are also &amp;quot;correlated&amp;quot; with something else, it&amp;#x27;s that they&amp;#x27;re carefully cherry-picked and made a target for an attack that would work against conservative positions, carefully excluded by the author, just as nicely as it does against liberal positions here.</text></item><item><author>lelanthran</author><text>&amp;gt; I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author&amp;#x27;s examples for &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot; would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t the author&amp;#x27;s point that the examples correlate very highly with affluence? The fact that it may&amp;#x2F;may not be correlated to something else might be relevant, but I&amp;#x27;m not seeing the relevance.</text></item><item><author>indigo945</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a 
    &amp;gt; dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural 
    &amp;gt; appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.”
    &amp;gt; 
    &amp;gt; Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you 
    &amp;gt; visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will 
    &amp;gt; eagerly explain them to you.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author&amp;#x27;s examples for &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot; would &lt;i&gt;just so happen&lt;/i&gt; to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; But unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can have long term detrimental 
    &amp;gt; effects for the poor and working class. However costly these beliefs are 
    &amp;gt; for the rich, they often inflict even greater costs on everyone else.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is certainly true for a high number of luxury beliefs, such as &amp;quot;trickle down economics&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;small government&amp;quot; advocacy and &amp;quot;catallaxy&amp;quot;, none of which come up often among dishwashers; and all of which freshman students at Yale, who just read their first essay on Friedrich Hayek, will gladly explain to you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elmomle</author><text>I think once the idea of heteronormativity had percolated through all of society as a well understood concept, it would no longer be as pressing a concern.  These concepts tend to be in vogue specifically because they are salient.&lt;p&gt;It is intellectually dangerous to read a piece like this &amp;quot;apolitically&amp;quot;, precisely because a biased political agenda is wearing the garb of a much more universal observation.  If the writer had mixed &amp;quot;luxury beliefs&amp;quot; from all over the political spectrum, then there would be a clear focus on what the title purports to concern.  Instead, there is a second agenda that is being silently conflated without being acknowledged.</text></comment>