Greetings All. I just subscribed because I want to make this very important point that goes right along with this essay. The current fentanyl crisis is yet another example of luxury beliefs. The rich see the deaths as a bunch of unknown and unamed junkie peasants. I just lost my stepson a week ago, and a friend of my daughters who actually brought us food while we are grieving him (she died last night). This crisis it killing hundreds of thousands of our youth, and touching millions of family members. Yet is is barely discussed. Nobody is saying that if you take pills today, you are literally playing russian roulette and will sooner (probably) or later die from it. These children are not trying to die, but die they do and nobody will mention exactly how deadly street drugs are.
I have a lot of theories, though the luxury beliefs certainly are another. Perhaps we are afraid of insulting big pharma by noting that these PILLS are deadly. Maybe we are interfering with the big guy cut that is surely generated by the cartels and Chinese and paid out to our elites who keep everything quiet and allow this trillion dollar industry to flourish. There is no way that much money changes hands without big guy cuts (taxes) to the people who could use lethal force to fight them.
Heather MacDonald said something in a podcast that haunts me – apparently the elderly in housing projects are often afraid to come to the lobby and check their mail, since they are routinely terrorized by young drug dealers, unless there happens to be a police presence in the building. Shame on these defund the police people.
Well, if indeed they do defund the police, I hope we get a heads up previous to it application. As this would give me enough time to decide whether to invest in funeral homes or a hog farm.
“How does the most affluent segment of society set themselves apart? My claim is they do it through these beliefs, these costly signals….They would expend resources in order to learn intricate and arcane knowledge about wine and artwork and furniture, sophisticated vocabulary, attending certain schools. And through their opinions and their views, they would be able to reveal themselves to one another, reveal these buried signals of ‘I'm a member of the affluent,’ so that if they're in a space, they would be able to identify one another.” I wonder how conscious these people were of their signaling behavior. To me their behavior seems sort of weird, but I wonder if all people—mostly men—do something similar—to a lesser extent. Seems like it might be a survival strategy baked into our DNA—to form alliances in the event of war or competition. Here I’m thinking of Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers. She describes how important it is for men to identify and destroy the enemy. Maybe luxury beliefs emerge from our innate behavior to determine the alpha male and specialized skill sets in each member of our group.
Yes. Really expensive everything...country club memberships, 200K cars, multiple houses, private jets, million dollar Ivy League legacy-admission donations, 1000 dollar shirts, 500 dollar shoes, 50,000 dollar a year prep schools, yachts, etc. These can be viewed as the equivalent of peacock feathers. But now DEI authorities say "white people are oppressors." How do the white and affluent respond? They victimize themselves. They take-on oppressed identities. They self-deceive. For example, "I'm not sure what gender I am and I feel oppressed." And they espouse luxury beliefs such as polyamory, defunding the police, reparations, forced integration of schools, prohibition of fossil fuels, legalizing hard drugs, etc. These ideas inflict costs on the lower classes while conferring status on the upper class. As Rob Henderson says, "Why are affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? They can afford it. And they care the most about status." With their oppressed, victimized identity they can more easily win admission to Ivy League universities; they can avoid shameful feelings induced by DEI authorities. But now that their luxury beliefs are being exposed, how will they deal with the DEI cronies? It will be more difficult to advocate for defunding the police. No longer will they be able to condone trans surgeries for kids. How long until their anti-Israel ideas are exposed as mistaken? They may want to look toward the First Amendment in order to cut funding to DEI. https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/religion-education-and-identity?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Great clip. Thank you Mr. Loury. The image of the upper class in their gate guarded neighborhood, advocating to defund the police is one of the best examples of luxury belief.
“When they broke down the data by income category, the highest-income Americans were the most in favor of defunding the police, and the lowest-income Americans were the least supportive.
I consider this to be maybe an example we're talking about here, because a lot of these people who are championing the defund the police movement, if they were to defund the police in their area, they already live in gated communities. They already live in safe neighborhoods. And so even if their police are defunded, they would incur a lower cost than when the police are defunded in poor, low-income communities. And even for a lot of these affluent communities, when the crime wave did eventually come into contact with their lives, there were reports of affluent neighborhoods in Chicago hiring off-duty police officers or security guards or private bodyguards and so on. And so even when it does go on to affect them, eventually they will find ways to protect themselves.” Yep, that’s a luxury belief.
It does make me wonder how threatened the upper class is by this idea of luxury beliefs. It’s such an easy concept to understand and reveals their hypocrisy and mistaken beliefs. Might this actually cause them some blowback?
Good question. One vulnerability of the elite class has always been it's isolation from the people. They live in an echo chamber. It has cost heads in the past.
