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Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#431

Post by hammock »

SoftTalker wrote: post #359
steveBK123 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is very well put, you really hit the nail on the head here on the sort of reverse bell curve of signaling.. For the very wealthy.. If you show enough interest in something to make signaling purchases, it's expected to be "up to snuff" .. this can mean very very high expense or high esotericness. So that might mean a $200k sports car, or it might mean some uncommon though inexpensive limited production vintag…

Very senior/wealthy people can get away with whatever they want. It's why Zuckerberg can look like a total slob at Facebook (notice he still wore a suit while testifying to Congress though). If a senior executive wore a $200 suit to work, nobody would say a word.

If a sr exec wore a $200 suit to work, it would be noticed. Maybe in a warren buffet folksy sort of way. How they tell defense attorneys not to dress too flashy

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#432

Post by hammock »

vba616 wrote: post #382
trasz2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically a Rolex, however expensive, will always be much worse as a watch than a 20$ Casio. But recently there's another aspect to this: there are now watches that are technically (mechanically) identical to rolexes. Same design, same mechanics, virtually impossible to tell the difference when you tear it apart. Rolex has always been more about marketing (artificial scarcity, waiting list etc) than mechanics, but…

Somewhere I read that a Rolex has a very practical purpose - a real one is a commodity that can fairly easily be turned into cash or a bribe in an emergency, but as a watch, it's not susceptible to being seized by authorities in many circumstances where cash or gold might be. I don't know if this is true, but it makes a good story.

Applies to jewelry in general, however Rolex tends to hold its value better than most jewelry (vs price paid)

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#433

Post by chewz »

chris_j wrote: post #420
ajb wrote: post #260

As always, context is everything. Not all countersignals are that costly. For example, casual wear is common among devs. This signals that our skill set is valuable enough that we don't need to comply with corporate dress codes. Sometimes someone from a poor background turns up in a suit - for example, we had a QA guy who did, having converted from some previous career via a short course. Sometimes new grads come to…

Around ten years ago, I worked for IBM as a software engineer. The dress code at work was pretty casual, so I tended to wear jeans and a t-shirt in the office. One day, I was asked to speak at an event that would be attended by a lot of our customers. I asked my mentor, "Should I dress up? Should I wear my suit for the first time in years?" His response surprised me. He said, "These customers have come here to talk t…

Dressing casual, wearing glasses and not being too pushy was my secret sauce to selling software tools to chief engneers...

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#434

Post by elevaet »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #274
steveBK123 wrote: post #47

"An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you’re a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can’t afford a car." This tidbit reminds me of a similar anecdote (that my experience aligns with) re: the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW i…

I think there's a bit of an idea now that you should be expressing yourself with your money, not expressing society's ideas. Around cars and watches, this creates a little bit of a "dead zone" for prestigious professionals. For example, if you aren't showing up in a $200k Maserati, your car had better be under $50k (maybe $70k with inflation). Only posers who aren't really into cars but want to show off their wealth…

The "uncanny valley" of wealth display.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#435

Post by perardi »

steveBK123 wrote: post #64
331c8c71 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$2k Rolex I thought the cheapest Rolex is substantially more expensive. Am I wrong?

Fair point. My numbers are probably off on everything now. Before the 2020s era inflation you could definitely pick up a mens one used for $2k, like a Datejust model for example. Likewise a $70k car is neither particularly rare or exotic now with how much the average car price has been pushed up by big trucks and EVs.

I’m…old now? Old enough to be shocked how much car prices have gone up. And I follow the industry.

Why, back in my day, you could get a “stripper” model of a truck (my dad’s term for the most-basic-possible model with crank windows and a stick shift) for like $15,000. Now?

https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/

Good luck getting off the lot for less than $40,000 for a full-size truck.

…though to give Ford some credit here:

https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/

They do still sell a truly cheap-and-cheerful truck. Will it tow much? No. Is it going to take you to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or whatever off-road macho fantasy? No. Will it get several bags of mulch back from Home Depot? Absolutely—which is what people actually use trucks for. (If that.)

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#436

Post by thaumasiotes »

PaulHoule wrote: post #193
AlbertCory wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a fake "Rolex" in Thailand, for $10. It actually didn't work very well. I guess there's a hierarchy even among the fake.

