This analysis sharply captures how the elite have abandoned gaudy displays for a "relatable" aesthetic to deflect social resentment in an era of extreme inequality. It correctly identifies that status hasn't disappeared; it has simply become more subtle and gatekept to maintain class distinction.
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Is there anything more capitalist than a peanut with a top hat cane and monle selling other peanuts to you to eat? I'm your host, not Jason Miles. It's a family name. I'm here for another episode of This Is Revolution podcast.
Welcome or welcome back. Peace to the mods. piece of the chat. This week on TIR, we discussed everything from white Polish slavery to the epidemic of coons.
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If you missed any of those episodes, check them out after this show. Also, our Saturday episode, The Loneliness Economy, will be rescheduled for next Saturday. I, not Jason Miles, will be your host for that one, too. We finally got to 20,000 subscribers here on the YouTubes. So, let me also thank you for your support.
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All right, let's get to what you came here for. Is bling dead?
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of bling and the age of food stamps. The season of luxury handbags and payday loans, of Met Gallas and homeless encampments, of billionaire space weddings and doing a Door Dash gig with your kids in the backseat of your car.
In a city that's at least two in one, a man spent millions to sponsor the 2026 Met Gala for at least two reasons. He is Jeffrey Bezos, a man who went from looking like the average IT dork to a billionaire Lex Luthther in a tux for the night.
The site of his $10 million effort to artwash his image was where protesters left bottles of fake urine alongside the message, "If you can buy the Met Gala, you can pay more in taxes."
That same day, a man had a portfolio published showcasing the photos of the quote hardworking New Yorkers who make our city's fashion industry second to none. He is the city's new mayor, Zoran Mamdani, who framed his absence from the gala as a way to keep his focus on quote making the most expensive city in the United States affordable.
So what does it mean that in one of the that one of the most moneyed spectacles on earth exist in a city where millions struggle to afford rent, food, and stability? And what does it say about America that world famous museums increasingly survive through billionaire philanthropy instead of public investment?
Let's bring in the people who will take us beyond the slogan eat the rich.
First up, he's your preppy frat brother from another mother, the ultimate co-host on This is Revolution, and the sapioexuals them sugar. He is Pascal Rober.
>> Peace and greetings to the chat. Peace and greetings to the audience. Peace and greetings M2 with a new soundboard.
>> Yeah. Well, a little bit. Uh, let's see.
Let's bring in some more folks to help us. Next up, he is more leftist guns than Democratic Socialist Roses. the co-author of the new book, The People Are Not One, and the most fashionable of all his brothers. He is see Derek Lauren.
>> Yeah, I'm literally in a t-shirt.
>> We'll take it. I'm sure you appreciate the workers who made it, so >> yeah, that counts.
>> I mean, yeah, they're probably in Vietnam. Um, anyway, go ahead.
>> And lastly, but not leastly, he is your favorite middle manager on the Death Star, an extreme neckwear enthusiast, and my emotional support Canadian of choice. Take that, Drake. He is deep state Koopa.
Welcome, fellas. Thanks for being so fashionable today. I really appreciate it. Did any of you watch the Met Gala coverage >> a little bit?
>> Yeah, >> I heard about it.
>> Yeah, you saw the lady with the money over her over her eyes as some kind of protest even though she still attended Matt Gala.
That was fun. All right. So, >> I mean, stunts at the Matt Geller are nothing new, you know, specifically like AOC's dress from what, like three, four years ago.
>> Um, so >> her Eat the Rich dress. Yeah. Um, let's see. More on the Met Gala later. I actually have some visuals for us. I'm trying something new today. Uh, so let me pull up the visuals for everybody here.
Here we go.
Visuals.
The death of bling. Why do rich people suddenly want to look normal? So, we're here to unpack this today.
Uh, so this is what rich guy rich guys used to look like around the guilded age. I think we all kind of recognize rich guys's looking like this in the past. Why did old elites project authority instead of relatability?
Well, um, one one important difference between then and now is the relative proximity to the old world European class hierarchy, right? The these were extremely powerful men, of course, extremely wealthy men, very important, but they remained commoners in a world where some people had titles and there was a collective memory. Well, forget a collective memory. We're talking about the early part of the 20th century. You have absolute monarchs in Russia, absolute monarchs in Austria, Hungary, absolute monarchs in Prussia. You have an empress of India. You have um rulers from the feudal dynastic tradition in China, in Japan, all over the world.
Together with all of the purigages beneath them, the lords, the ladies, right? At this point, when women imagine that one day their prince will come, they mean a literal prince, right?
like >> at the very least uh an Arab app parent to a major duche, right? No, >> no, um bourgeoa merchant folk need apply. And that hierarchy in Europe was maintained significantly by saratoral rules. There were things that only the king could wear. There were things that only aristocrats could wear and there was significant punishment no matter how wealthy you were, no matter how fancy you were, no matter how great you thought you were. Um, if a commoner um dresses and affects that that kind of look.
