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I dunno, the status appeal of money is very much what you can buy with it. I can technically imagine stores both online (good old tracking) and brick-and-morta

I dunno, the status appeal of money is very much what you can buy with it. I can technically imagine stores both online (good old tracking) and brick-and-mortar (looking at clothing and subtle body cues: inferring health, psychical well-being etc. - if not matching to external data with facial recognition) being able to quote, with machine learning, higher prices for you at check-out if your financial situation is better. Now of course wealthy people spend less on such "trivial" consumption in comparison to capital investments, but for middle class this could be significant. I mean a kind of thing like this.

clairity 7y ago
the rich person would just hire poor people to buy their trivial consumption items for them, both to get better prices and to put downward pressure on the practice. that's not even a particularly ingenious solution, but that's the kind of thing i mean by underestimating our collective ingenuity. the transactional value of money is not inconsequential, but people absolutely do all kinds of (silly) things for status (see social media), moreso than just for transactional value.