Status as a multiplier on intrinsic enjoyment

Many things that are intrinsically enjoyable become high-status. One example is having a physically attractive partner. People like having a physically attractive partner partly for intrinsic, non-status oriented reasons - including that we’ve evolved to find certain physical traits attractive. But because most people like having an attractive partner for non-status reasons, it also becomes high-status. Since people vary in attractiveness, there will be competition for the more attractive partners - and winning such competitions is high-status. That provides, in turn, an additional reason to want an attractive partner: status.

The same is true of all kinds of things that are intrinsically enjoyable and scarce - everything from fancy meals to opera tickets. Many people find these things enjoyable, and that - together with the fact that not everybody can have them - triggers a competition which it is high-status to win. That in turn leads to people becoming even more interested in getting these things.

I think the naive view that, e.g. children take, is that people want the above kinds of things purely because they are intrinsically enjoyable. Cynics reject that view and rather claim that they just want them because it gives them higher status. But neither view seems quite correct. Intrinsic enjoyment and status motives often feature side by side, because things that are intrinsically enjoyable and scarce become high-status.

When people discuss status motives, they often focus on how status makes people do things that are not intrinsically enjoyable, like wearing uncomfortable clothes. That is to some extent natural, since those examples make it more salient that we are motivated by status. At the same time, this focus can hide the fact that many of the things that are high-status are also intrinsically enjoyable. My guess is that it’s more common that high-status things are intrinsically enjoyable than that they are intrinsically unenjoyable.

I could also see that this tendency has been strengthened over the last century or so. Progressives have criticised many norms that give status to unenjoyable things, like abstaining from sex before marriage. Similarly, the norms supporting uncomfortable fashion seem to have weakened considerably - likely partly as a result of the vaguely consequentialist notion that norms should not be antithetical to human well-being. I of course think that these changes are very much for the better, but it’s worth noticing that in spite of their progressive roots, they may have increased inequality in a relevant sense. If higher-status things were less intrinsically enjoyable, then people with higher status would have had to pay for their consumption of those things by lower intrinsic enjoyment, which would have had an equalising effect in terms of welfare. But if higher-status things are rather more intrinsically enjoyable, then some people get to enjoy things that are both high status and intrinsically enjoyable, whereas others are left with things that are neither.