So you need to um in that type of world the business suit and the arch billionaire look becomes a kind of bourgeoa merchant class commercial version of the saratoral um rules of Europe enforced not by um the crude punishment of medieval systems, but by the brutal logic of the market. And similarly, you know, you have a movement away from leadership and authority that's grounded in tradition, bloodlines, those types of hierarchies. And instead like all you need to buy the outfit to look like a captain of industry is the money. All you need to be a captain of industry to have that kind of power to have that kind of status to command the socialized obedience of the poors is to have that kind of money right you there's no longer these arbitrary barriers. And I think that over time the upper bourgeoisi right the old bourgeoa recognized that feudalism wasn't the threat that that system wasn't coming back and that they had to adjust to a world where democratic pretensions right the idea that people are cool with you the idea that you might be one of becomes more significant and you have a a shift towards that relatability that even some of these, you know, most blood sucking of uh billionaires racing towards a trillion dollars still try to affect when uh when they're interfacing with the public.
>> Derek, you wanted to jump in?
>> Sure. I have I mean, there's a lot to say about that. I I don't disagree with anything that said there. I would add to it though. Um the authoritative look of the early boogeoisi is actually still not as different from the separation between lords and peasants by subject laws that we see. So if you look at like the the the nice suits of the bourgeoisi, um you have to remember that uh all clothing for everybody was a much higher proportion of their income. Um everybody wore suits for practical reasons. things like detachable collars, uh, undershirts, these all had functions that we've forgotten in the in the cheapening of clothing. Um, and if you look at the suits of the captains of industry, they are nicer. They are made out of better fabrics. They have better cuts, but they are still on the spectrum of what everyone else was wearing, unlike a king.
>> All right. So today when you say that now I do have stats like bling is dead but when you talk about the relatability of >> of um things like the boogeoisi uh you like Jeff Bezos they're signaling to different people in different ways Jeff B uh Jeff Bezos stupid [ __ ] t-shirt right I'm wearing a stupid [ __ ] t-shirt this t-shirt probably cost I don't know what what's This is probably a $10 t-shirt, right?
Uh I wear t-shirts that probably cost up to $30, $40 depending on their cut. Um there are t-shirts that look almost like this that are $200.
>> Mhm.
>> Right. And what you're looking for with this expensive hidden bling is you are signaling to people in the no versus people people who aren't. and still looking approachable simultaneously.
Um whereas the captains of industry are are wearing stuff on the spectrum that everyone else is wearing. I do think that is important because they're not wearing crowns and stuff, but they are also trying to use what we will call beveling goods. We'll talk a lot about it later and the changes in that now. Um to make that point that they still have a ton of status that they are like the common man um but that they are not the common man.
They are not lords but they are they can afford to be. It's not an issue of money and that's what they're signaling. Um, if you think about what you see these like these fancy people wearing today, um, it's a similar thing where things look normal to you if you don't know what they're wearing.
You don't know that they're wearing a t-shirt that is, uh, a slightly h higher fabric count and they paid $300 for it.
Now, you do have ostentatious fashion still. Balenciaga exists. Um, but even there, you're not, it doesn't seem like you're projecting authority until you think about it. So, what what are the things that that uh make Balenciaga's clothing really [ __ ] obvious is none of them are practical. None of it's practical. Like, you cannot do normal work in a stupid Balenciaga get up. Um if you think about that that kind of fashion which doesn't project authority at all but the reason why we think of like when we say the captains of industry project authority we are also saying that because that's what the captains of industry wore like that the reasons why we associate those items of clothing with authority like the reason why like people when I dress up in a suit and and that is seen as authoritative to normies is actually because people 100 years ago who are the image of who we think is successful in a non-aristocratic society that's what they did and that is thus available and good. At a certain point though, the mass production of clothes means that that doesn't have the same um resonance that it used to have. Like like let's say let's say even if you're buying real suits, you have a hundred of them. Uh that doesn't signify the same status as having a hundred suits in 19 in 1900.
>> It just really doesn't. Um, and like I said, everyone's clothing was a bigger part of their expenditure. This is still kind of true in Europe, actually. But like when you look at like um why all these things like why did you have detachable collars? Why did you wear so many layers? It's so you didn't wash your clothes because there weren't machines to wash it. You had to maintain them. A lot of the layers are functional to protect other layers of clothing both outside and inside.
