Everything Arnold says about status goods and tipping points holds for signaling as well. It’s theoretically possible for bizarre new equilibria to emerge:
Something that is a status good in one era can be the opposite in another. Think of smoking, for example.
At some point, there may emerge a generation for whom having their children attend an elite college is not a status good.
Today, wearing a suit signals conformity and ambition. A thousand years ago, however, wearing a suit would have signaled that you were an utter freak. Tipping happens.
I’m puzzled, however, when Arnold seems to suggest that the emergence of bizarre new equilibria is likely:
Predicting when that will happen is difficult. It’s like predicting any
tipping point, such as the tipping point at which an asset bubble pops
or the tipping point at which people no longer believe that a government
will pay its debts.
Isn’t it more accurate to say the following about the unraveling of status/signaling equilibria?
1. “Predicting whether tipping will happen is easy: Smart money says it won’t.”
2. “If tipping does happen, however, it will be hard to predict when.”
READER COMMENTS
Lars P
Jul 9 2012 at 1:50am
When the current education bubble with it’s spiraling tuition cost and student loans bursts, I expect attitudes to also reach some kind of tipping point.
Lupis42
Jul 9 2012 at 6:50am
I would say tipping is likely to happen on a long enough timescale. Determining how long the timescale is falls back into that when.
Alex Godofsky
Jul 9 2012 at 10:16am
Suits aren’t a story of a sudden tipping. They are a story of an extremely slow, incremental evolution.
aretae
Jul 11 2012 at 11:56pm
What Lupis said.
We know that the change will happen. We just don’t know whether the change will happen in our lifetime.
Comments are closed.