I really liked this. Most of my baseline thinking on ambition, social class and the like comes from Veblen and some assorted anthropological reading. From what

I really liked this. Most of my baseline thinking on ambition, social class and the like comes from Veblen and some assorted anthropological reading. From what I understand, it turns out that in every human society (that western anthropologists have studied & documented), there is an overt desire for (and so often competition over) social status. While wealth, power, ladies and fame are some of the most common types of social currency, they aren’t universal – in some cultures, you’re the man if you grow the biggest vegetables in town. Each of the areas you pointed out each has its own status game rolling already. In my limited experience, San Francisco generally appreciates for “doing good”; my friends and I seem to treasure “creating value,” building things, and being constructive, but we all love our buddy who runs a nonprofit that works with inner city youth. He’s the man. My friends in NYC, on the other hand, don’t even try to justify shaving basis points with talk of serving the greater good by making markets more efficient. One of the positive perspectives I draw from the status game is that if or when it’s incentivized correctly, things can (could?) get noble in a hurry. Lifeguards in San Diego and Hawaii get respect, as do firefighters and cops in New York and professors in Cambridge. The social esteem that these jobs convey helps to make up for the shitty hard currency they’re worth. Now we just have to translate the social currency of nobility into beachfront property for teachers.