Um, all that stuff uh seems to in many ways um uh just be lost to us when we look at these people now. Um, and I think the other thing that that people are picking up on is the cheapening of velving goods in terms of like how well you can approximate them without without you know I mean because even today like like um everything including like some high-end stuff is made out of basically the same [ __ ] as everything else. Um there's been like material inflation even in elite goods. Um so how are you going to signify that? Well, brands were the way you used to be able to do that. But even that has become limited ironically uh because luxury items for a little while were seen as investment items by uh earlier millennials and Gen Z. And we can talk about like specifically how that accelerated this trend. Um, but I I don't think it's just a sociological need for relatability, although that's part of it. Um, but I think we we tend to view the dress of the captains of the industry as unrelatable because of who's wearing them, not because of it was comparatively with what everyone else was wearing. Like if you look at like what a fac a factory worker would come into um would come into uh work in a button-up shirt with a jacket, etc., etc., etc., unless they were unless they were on the shop floor and then they change into things. But when they're out in public, they wore suits like everyone else. They wore different hats, but they had hats. Um, all these things have both functional and status symbolic meanings, but we would recognize like if I dress up like a worker from the 40s or even the 20s or 30s, I'm going to look remarkably formal for today. Like that's just the case. Mhm.
>> Um, so and the subtle distinctions between like, you know, the difference in weave on a wool fabric or the difference and like how much satin is on this are what kind of cuff links I'm wearing or are um the stripes on my shirt, whether or not I have no buttons, two buttons, or one button. Those all had significance in the early 20th century. They don't now.
All right. Um, so you know, I completely agree with Kuba about like, you know, I think people forget how long it took us to liquidate most of the pre uh the the pre- bajgeoa aristocracy. I mean, basically it didn't happen to until the two world wars, right? Finished wiping most of them and not all of them out.
Um, but and and even then by wiping them out, what we really mean is a lot of them just became bgeoa. Um, but it is it is also important to remember that like in the 19th century the symbol of authority is not whether or not you have a jack top hat is whether or not you have like a furline cape.
Like so like these things are these things are going to be different and subtuary laws are basically removed hitting the country you know over over a 300 year period. But the but even if we're like the poor worker to the elite, there's less of a difference than if you look >> where if you look at what a peasants's wearing and what a lord is wearing or what a king is wearing, they don't even look like they're on the same spectrum of clothing.
>> Facts.
>> That's absolutely true. Um, see, I knew you guys >> they could be from a whole other lore.
I knew you guys were the right ones to talk to about this. So, yeah, we're going from Mr. Monopoly into the guilded age. Well, yeah, this is where elites start to try to distinguish themselves from old money and new var. They want they want to look different from each other. Well, the old the the the old money wants to look different from the new var. They try to shave them off a little bit. Have you ever heard of Thorstein Vein? Yeah.
>> His book, Theory of Leisure.
>> Oh, yes. The >> theory of the leisure class.
>> John Doasos has an entire loving him.
Um, I can't remember if it's um it's somewhere in the USA trilogy >> and I think that there's something very Protestant and Midwestern about his suspicion of conspicuous consumption.
>> Right.
>> He created the phrase.
>> He did.
>> Yeah.
>> Exactly. I think that it's offensive to any proper work ethic, productivitybased uh meritocratic worldview to even have conspicuous consumption, right? Like you should barely consume, let alone conspicuously, >> right? Oh, that's a good point though. I guess um conspicuous consumption is more Catholic.
Protestants and Catholics very very different aesthetics. So I wanted to ask Pascal.
>> Oh very much so.
>> Yes. Hugely different. Um Pascal then um elites began distinguishing themselves from flashy imitators. Is the phrase money talks wealth whispers actually anti-democratic?
>> Well that's a very good question. Money talks wealth whispers. I don't uh I don't think wealth whispers at all. I think west wealth is very loud, but it's not loud in the same places that money is. I think money is braggadocio, but wealth is very very very very makes blunt and direct sounds. I think for example the ability of uh the guys who run Palunteer to control all of the data technology and and the nano information around the world and shape global affairs in war is very loud. It's not it's not whispering at all.
>> So I kind of take issue with the notion that money talks but wealth whispers. I don't think wealth whispers at all. I think wealth is actually very loud. I think money can be ostentatious and braggadocious, but the wealth ain't whispering anywhere.
>> So, how are you making this distinction wealth and money and what you're saying?
>> What's the difference?
>> Rappers have money. People who have institutional assets have wealth.
H Kuba.
>> Um, okay. I've I missed some of that because of my uh connectivity issues.
Maybe I've got I got to close some tabs.
>> Same here. Oh, he just disappeared.
Okay, that was weird. Um, okay. Uh, Varn, any thoughts on this? the distinction between money and wealth and wealth whispering.
>> Um, wealth whispering versus money. I mean, one of the things you have to remind yourself is that generational wealth is accumulated. Income is just income.
>> Um, wealth does not tend to accumulate insprecious consumption because conscious consumption by definition is wasteful.
Um, uh which is what makes Veblin different than Bordeaux. Bordeaux uh talks about distinction and class taste being an effective marker of class all the way down to your your habitat which affects the way you talk, your demeanor, your posture even. Um uh so these things intersect. Um, a beveling good is a good that the wealthy will buy because it's wful, not because it's an investment. But this was often associated with the neuvoirish who wanted to signify their status.
