Status And Men

Grey Enlightment:

Men are motivated by the desire to gain status among their peers–the approval of women is secondary. For many men, the world revolves around status, not women.

This idea is alien to me. To me, men aren't particularly interested in status- unless and until they notice the importance of status to women. And then even knowing this is important to women, it is still hard to take it seriously when it is fake.

Again, to me, men would do stuff, and they'd get respect or not based on the stuff that they did.

That actually has to happen to some extent, just like some people's wages have to have something to do with their productivity some of the time.

But politics means that there's always a mostly illegitimate push for some people's wages to have nothing to do with their productivity, right up to the point where the organization goes out of business. Minimum wage isn't really the problem either- there are entire departments with highly paid bureaucrats in them who are making the real money off of politics and who are actual barriers to productivity.

But it seems to me the fake often seems more real to women. And, of course, it is no help that the fake is often enforced by the state in some way.

Something else popped up soon after reading the above post: Food consumption now has higher entry barriers than does music consumption. Tyler Cowen relates an email from a Marco Bresba, who talks about how it used to be hard (pre-internet) to become well acquainted with the cool bands, and that the demanding scene right now is food related:

In our age of convenience, food still requires long term planning. At least the stuff foodies value. Will anyone care if I order Massaman Curry on Uber Eats? No. In order to become an elite foodie, I have to leave the house. I must shed my complacency in various ways:

This reeks of silliness to me. I am a foodie to some extent or another- and my foodiness was always about learning how to do things. How to cook. Even stuff like plating, pairing, whatever the crazy new thing some chef is doing somewhere- I want to know how to do it.

But running around looking for the pop-up secret foodie status granting rendezvous? That's for silly girls, who aren't going to be able to tell the quality of the food, because who ever is in charge of the event knows perfectly well he can cover a multitiude of sins with some high powered pre-dinner drinks. It would be more fun to put one of these on, rather than attend one.