3 ms·

Material wealth is status. Money is status. Assets that earn while you sleep is status. Money is arguably the ultimate status game.

• gnicholas 4y ago
  I disagree; wealth can be displayed as status. Money can be spent in status-seeking ways. But money can also be earned so that one can care for sick family members (or a sick future self), or to put kids through college. Or money can be spent on enjoyable experiences that no one else will see. Money is not the ultimate status game, even though it is an important ingredient in most status-seeking activities.
  • throwaway22032 4y ago
    Caring for sick family members is status. It's something which people of lesser status are not able to do.
    • toomuchtodo 4y ago
      It’s privilege and luck (as much wealth is luck), not status. There is a difference.
• paulryanrogers 4y ago
  This seems overly reductive. Folks without wealth still try to demonstrate brands and experiences associated with wealth: luxury cars, clothes, trips, etc. Yet they sacrifice much more to do so. Some also posses political forms of power, influence, and status disconnected from wealth. Gandhi for example was never weathly or rich in money or assets. Appears to me that status is an abstract thing, albeit correlated with wealth.
• pclmulqdq 4y ago
  When I lived in New York and worked at a trading firm, I met plenty of "high-status" people. They usually lived paycheck-to-paycheck on a 7-figure salary because they were busy playing status games - giving a few hundred thousand to charity, having a big loft in a nice neighborhood, throwing lavish parties, etc. Other people saved that money and retired at 40 to places like Wisconsin and Montana - they had wealth. Status is expensive. The only people for whom it is cheap are the uber-wealthy, those who earn $100 million a year or so.
• apsurd 4y ago
  adding onto the "disagree" siblings. that money is status is far too simplistic. plenty of people are simply not impressed by money. it's not even really a concerted thought, it's just a matter of different strokes for diff folks. people have all sorts of tribes. money is really just one. just a gawdy obnoxious one.
• hackerlight 4y ago
  Money isn't all there is to status. A surgeon has higher status than a lottery winner or heir to a fortune. So Naval's point is that a desire for status can sometimes conflict with getting money, because it pushes you down a conventional path which is competitive and therefore unlikely to make you rich.
• barrkel 4y ago
  Status is based on attention, deference and so on other people give you. You can, to a degree, buy that, in different qualities, from different audiences. It doesn't mean wealth is status.