>> Mhm.
>> Versus the versus long-standing wealth who wanted to accumulate more wealth.
And even today, when you look at like like the richest people in the world versus the richest families in the world, this will often tell you a lot.
Um like um what are the reasons why you don't see like the established 20th century like big captains of industry from the mid 20th century from the forest period on the top list of individual wealth. It's because their wealth is diffused amongst their family.
But if you count the family wealth, it's actually still often higher than um new rich people like the tech oligarchs, which is probably some of the things triggering their specific kinds of consumption. Um, so while I think it's true that wealth whispers, you often cannot tell wealth. I mean, I I remember like thinking about uh people who who drove certain kinds of vehicles to signal their status versus like when I met the Uber uber Uber rich like I one time met Warren Buffett and he everything he wore was well made.
Everything he wore was nice. His car was nice, >> but it was not obvious because status seeking isn't something he even needs.
>> You hear this saying wealth whispers, you think the people who actually have wealth in the world are silent and exercising their dominion and control?
>> Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Hey, wealth whispers. I was like, what are you talking about wealth whispers? I was like wealth is is everpresent in the way it manipulates the political affairs of the globe everywhere.
Um >> I suppose like the one way of one place where I can imagine that term that expression coming from is the way in which um in a group of other sort of oligarchs and would be oligarchs.
the individuals who have real decision-making power, right, as a shareholder or whatever the particular context is. And this may be less true in an age of Trump, but um they prefer not to have very obvious fingerprints on uh movements to protect their wealth. They prefer to channel power through other more visible um avatars and representatives.
So one of the shifts I think in since the 90s maybe is the way in which both the need to create your own brand identity as a public-f facing powerful person together with just this American general pursuit of celebrity means that we know the names of huge bankers.
>> We know the names of Jamie Diamond, of uh Blank Gold, Fine. Um, more and more billionaires come out with each scandal, but the billionaires that sort of would be billionaire class, the fact that they're visible at all is extraordinary.
In the past, these types of figures may have had um lower profile and and channeled things through their hierlings and staff, right? Which might include a number of US senators and congressman and maybe a sitting president himself.
I I will say too when we talk about like the Nevo Reef versus the versus the old wealth, uh JB Diamond versus uh versus like Zuckerberg and stuff, that's probably a good way to look at it because while the tech oligarchs don't come from nothing, they're not they're they they they come from generational wealth, they are on the scale of wealth that they're at relatively new. Um, as is, for example, the Trump family, as I've talked about, I think I've talked about it with Pascal, is like Trump is not a self-made man by any stretch of the imagination.
Um, but compared to the other elements of American industry or even in American industry and real estate, that family is new to the game.
>> They're Novo Ree.
>> They're Novo Ree. And status consumption for the neuvo ree has been studied a lot sociologically.
You do have to show your status, but how you show your status changes dramatically. If you look at the way Jamie Damon dresses, he still dresses as a figure of corporate authority. I just pulled I just looked him up right now. I like looking at him. I can't find a single picture where he's not in a suit jacket and only about half where he's not in a tie.
Whereas I can't find a single picture anywhere of like most of the tech oligarchs except for Bezos before recently wearing suits. Um I do think part of the issue is that branding is tied into this and branding needs to be both relatable and distant simultaneously.
Um I also think the fact that like um you know the the uniform of uh of the kind of middle middle petite bgeoisi uh middle wealth the Brooks brother suit has been a joke now for two and a half generations.
Um so when you ask yourself like why is blingo away? I mean like like when we look at bling who has often been associated with bling is entertainers.
>> And one of the things you see with tech oligarchs is that their brand as a genius is part of their survival strategy for stock manipulation um in a way that is not true for different sectors of the economy today.
I when we talk about Velin goods though, one thing that we have to think about is like um Vlin goods are now achievable by all kinds of people. Like we saw right after COVID um people saving up to buy Louis Vuitton and stuff like that as an investment and also to show off on their stupid influencer channel. Um that was partly because uh other forms of property investment are forgone to even relatively welloff people in J generation.
So while uh homeownership for for zoomers was actually higher than you'd expect uh during the very beginning of 2020 if they bought a house with all the money they got very very briefly out of out before the the interest rates went up which was like a window of like six months. Um, after that happened, one of the ways that you could try to play the market and and get wealth with appreciating be goods like Louis Vuitton purses, Balenciaga, stupid [ __ ] Um, you can tell my opinion on this fashionably, uh, etc., etc. >> Would you describe them as as like the poor man's art?
