One, and I think is the most prevalent, is the hierarchical status pursuit. Jordan Peterson does well to explain this from a human psychology and behavior perspective. It is biological as higher status people tend to survive longer... primarily because higher status people tend to kill lower status people to prevent them from competing for higher status. This biological evolutionary behavior is both rational and corruptive. However, given the alternative of other methods to achieve and convey status, I am not sure it is the worst. If you consider the behavior of people today - especially the left - due to China and other countries destroying the luxury goods market with cheap knockoffs - and the fact that we have stuffed so many people through the high-learning meat factory - there are not enough high-status virtue signaling opportunities in luxury goods and thus people have adopted a sort of modern version of blue-blood ranking where people of certain group identities would be given higher social and economic status. That is the basis for why so many seemingly normal Democrats are attracted to the woke movement.
But people still want that $4,000 purse and $20,000 watch to show the world how special they are.
The other driver is simply that luxury goods are higher quality.
My dear wife is a country bumpkin. When were first married I had to ignore her telling me that we did not need to replace our 12" black and white TV with a 19" color set. One day I heard her crying in our walk-in closet... when I asked what was wrong, she said "I don't have anything to wear to work tomorrow". We both worked and had good enough jobs at the time. I had to take her shopping the next day and force her to purchase a new wardrobe. Recently her 10-year-old Ford with only 70k miles blew a head gasket and would have cost more than the car was worth to replace the engine. I am now a high-income CEO after 40+ years climbing the corporate ladder and picked out a mid-level luxury SUV I wanted to buy for her. She is still complaining that it cost too much. But I did the research, and it is a car with top-level reliability, and since we tend to keep our cars for over 10 years, I wanted one that would last.
Yes, I am lucky in marriage.
This last point about people with money buying more expensive goods is that it also serves to help producers to supplement their production of cheaper goods. For example, the new device would cost more but eventually the cost would fall so more could afford it. The early adopters would be providing a service to the market to lower the cost for all. This process has been effectively destroyed by China over-producing. Today everyone pays the same for the newest iPhone. And everyone thinks they need it. And because the devices are leased and not purchased in general, the incremental increase in monthly cost causes people that really cannot afford it and that do not need it, go buy it.
I own a business that makes distilled spirits products. Several years ago, Japanese whisky makers decided to push a fake news meme of lack of supply for high-end Japanese whiskey. That created a run on products and drove the costs higher and higher. The whisky did not taste any different, but consumers had to have it. Today that meme is still effective... there is a market narrative that Japanese whisky is better, rarer and more worth more. Much of that is just market myth.
The worst thing for all the corporations is that a new high-status meme develops for low consumption. However, I am all for turning back the clock on what I see as the "new feature" obsession that feeds the landfills and causes people to purchase the newest and greatest with the existing product is perfectly fine. My 2015 Ford F150 with 80k miles is wonderful. I will drive it until it dies. I think product companies should make more reliable and long-lasting products that cost more. And frankly... fuck China.
You did luck up with the way your wife thinks about money — and yeah, right now, I’m driving a 10 year old Toyota Camry. On the one hand, I feel like I’d be justified in replacing it since it’s 10 years old, but on the other, I’ve never had a major mechanical problem out of it, so why bother upgrading? At some point, I will, but it gets me from point A to point B, which is primarily what I want it to do.
Well, I too drive a 2015 car with 100+ miles. My spouse and I do not spend money on high priced lodgings but have very nice homes. Not to impress other people but because we live in them. Have read John Hawkins for years...he is very good and I felt bad about not being a paid reader. Didn't like the price point but jumped at the recent special substack offer.
Thank you. The paid readers essentially make all of this possible. Without people like you, I'd probably end up writing shclockier pieces for some conservative outlet instead of digging into things that I think matter more.
I have worked hard, saved and invested carefully over my life as a Scottish Presbyterian, belonging to the only mainline denomination that considers financial solvency to tbe a positive thing, should do.
As a result I would be considered "rich" by most standards.
But I still buy my clothes at thrift shops* and only 1 time (and then because of necessity) have I ever bought a new car.
Being concerned about the opinions of others is one of the worst personality traits one can have.
It means you are no longer yourself, you are not free, you have voluntarily made youself into their slave.
This is true not only of important issues like race, immigration, national subservience to Israel, etc.
It's true on the most personal level.
Thank you, John Hawkins, for writing this.
*The inventory of clothing in thrift shops is quite good. Only upper middle class and upper class people care about things like giving clothes to thrift shops and the people who buy their clothes at such shops tend to be non-white immigrants who want to buy the gaudy, garish stuff.
I've bought many Brooks Brothers pants and shirts at such shops for $2.00 apiece. Lots of them clearly were brand new and probably started out as birthday and Christmas gifts that didn't fit the recipients.
