The Misguided Economist

When I was 16 my mum got me The Economist: The World in 2004. I expected it to be funny. It wasnt. Not quite the same as the Beano's Annual Review. Although to be frank that was never as funny to me as it was to other kids.

The World in 2004 had funny captions. I won't deny that. But as is the way with serious publications most of the magazine was text. Next year I got The World in 2005. This time I found it hilarious. I don't know why. Maybe the writers were on a high because the global economy was doing so well (remember those days?).

Over time I have grown to respect the The Economist for its liberal views and coherent journalism. It benefits from being a weekly newspaper: it doesn't have the same drag towards sensationalism that even traditional stalwarts such as The Times have suffered from in recent times. There is far less reactionary journalism in The Economist which I respect.

I'm currently living with an Economist. At first all I found amusing was the odd caption. Now I find him hilarious. He suscribes to The Economist which means I get my weekly fix. Great! When he had gone home to Cambridge and his parents to gorge on duck terrine and roasted ricotta and pinenut tortillas he left behind the Christmas edition of The Economist.

The Christmas edition of The Economist is a big deal. It's like the Radio Times: it's big enough for two weeks. And you get a beautiful insight into the people who write the paper. They talk about music, science and roasted ricotta and pinenut tortillas.

The one thing it deals very badly with is sex. It's not a great surprise though. Maths and sex meet at one point: "I'd like to be your derivitive so I could lie tangent to your curve!". A bad line. (Ok...it is kinda funny!). Economics and Sex's sordid relationship begins and ends at the price of a prostitute. It comes (heheh) as no surprise that The Economist takes a scientific approach to sex. I have no objections to this. Sex is, afterall, an evolutionary device to pass on genes.

It's a shame that The Economist fucks up so badly. It approaches sex in the same way they deal with fiscal policy in Singapore: in a detached emotionless way. It seems funny when dealing with relationships and people that you can contemplate looking at the issue in a purely theoretical way.

The first moment that made me wonder whether the author of this particular article had ever set foot in a club was, "Men [show off to attract members of the opposite sex] more than women" before dropping a reference to women wearing hats at ascot. Like what? This theme runs throughout the article. WHAT? I know that guys bullshit and brag a lot. Im not retarded/pinnochio. And the article acknowledges that both men and women show off. But HATS AT ASCOT? How fucking upper middle class. How about clubs and pubs across the country every Friday and Saturday night? The average guy makes sure he has a nice shirt or a cool tshirt on and some jeans that have no visible coffee/spunk stains and might put some gel/perfume on.

Girls spend aeons in the bathroom getting ready. I was ready to go clubbing with a girl to an annual rave in 2006 and we only just made the 2007 edition. She looked hot though.

Makeup. Clothers. Hair. It all has to be acknowledged. It's as much to be better than the other girls (the same "bragging" that guys are accused of in the article) and for their own self esteem as for guys (Im not deluded about this). But the time that goes in to making a girl attractive is far more than that for a guy.

Then in the club they're shaking their cute little ass, making squealing noises and flaunting it all over the bar. When girls make out with each other in the club it isn't to pay homage to their personal hero Katy Perry. Clue: Attntn

Anyway. My real beef isnt here. It's kinda irrelevant. It's just so far off the mark I had to point it out. It illustrates (good word!) how far off the mark the guy was and what sort of place he was coming from (Ascot! hahaha...i cant get over that one!). Incidentally, scientific surveys on sex and attractiveness make me laugh. Researchers are PhD folk in universities. Professors. Old men. Remember the geekiest kids at school...they were SCIENCE geeks. The least likely to put their Johnson in anything that doesnt belong to them. And these guys with 10 years more nerdiness rubbed into them are going to explain sex to us? C'mon! haha It's funny, right?


"Status" said the Ascot-wondering economist "is mediated by money".

hahaha. I hadnt cottoned on to just how funny this article is. It's almost satire. Terribly Dickensian old sport!

On an individual level we obviously get that that isn't the case. There are exceptions, of course, but attraction, love, sexual desire (whatever you want to call it) is not based on money. It just isn't. We accept that it's shallow and it's shallow for a reason. Because humans just dont fall in love with other humans because they have money.

On the level of societies it's wrong as well. Between different groups of people it doesn't matter. Kids from deprived areas aren't trying to get rich so they can be like the queen or Peter Jones. As the articles points out they are doing it be oneup on their peers. But even here this is looking at the surface and not the depth.