>> Yeah, kind of. and and also a poor man's form of property investment when home ownership and actual commodity property is foregone from you. I mean you these people were also like you know trying to day trade and [ __ ] too. Um and this was all viewed as investments and also projecting um wealth as an influencer. Um, and you started seeing like things like for example, uh, renting tuxedos was something we've all done because buying a tuxedo is expensive. Although it's not as expensive as it used to be. You probably get one for $500. Um, which is still, you know, not something most people can do easily, but they can do it. Um, so these Vblin goods like that kind of clothing are rentable. Are they're sharable? Are you started seeing this with art? Like people started like buying art as a commodity trading with microtransactions to so everyone's buying shares of art. This was a thing uh five years ago. Um, I think that changes the dynamic of the function of beveling goods. Part of the purpose of conspicious consumption is to prove that you have the money to waste part of it.
And if other people of a lower status than you can do that, then what's the [ __ ] point?
>> It goes away. And and so like when when Pascal's like, "Well, well, you know, wealth isn't quiet." I agree with him.
Although we're kind of talking about two different things here. established wealth does usually not want to be seen because I mean the one other thing about establish about established wealth in the in the terms of families and power elites and whatnot uh is that it's more diffuse and also they are some in some ways more vulnerable to competition not from the working class not from the broad populace but from the nevo ree who are coming up that That hot bgeoisi versus neuvo boogeoisi thing is an internal class stratification dynamic that has for a long time been signified by what you consume. I think today what what I was reading in an article in response to this and why things like the Met Gala are being targeted. It's not just about the fashion or any of that. I mean like like again Balenciaga exists.
Um it's also about the fact that what can you commodify today that that other people can't have access to actual experiences.
So this leads to the increase of price of things like concerts and stuff because now these are beveling goods themselves. The ability to go out is now a beveling good. But also um like look at like think about Coachella of all things as a as a a sign of intermediate wealth.
>> Like how much did it cost to go Coachella when it first started in like the early as or in the 90s? I can't remember exactly when it started but >> Rage Against the Machine used to be there all the time. Um so maybe it was the 90s.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes.
Uh, so it was less than $100.
Ticket prices for Coachella today um, uh, start at about $550.
Even adjusting for inflation, >> that far outpaces inflation. I'll give you another example. Burning Man.
Burning Man was a sign of the of these kind of like experiences being increasingly where beveling goods are going to appear. Burning Man originally was very cheap and you just had to have had the the ability in the water to get out there, which actually you did need some wealth to do because you got to cart a bunch of water out to the desert to survive for a week.
>> Um that >> was also it was also attached to a hippie DIY um camping style culture, right? Um you're right that you do require you can't be destitute but the resources required especially if you have time on your hands and some some skills right um they decrease radically so >> I I feel like >> there's a hippie yepy um tension at the heart of Burning Man and it used to be closer it used to be that you could offset shortage of yepy by increasing the hippie and now just everything is incredibly expensive, >> right?
>> Mhm.
>> Um and so I I think you know to uh to agree with that like like it was foreseeable for me if I had wanted to and the aunts to have hiked my happy ass out to the middle of the desert and hang out with a bunch of polyamorous hippies and Burning Man and burn some down. Even though again if you think about the nature of conspirious consumption, Burning Man's kind of perfect for it because what are you doing? You're building temporary art projects that are supposedly not based on capitalism which you destroy when you leave.
Like it's almost per it's like almost perfect for that. I think you're seeing that spreading throughout the economy and and I don't know I can't speak for Canada. I actually haven't followed it, but in the United States, what we've seen is like um this spreading throughout the economy so much that inflation for experiences has outpaced a whole lot of other kinds of inflation. Um concerts have been insane.
Some of that's cost admittedly, but like stuff like this has gone up uh dramatically. Coachella is now something that people go to to show off their fashion.
That means it's the conspiracous consumption event.
>> Yeah. It's it's kind of like the canification, you know. Um you don't need to, right? Like it's based on appreciation for the film industry. And in theory, what's the price of a a movie ticket?
especially in the sort of mid-century heyday of French cinematic art, right?
It was an accessible art form.
So when it became beloved of the French and everybody wanted to celebrate it and have a bunch of recognition for great artistic achievements, of course the rich turn it into a bunch of exclusive parties and drive up the price for everybody, right? None of that is essential to appreciating cinema. None of the Monte Carlo um Aspen Veil um moneyed pageantry is part of movie culture intrinsically, right? Like Quentyn Tarantino worked renting VHS cassettes and um there is a workingclass connection to to cinema as well as a sort of academic intellectual connection as well. You know, you don't need to go into it through money. And yet as soon as it becomes valuable, right, as soon as an appreciation for cinema becomes something that you might be able to flex as a status gesture, the rich bid it up and um the premier event in France attached to um film culture then becomes an exclusive an economically ringfenced um institution.
You make a good point. Um, let's skip a Well, you guys did skip ahead already, but let's go straight to the 2000s.
Uh, this is, I guess, what we would consider peak bling or definitely the bling era. So, yeah. Here are visuals.
We've got um Britney and Justin Timberlake in their all denim outfit with diamonds. 50 Cent with his chains.