Greetings All. I just subscribed because I want to make this very important point that goes right along with this essay. The current fentanyl crisis is yet another example of luxury beliefs. The rich see the deaths as a bunch of unknown and unamed junkie peasants. I just lost my stepson a week ago, and a friend of my daughters who actually brought us food while we are grieving him (she died last night). This crisis it killing hundreds of thousands of our youth, and touching millions of family members. Yet is is barely discussed. Nobody is saying that if you take pills today, you are literally playing russian roulette and will sooner (probably) or later die from it. These children are not trying to die, but die they do and nobody will mention exactly how deadly street drugs are.
I have a lot of theories, though the luxury beliefs certainly are another. Perhaps we are afraid of insulting big pharma by noting that these PILLS are deadly. Maybe we are interfering with the big guy cut that is surely generated by the cartels and Chinese and paid out to our elites who keep everything quiet and allow this trillion dollar industry to flourish. There is no way that much money changes hands without big guy cuts (taxes) to the people who could use lethal force to fight them.
Heather MacDonald said something in a podcast that haunts me – apparently the elderly in housing projects are often afraid to come to the lobby and check their mail, since they are routinely terrorized by young drug dealers, unless there happens to be a police presence in the building. Shame on these defund the police people.
Well, if indeed they do defund the police, I hope we get a heads up previous to it application. As this would give me enough time to decide whether to invest in funeral homes or a hog farm.
“How does the most affluent segment of society set themselves apart? My claim is they do it through these beliefs, these costly signals….They would expend resources in order to learn intricate and arcane knowledge about wine and artwork and furniture, sophisticated vocabulary, attending certain schools. And through their opinions and their views, they would be able to reveal themselves to one another, reveal these buried signals of ‘I'm a member of the affluent,’ so that if they're in a space, they would be able to identify one another.” I wonder how conscious these people were of their signaling behavior. To me their behavior seems sort of weird, but I wonder if all people—mostly men—do something similar—to a lesser extent. Seems like it might be a survival strategy baked into our DNA—to form alliances in the event of war or competition. Here I’m thinking of Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers. She describes how important it is for men to identify and destroy the enemy. Maybe luxury beliefs emerge from our innate behavior to determine the alpha male and specialized skill sets in each member of our group.
And really expensive neighborhoods
Yes. Really expensive everything...country club memberships, 200K cars, multiple houses, private jets, million dollar Ivy League legacy-admission donations, 1000 dollar shirts, 500 dollar shoes, 50,000 dollar a year prep schools, yachts, etc. These can be viewed as the equivalent of peacock feathers. But now DEI authorities say "white people are oppressors." How do the white and affluent respond? They victimize themselves. They take-on oppressed identities. They self-deceive. For example, "I'm not sure what gender I am and I feel oppressed." And they espouse luxury beliefs such as polyamory, defunding the police, reparations, forced integration of schools, prohibition of fossil fuels, legalizing hard drugs, etc. These ideas inflict costs on the lower classes while conferring status on the upper class. As Rob Henderson says, "Why are affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? They can afford it. And they care the most about status." With their oppressed, victimized identity they can more easily win admission to Ivy League universities; they can avoid shameful feelings induced by DEI authorities. But now that their luxury beliefs are being exposed, how will they deal with the DEI cronies? It will be more difficult to advocate for defunding the police. No longer will they be able to condone trans surgeries for kids. How long until their anti-Israel ideas are exposed as mistaken? They may want to look toward the First Amendment in order to cut funding to DEI. https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/religion-education-and-identity?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Great clip. Thank you Mr. Loury. The image of the upper class in their gate guarded neighborhood, advocating to defund the police is one of the best examples of luxury belief.
“When they broke down the data by income category, the highest-income Americans were the most in favor of defunding the police, and the lowest-income Americans were the least supportive.
I consider this to be maybe an example we're talking about here, because a lot of these people who are championing the defund the police movement, if they were to defund the police in their area, they already live in gated communities. They already live in safe neighborhoods. And so even if their police are defunded, they would incur a lower cost than when the police are defunded in poor, low-income communities. And even for a lot of these affluent communities, when the crime wave did eventually come into contact with their lives, there were reports of affluent neighborhoods in Chicago hiring off-duty police officers or security guards or private bodyguards and so on. And so even when it does go on to affect them, eventually they will find ways to protect themselves.” Yep, that’s a luxury belief.
And that is why the deplorables at the bottom of the pile should be forced to listen to, and obey, their betters.
It does make me wonder how threatened the upper class is by this idea of luxury beliefs. It’s such an easy concept to understand and reveals their hypocrisy and mistaken beliefs. Might this actually cause them some blowback?
Good question. One vulnerability of the elite class has always been it's isolation from the people. They live in an echo chamber. It has cost heads in the past.
I agree. They're almost certainly out of touch with red counties in red states.