Well, I agree with about 90% of this. But I would say that the purpose of money is ultimately to spend it. The biggest waste of money you can possibly imagine is to die with it. All that work for nothing. Might as well have lit it on fire.
Not that I am saying you should die with exactly zero. You want to leave a margin of error since you don't know your life expectancy (or late life medical expenses). But don't keep going past that buffer.
I'm not saying you disagree with this but it's an important point that was left out. I know there are space limits, I just think it's very important. The goal is not to squirrel it away in a pile that will never be touched. The goal is to use it effectively to improve your life.
With that proviso out of the way, for most people the single best way that they can "spend" that money is to have an emergency fund. I see people panicking over how they are going to pay rent and think "none of the junk you bought this money could possibly be worth this level of stress."
Spend the money on the proverbial "cup of coffee at starbucks" that the gurus are always going on about, or not stress about having utilities cut off. The choice is so obvious. "Buy another piece of junk on Amazon, or not worry about how you are going to pay when the air conditioning fails?".
If you put it on a multiple choice test, it's hard to see how anyone every gets it wrong. And yet in real life, they get it wrong. Over and over.
Retirement is just the "emergency" you see coming 40+ years before it happens. And happens with 100% certainty. And a sinking fund for a car is the same. You don't know the exact day the car is going to die, but you know it will.
But once you have your margins in place, the rest of your money is yours to spend. If you want to travel, go forth. If you want the larger house, that's why you worked hard for the money.
We don't tell people to do things as some sort of punishment, we do it so they can live their best life.
Get margins in place so you can be at peace. After that, it's about prioritizing so that things that don't matter much to you don't rob you from getting the things that do.
It's not about doing without, it's about getting as much as you can. You worked hard for that money, don't waste it. Get as much as you possibly can from it.
"But once you have your margins in place, the rest of your money is yours to spend. If you want to travel, go forth. If you want the larger house, that's why you worked hard for the money."
I agree with that 100% and I even encourage people in the article to spend money on the things they really care about.
Where, I think people get into trouble by spending way too much money on things that are basically irrelevant and forgetting that the biggest purpose of money is guaranteeing those margins people really care about. If you have a new living room set, but it means you have to worry about whether your bills are paid next month, you made a bad purchasing decision.
Wearing a 200k watch just makes one a walking target. Living in Clark County, NV, I read regularly about dudes entertaining new girlfriends in their hotel rooms and their subsequent disappointment when waking up and noticing some items missing.
I think that there are two drivers.
One, and I think is the most prevalent, is the hierarchical status pursuit. Jordan Peterson does well to explain this from a human psychology and behavior perspective. It is biological as higher status people tend to survive longer... primarily because higher status people tend to kill lower status people to prevent them from competing for higher status. This biological evolutionary behavior is both rational and corruptive. However, given the alternative of other methods to achieve and convey status, I am not sure it is the worst. If you consider the behavior of people today - especially the left - due to China and other countries destroying the luxury goods market with cheap knockoffs - and the fact that we have stuffed so many people through the high-learning meat factory - there are not enough high-status virtue signaling opportunities in luxury goods and thus people have adopted a sort of modern version of blue-blood ranking where people of certain group identities would be given higher social and economic status. That is the basis for why so many seemingly normal Democrats are attracted to the woke movement.
But people still want that $4,000 purse and $20,000 watch to show the world how special they are.
The other driver is simply that luxury goods are higher quality.
My dear wife is a country bumpkin. When were first married I had to ignore her telling me that we did not need to replace our 12" black and white TV with a 19" color set. One day I heard her crying in our walk-in closet... when I asked what was wrong, she said "I don't have anything to wear to work tomorrow". We both worked and had good enough jobs at the time. I had to take her shopping the next day and force her to purchase a new wardrobe. Recently her 10-year-old Ford with only 70k miles blew a head gasket and would have cost more than the car was worth to replace the engine. I am now a high-income CEO after 40+ years climbing the corporate ladder and picked out a mid-level luxury SUV I wanted to buy for her. She is still complaining that it cost too much. But I did the research, and it is a car with top-level reliability, and since we tend to keep our cars for over 10 years, I wanted one that would last.
Yes, I am lucky in marriage.
This last point about people with money buying more expensive goods is that it also serves to help producers to supplement their production of cheaper goods. For example, the new device would cost more but eventually the cost would fall so more could afford it. The early adopters would be providing a service to the market to lower the cost for all. This process has been effectively destroyed by China over-producing. Today everyone pays the same for the newest iPhone. And everyone thinks they need it. And because the devices are leased and not purchased in general, the incremental increase in monthly cost causes people that really cannot afford it and that do not need it, go buy it.
I own a business that makes distilled spirits products. Several years ago, Japanese whisky makers decided to push a fake news meme of lack of supply for high-end Japanese whiskey. That created a run on products and drove the costs higher and higher. The whisky did not taste any different, but consumers had to have it. Today that meme is still effective... there is a market narrative that Japanese whisky is better, rarer and more worth more. Much of that is just market myth.