We got the Paris Hilton aesthetic for regular people. Everything was bedazzled. They've got their flip phones here. The the the the rapper chains were outrageous.
Uh let's see. Um around this time, wealth visibility itself became aspirational.
Wealth became mass entertainment fantasy.
>> I'd like to say something about how this Part of this kind of wealth aspirationalism >> is funneled upward from the urban so-called underclass with the advent of rap music >> to become part of the the rhetoric and the discourse of the American elite. And I think about the rise of the rap the capitalist capitalist of the ts of the 50 cents >> and how former drug dealers become elevated into a form of entertainment budgeis visa this music form that was supposed to typify quote unquote the revolutionary elements of urban underground and how all of that marketing really becomes just apologetica for capitalist aspirationalism.
I mean for for for goodness sake we're calling this show the death of bling.
Bling comes from uh the song coming out of um you know the boys from Louisiana.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I forgot the group. Uh, I don't remember their name, but yes, Lil Wayne is actually the person who coined the term >> bling bling. The song bling bling, >> right?
>> The >> And for me, I remember >> in this phase not really noticing um that bling was becoming such an influence because I had moved to Dubai and there >> the entire regional culture, right?
Bling is the national pastime, right?
Everything is crystal, everything is golden. Uh, and I don't think that it's coincidental actually that if you were to sort of uh date the rise of the GCC countries, not as a geopolitical or economic block, but as a cultural force, something that was recognized.
Maybe it's Buster Rhymes and Arab Money.
Maybe it's like the um maybe it's the Sex in the City 2 movie that's fil that's supposed to be set in Dubai. But like >> that is a great confluence. Um because there's a clear affinity between GCC uh collegi culture and aesthetics with bling culture that you just wouldn't have with like the Swiss.
>> Oh yeah. The the the Emiratis love your boy Drake. They love Drake.
>> Yeah Drake is big. He's got his album. It's called Habibi.
The Arab word for beloved.
>> Habibi.
>> Habibi. The fe that's the feminine. The feminine Arab word for beloved.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
Um, was the bling era optimistic?
Pascal, I >> I don't believe conspicuous consumption and over capitalism is ever optimistic.
I think it's nealistic.
I mean, yes, I actually do too. I I'm gonna say what part of the purpose of conspicuous consumption and why the theory of the leisure class was so influential is it it was trying to explain something that the, you know, the Protestant work ethic capitalist couldn't explain, which is why conspicuous consumption survived the end of the aristocracy. It made total sense with the aristocracy. They're showing their power over you that they took from you by literally wearing it. And you have to remember they took it from you not in an indirect way like the capitalists do, but in a literal I have a sword, give me your [ __ ] way.
>> I mean I mean it is a classier version of wearing a literal string of human ears.
>> Yeah.
>> Which >> that was also that's also a proud part of the white barbarian heritage, right?
like um >> old tradition, you know.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> Um one thing, >> one thing I want to talk about bling though that we haven't talked about about bling and its association with black culture >> is that if you are lumpized, I use it as a verb advisedly. Um and you often have to go into places where you can't trace where your money is.
Obnoxious displays of wealth are also something you can trade because you are outside of the formal economy.
Um that is why that stuff was like you know because we we could talk about it in the odds but you see it all the way back to the 70s and 80s. Um that's why however that's part of that because you are signaling that you have resources that are outside of a bank book. Um and that you can get without a bank book.
Whereas if you got stuff in a bank book um uh you don't need that you you it really it's either conspiracious consumption or something else. I actually am I actually think the origin of bling taking the form that it takes in the aunts with you know the you with basically in the in the pop culture wars rap finally winning over rock and all that stuff as a as a as a signifier. You have to >> grunge.
>> Yeah, exactly. Um, you have to remember though that most of these fashion statements, even though they get gentrified, do come out of the gentrification of priorly workingass and lumpinized um, forms of fashion that often have practical points. So, for example, to go back to grunge, >> why the [ __ ] are people in Seattle wearing flannel all the time? It's not a fashion statement initially. It's because that's the best clothing that's mass-produced for the >> It rains all the time. It's kind of clammy. Plus, it's the lumberjack culture. So, it's you go to the >> you don't look for it. You just go to the store. They sell it at Kroger's, >> right? And then that gets gentrified and expanded out. Similarly, when you look at like you know what people who are in often a gray or black market are doing, they're going to want to carry their wealth on them physically a lot of the times because they're procluded from showing it in banking anyway. um >> is part of the flex is part of the flex um >> showing that you you're not afraid to demonstrate this much wealth that you're either strong enough or you have enough other resources so it would be a bad idea to take this from you. So, I mean, because when you talk about bling and like- >> which incidentally >> um Kim Kardashian ran a foul of in Paris famously, right?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> That's the downside of bling.
>> Eventually, you do have to protect it.