Back in the 1990s my dad's oldest brother went to the outskirts of NYC and was really impressed with the fake "Rolex" he bought. My mom was indignant about it because she sold men's clothing for a living and could tell you exactly how a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt was worse in so many ways than a real one. Two weeks later the watch stopped running. Around the same time, though, my mom's youngest brother was driving on…

> My mom was indignant about it because she sold men's clothing for a living and could tell you exactly how a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt was worse in so many ways than a real one.

Gomorrah opens with a description of Italian clothing manufacturing. As described there, the difference between a fake shirt and a real shirt is that they were made to the same specifications under one and the same contract, by different factories, and the real one got delivered faster than the fake one did. Only the first guy to deliver gets paid.

It's an interesting book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250145031/

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#437

Post by ycombobreaker »

denton-scratch wrote: post #93
NikolaNovak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical cash? How?

Bitcoin Local offers the opportunity to meet a seller at a physical location. Same with Local Monero. If you're planning to exchange $10M, you'll probably need a couple of bag-carriers, and perhaps some muscle as well. You can also trade for non-physical "cash", e.g. local bank transfer via escrow. As far as I'm concerned, that's a cash exchange.

Won't the usage of escrow trigger a KYC/AML "event" of some sort? That would tie the two parties' identities in a way that a cash evades.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#438

Post by WalterBright »

depressedpanda wrote: post #407
WalterBright wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it like a machine shop. Expensive tools work way, way better than cheap ones. I also have a restaurant grade toaster. It costs quite a bit more than the usual toasters do. But the usual ones would always break after a year or two. The restaurant toaster makes better toast, and has worked fine for 25 years now. It was actually cheaper to get the restaurant grade one over the long haul.

> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boo…

On the other hand, if the wealthy person bought the $10 boots and invested the other $40, the investment could throw off enough money to keep him in annual $10 boots forever.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#439

Post by steveBK123 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #421
Gordonjcp wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane. For a shit car with the interior fit and finish of a poverty-spec Skoda, and all the important controls replaced with a bloody great iPad that blinds you at night. Oh, and it's from an obscenely "techbro" company. Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?

> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas? I am very impressed by their batteries and I like the look of the Model S but I'm utterly unimpressed by the build quality of the interior and the cheap materials used. At that price I'd except to be entering a comfortable car using luxurious materials. FWIW I tried the Porsche Taycan and the interior is leaps and bound ahead of the Teslas (but the batteries a…

Look at really any of the competition at the Model S price level from the Germans and the interior is spectacular. Honestly the battery range on the Germans is also better than you realize.

Tesla exaggerates their range and few actually achieve the quoted EPA range, so you can deduct 10-15% for real world.

The Germans, especially Porsche undersell their range and real world you can get about 10-15% longer out of the BMWs & MBs and something insane like 35% more out of the Taycans.

InsideEVs has a nice real world 70mph highway range comparison, and the ranking would surprise you compared to the advertised ranges. https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/

So an advertised 350mi Model S and a 225mi Taycan in fact meet somewhere in the middle, closer to 300mi +/- for both.

Re: Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to countersignal

#440

Post by PaulHoule »

mrexroad wrote: post #352
steveBK123 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love & miss minidiscs :-D

I’ve been tempted to dig out my minidisc recording deck and player from storage, and use them for to add a bit of friction for more constrained listening. I’m probably projecting other problems onto music streaming services, but I often shut down with the endless choices and frustratingly flippant auto-generated playlists. Of course I can, and do, curate playlists for specific moods and tasks, but I also seem to lack…

In my case it is YouTube I am trying to get away from. Really listening to music on YouTube is a pretty good experience, it is great for discovery, and it even does a good job of making mixes for me. For many reasons though I don't want to be plugged into it and I try to listen to files on my computer, jellyfin or minidisc when I use my computer.

Upstairs I have a home theater receiver, I also have one downstairs where the HDMI out is burned out but it is good for music. I have an XBOX ONE plugged upstairs and it works for games but it seems to get worse all the time as a media player, it doesn't even play CDs although it plays DVD and Bluray. Upstairs I have the minidisc player for stereo music and one of these

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-92WonNqYEjS/p_158CDPX355/Sony-...

which is connected to the receiver with an optical cable and is full of 5.1 DTS discs which I am a huge fan of. There are some good 1970s quad recordings such as Fragile by Yes but also a lot of good stuff in the the 2000-2010 period such as Supernature by Goldfrapp and some artists like Donald Fagan who always believed in multichannel. Like stereoscopic cinema I think a lot of people don't see a big difference but I like it a lot.

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