The worst thing for all the corporations is that a new high-status meme develops for low consumption. However, I am all for turning back the clock on what I see as the "new feature" obsession that feeds the landfills and causes people to purchase the newest and greatest with the existing product is perfectly fine. My 2015 Ford F150 with 80k miles is wonderful. I will drive it until it dies. I think product companies should make more reliable and long-lasting products that cost more. And frankly... fuck China.
You did luck up with the way your wife thinks about money — and yeah, right now, I’m driving a 10 year old Toyota Camry. On the one hand, I feel like I’d be justified in replacing it since it’s 10 years old, but on the other, I’ve never had a major mechanical problem out of it, so why bother upgrading? At some point, I will, but it gets me from point A to point B, which is primarily what I want it to do.
Well, I too drive a 2015 car with 100+ miles. My spouse and I do not spend money on high priced lodgings but have very nice homes. Not to impress other people but because we live in them. Have read John Hawkins for years...he is very good and I felt bad about not being a paid reader. Didn't like the price point but jumped at the recent special substack offer.
Thank you. The paid readers essentially make all of this possible. Without people like you, I'd probably end up writing shclockier pieces for some conservative outlet instead of digging into things that I think matter more.
This is a profound and very useful essay.
I have worked hard, saved and invested carefully over my life as a Scottish Presbyterian, belonging to the only mainline denomination that considers financial solvency to tbe a positive thing, should do.
As a result I would be considered "rich" by most standards.
But I still buy my clothes at thrift shops* and only 1 time (and then because of necessity) have I ever bought a new car.
Being concerned about the opinions of others is one of the worst personality traits one can have.
It means you are no longer yourself, you are not free, you have voluntarily made youself into their slave.
This is true not only of important issues like race, immigration, national subservience to Israel, etc.
It's true on the most personal level.
Thank you, John Hawkins, for writing this.
*The inventory of clothing in thrift shops is quite good. Only upper middle class and upper class people care about things like giving clothes to thrift shops and the people who buy their clothes at such shops tend to be non-white immigrants who want to buy the gaudy, garish stuff.
I've bought many Brooks Brothers pants and shirts at such shops for $2.00 apiece. Lots of them clearly were brand new and probably started out as birthday and Christmas gifts that didn't fit the recipients.
Give thrift shops a try.
Well, I agree with about 90% of this. But I would say that the purpose of money is ultimately to spend it. The biggest waste of money you can possibly imagine is to die with it. All that work for nothing. Might as well have lit it on fire.
Not that I am saying you should die with exactly zero. You want to leave a margin of error since you don't know your life expectancy (or late life medical expenses). But don't keep going past that buffer.
I'm not saying you disagree with this but it's an important point that was left out. I know there are space limits, I just think it's very important. The goal is not to squirrel it away in a pile that will never be touched. The goal is to use it effectively to improve your life.
With that proviso out of the way, for most people the single best way that they can "spend" that money is to have an emergency fund. I see people panicking over how they are going to pay rent and think "none of the junk you bought this money could possibly be worth this level of stress."
Spend the money on the proverbial "cup of coffee at starbucks" that the gurus are always going on about, or not stress about having utilities cut off. The choice is so obvious. "Buy another piece of junk on Amazon, or not worry about how you are going to pay when the air conditioning fails?".
If you put it on a multiple choice test, it's hard to see how anyone every gets it wrong. And yet in real life, they get it wrong. Over and over.
Retirement is just the "emergency" you see coming 40+ years before it happens. And happens with 100% certainty. And a sinking fund for a car is the same. You don't know the exact day the car is going to die, but you know it will.
But once you have your margins in place, the rest of your money is yours to spend. If you want to travel, go forth. If you want the larger house, that's why you worked hard for the money.
We don't tell people to do things as some sort of punishment, we do it so they can live their best life.
Get margins in place so you can be at peace. After that, it's about prioritizing so that things that don't matter much to you don't rob you from getting the things that do.
It's not about doing without, it's about getting as much as you can. You worked hard for that money, don't waste it. Get as much as you possibly can from it.
"But once you have your margins in place, the rest of your money is yours to spend. If you want to travel, go forth. If you want the larger house, that's why you worked hard for the money."
I agree with that 100% and I even encourage people in the article to spend money on the things they really care about.
Where, I think people get into trouble by spending way too much money on things that are basically irrelevant and forgetting that the biggest purpose of money is guaranteeing those margins people really care about. If you have a new living room set, but it means you have to worry about whether your bills are paid next month, you made a bad purchasing decision.
Wearing a 200k watch just makes one a walking target. Living in Clark County, NV, I read regularly about dudes entertaining new girlfriends in their hotel rooms and their subsequent disappointment when waking up and noticing some items missing.