Um whereas like um I I do think we are conflating like a lot of different class positions with the way the public views them. Um because like the average rapper who's willing a bunch of gold and whatnot is rich compared to most average people, but compared to the actual wealthy is a nothing burger really until you have the rise of people like Jay-Z and whatnot. And I do think we kind of have to look at all that together with these like fashionable entrepreneurs being really really really able to make some money. Um but still, you know, there it's still interesting to think about because one of the things that what what else do you associate with people who wear bling um in the entertainment industry is being bankrupt as soon as they're not famous anymore?
Um, and that's not what we're talking about when we talk about other forms of conspicuous consumption and authority.
>> I um a story that I heard from one of my classmates um was that somebody we knew uh that was originally from Los Angeles, he moved back and became a very niche type of financial adviser.
Um, I can't remember. I can't like it's so hazy in my recollection that anything I come up with is going to be a projection. So, I'll I'll just describe it as simply as possible. His job was um, and I don't know how he found his clients, but upand cominging actors, athletes, and musicians, mostly black um, but you know, almost all from working-class backgrounds.
He would be their first money guy.
And a huge part of his job was actually making it clear that there are certain types of expenses and certain types of consumption that are a bad idea and they should not do, right? like um he'd get alerts when credit cards passed a certain limit and then he'd have some jewelry store calling saying, you know, your client wants to buy $40,000 worth of diamonds. And it's like, put them on.
You're not buying $40,000 worth of diamonds. It's a bad idea. Um but it's like, but I can afford it right now, right? And isn't that what people do with money? It's like no, no, no, not the people who keep their money.
>> You make a good point.
>> Well, and it's also that is sociologically one of the markers of class promotion out of being marginal or working class into respectability, right? like um you begin being grown up, if you will, about your finances because you're subject to a different set of pressures and rules um than you are when you're frozen out of banking and don't have the same accountancy and tax liability uh exposure.
Good point. Good point.
>> Go ahead.
>> And you know the I remember being told that the real marker to look out for this was like during my briefing before freshman year.
Um sure if you want to find like the real money, don't look for Balenciaga. Don't pay any attention whatsoever to brand names or the sticker cost of any item and don't and make make it clear that you don't give it any credence. They'll respect you for it, right? Um, but really rich people dress the way that, you know, somebody's respectable father or uncle would, except everything is ridiculously high quality.
>> Very well.
>> Yeah. the excellent fabric, excellent cuts, just but you it's almost like you can't tell the value of a jacket until you've seen the lining and then it's like oh crap this is an important person which is essentially the opposite of bling >> until you touch a hem like it's like oh wow this is actually made out of good quality cotton it's quadruple hemmed and this was tailored Oh yeah. The softness, the texture, right? Sometimes you can feel it.
>> Check that thread count, baby. Check that thread count.
>> One of >> We're going to be friends.
>> Exactly. One of the things that um some of these very expensive pieces of clothing have is something called seam allowance. So, it's like extra fabric at the seams so that it can be more tailored to you after you buy it.
There's just a little more fabric on the inside so that we could take this in here, let this out over here, and then it fits you perfectly.
>> And you know that because you studied fashion to >> I did study fashion and we did make clothes like that. And that's not how clothes are mass-produced at all. Cuz you see, you know, on the inside of your t-shirt, you don't have any of that.
It's not going to be tailored to you.
>> When I wanted to ask, >> go ahead.
I want to ask Pascal, did hiphop democratize luxury aesthetics? You like democracy. You're a leftist.
Why are you not excited about, you know, the democrat democratization of uh luxury aesthetics?
>> I don't think hip-hop democratized luxury aesthetics. I think it democratized tackiness.
>> Oh, well, there's a judgment.
Also, you're not catching. there was um it um and forgive me if I'm if I'm getting the the details wrong because again very very hazy recollection but I recall that in parallel but between like Outcast and Obama and Janelle Monae there was also this effrovescence of a kind of preppy black aesthetic that >> kind of >> Mhm. when he first came out >> like um >> Exactly. when he first came out the um and then he now he's basically at Balenciaga, right? But there was a time when the um the kind of golf golf club um country club look right um was also having a moment. And it's funny because it's a different way to express wealth aesthetically, but a very distinct and opposite almost uh method, right? The values underpinning it are are more about uh concealing or rather you know the the quality is the signal rather than the immediate presence of something valuable.
Dang. Well, let's skip ahead to the Great Recession.
>> Oh, yeah. The tax the rich dress.
>> That's right.
>> Uh, did the did the financial crisis permanently change how people view wealth?
>> No.
>> No. Occupy Wall Street didn't do that.
The great recession recession.
I mean, even on the left, I would say that like uh progressives from the 1990s and post Occupy Social Democrats actually asked for the same [ __ ] Um uh which by the way, I don't think is bad.
