Class-identical status assets produce shared signaling strategies that become taste worlds

Evidence

New Money’s love for ostentation leads us to the main topic of this chapter: the sensibilities underlying taste are never random, independent results of idiosyncratic and irrational minds. Members of socioeconomic classes possess similar status assets, which lead to similar signaling strategies. As these individuals signal the same ways, their behavior becomes conventional to the community, and over time businesses offer specific goods—i.e., cultural artifacts—that cater to their taste. In this process a taste world is formed. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 310

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact causal chain — from shared assets to shared signals to conventionalized behavior to commercial artifacts to a ‘taste world’ — that explains how entire aesthetic cultures emerge from status logic rather than idiosyncratic minds.
• XREF: connects to: Taste manifests only through social activity filtered by status value — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 245; Mutually perceived signals explain the pull of psychologically dominant equilibria. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 874; Classes share tastes without acting as coordinated groups — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 313 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Random signals can crystallize into stable cooperation through learned signaling conventions #expands (0.85)
• Taste manifests only through social activity filtered by status value #expands (0.82) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 245
• Classes share tastes without acting as coordinated groups #qualifies (0.80) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 313
• Mutually perceived signals explain the pull of psychologically dominant equilibria. #expands (0.78) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 874
• Tastes encode a whole choice of being rather than sexual or physiological facts #expands (0.76)