What is status?

Status is social position. Being high status means you have a high social position. You can have high status in one group and have low status in another. So status is best understood as a relative. It isn't something you can point to. Status isn't like a chair. Or a rock. It exists in the minds of people and relates to people and groups. This is really important. Reread it if you have to.

What's curious about status is that it is accepted and recognised by everyone. You dont need to be a member of a group to know who has status. You dont need to know the people. You can walk up to a group of strangers and know who is top dog and who is submissive. Its an engrained ability we all have to notice the leader and where we likely stand in that group. Consciously. Or subconsciously. And this effects how we behave in that group. The person who views him or herself as being highest status is the most free, natural and cool person. Because they give themselves permission to act like that. The person at the top doesn't bend for others. They dont care if the group takes them or leaves them. They are who they are. Other people react to them.
And the further down you go in terms of group status the more you react to others, the less you feel like you can express yourself and the more worried you are about how you will be perceived by others.

Is it the case that you can quickly recognise who has status in a group? Yes.
Is it the case that you can quickly recognise who has the most money in a group? Sometimes. Often not though. Within one group of friends it is hard to tell the vast majority of the time.

It seems to me that group dynamics are important in determining who mates and who doesnt. A woman is far more likely to want to match her egg to the sperm of a high status male than a low status male.

Isnt that the case though? Isnt it!


Money can often be a factor in who allows themself to be high status. But high status is just a free state of mind.
Status is in a sense determined by each individual. Each individual has some power of decision over whether he is going to be fun, positive and stick to his sense of self no matter what social pressure there may be. With practice (experience?) it becomes easier.

Is a girl going to want the genes of a totally cool, at ease, principled, solid guy or a rich one?

Money is laughable in this context.

In any event people tend to mate with others in their social circle. Social circles tend to have little disparity in terms of wealth. Eton boys dont hang out with bros from the hood. Ya get me?

At the risk of having constructed a strawman perhaps The Economist wanted to make a comment not about the status within a group but between groups. Practically this is irrelevant anyway as guys and girls go for girls and guys with whom they have commonalities. Meeting partners through social circles is extremely common.

This needn't matter though if low status social groups want to fuck/mate people from higher status groups.

First it needs to be explained what low and high status means. On the one hand it's not clear that gangsters want to fuck spoilt brats. Maybe they do. Maybe they dont. It certainly doesnt seem like they do because they're high status. On the other hand Brad Pitt (high status) attracts a lot of attention from women (far more than he would if he was working at Wall Mart anyway). How to resolve this tension?


Well first off we would do well to disassociate social status/evolutionary value with social class. Social class is related to money. It's hard to see what else it is. Social status is a different kettle of fish. What makes Brad Pitt particularly attractive? Why do we say "get laid like a rock star"? It's not cos they make a lot of money. It's because people the world over are reacting heavily to the way they behave. They are in control through their acting and performing. Same goes with sports stars. When you've got 80,000 people in the stadium and millions at home cheering, booing and being emotionally involved in the actions of someone, then that someone gains a lot of social value. They become socially important on a vast scale. This is why these guys are so attractive.

If people from what Victorians would call (and let's make no mistake about it, no right-minded person in the 21st Cenutry would) lower status groups want to earn more money it isn't because they want to swap hip-hop for classical music. Humans love to belong to a group (racial groups, gender groups, sports teams, music genres) and the aim is to appear as higher status within that group as possible. Idols for an average inner-city black teen might be the guys who run the estate or Kanye West. Kanye West lives the good life within the context of being a black male. He hasn't got rich and famous and decided that actually The Good Life isn't for him and he'd rather be producing piano concertos.

Kanye West is a brilliant observer of class by the way. "The people highest up got the lowest self-esteem/The prettiest people do the ugliest things", "I ain't saying she's a golddigger, but she aint hanging with no broke nigger" and finally, most pertinently,

"Some people graduate but we still stupid
They tell you eat this, read this, don't look around...
And after all that you receive this".

Kanye's no Shakespeare. He sips champagne on planes not at the opera. He'll never be caught at Ascot. And he certainly aint eating pine nut and ricotta tortillas. He hasnt received this, but he's got it. Cos he opens his eyes.

A different global view: 2000 and now.