I mean, I like I'm all about Medicare for all, too. But like the idea that it was some C change is actually culturally superficial. I think it is important that it made certain kinds of signaling different like everybody now signals that they're oppressed in some way and everybody know but that's been a trend in western culture for hundred years.
Um, and you know, for me that's always like a that's always like the tension between conspirious consumption, aka our aristocratic pretentions, and also our meritocratic pretensions, which is like we all have to have been victimized to justify the fact that we have any merit and have the right to to to want nice things. That is a weird cultural thing that we have here probably in America.
and to a less degree in most of the English speaking world. Um, uh, I find it really obnoxious and I hate it, but I don't know that it actually changes all that much. We could say that maybe that's why the tech oligarchs were really good at like blending in. Although, it also might be that I don't know. Um, I mean like I sometimes I sometimes wonder if like our cultural explanations are are are are operating backwards and we should be like like kind of materialist on this.
Um, and it's just that like as beveling goods, most of these ways of signifying wealth don't really work anymore unless you are up to the point where you can really truly have something tailored for you or really truly have someone do it for you uniquely.
Um, uh, and at that point, it kind of doesn't matter what you wear, just that you're wearing something that's unique to you. And I I do wonder if if that's the case. I do I do think maybe we can talk about the rhetoric of wealth and maybe even the visual rhetoric of wealth changing because one of the things I think that we're we could talk about is like since we're we seem to be going back and forth between the wealthy and the famous as if they're the same thing.
>> Sure.
>> Um uh but if we can talk about like like uh the like the black preppy thing. I I remember the first time really seeing that in hip-hop culture around P. Diddy back when he was P Diddy and not just Diddy or, you know, when he was John Puff Combmes or whatever the [ __ ] he was called.
>> When he was he was Puffy. Yeah.
>> He was Puffy, not Diddy. Um >> Yeah. He was repping the college kids and doing shows for them back then.
>> Yeah. Back in back in those slightly less disgusting days. Um >> Well, he killed a lot of them.
Um, so I I but I do think that you do see that shift away after the after the recession, but it's also concurrent to it. Like if you think about like like uh the the preppy period of like hiphop as a way of signifying power, you're talking about the Obama years.
That's after the recession. That's during that's during Occupy. Maybe after Occupy is done, there's some sense that being ostentatious is no longer a way to signal that you're up and coming and deserving. Maybe it signals that you're not. Um, but I still think if we looked at like production cost and whatnot, we'd probably still learn a whole lot more. Like it's just what like what makes something obviously a sign of wealth um when you can approximate it pretty well with [ __ ] that you really can't tell until you touch a person. If that is a status symbol that you're trying to do, well, that doesn't function as a status symbol anymore because you have to get pretty up close to tell the difference. And if you're super wealthy, then yeah, that matters. But again, the superw wealthy are kind of like I remember as I told the story a lot, but I remember as a kid when I was a blueco collar kid, like I would meet people who had $150,000 houses and 1990s money, >> which uh >> and I would think they were wealthy, right?
>> They were just middle class and I was lower middle class in in the liberal sense of the of the term. But I would perceive that as wealth because I had never experienced actual real wealth.
When I worked for like private schools in Mexico and in Egypt, I saw wealth like I had never seen before. And that was a wakeup call that was like, yeah, I knew even before then from going to college that like I did that those people weren't wealthy. But like when I actually experienced what really really wealthy people are like and what they had and just just being anywhere near it, I realized that like they're not status signaling to me because I don't even meet them until I work for them.
And that's a that's a completely different world >> than talking about what celebrities are signifying to the broader culture. Um, >> you make a good point. You make a good point. Um, Kuba, around this time of Occupy and the Great Recession, were people becoming angry at wealth itself or at blocked mobility?
>> I think that >> did they hate them because they weren't them?
when it's very easy to answer that in the negative because you just need to roll the clock back 101 15 years right um in the '9s there was no real anti-rich as such sentiment it was >> the bet noir of radicals right and people who really cared about inequality tended to be corporate power tended to be uh abuse and exploitation by the capitalist bureaucracy rather than specific um owners of of the means of production, right? Um part of it had to do with the fact that the shine was still on the tech Apple.
So, Bill Gates was associated with democratizing technology, creating new ways of communication, opening up the digital frontier, right?
There was still a lot of opportunity for people um uh online, right?
the but then what we've seen right it it really is the the vast fortunes of the um tech class that made wealth visible again.
But until you had this broad collective experience of economic hardship and frustrated mobility, um the ever receding horizon for some kind of financial security, right? and defying downwards continually like it went from one day I'll have a home and a family and be able to retire and we'll own it all and it'll be great to one day I won't have to worry about health insurance um that's the source of the anger and that anger is free floating it can be directed at wealthy people at the tech oligarchs that one could argue have a personal role in creating the the conditions that people suffer under. But it could also be directed at trans people, at immigrants, at um different ethnic groups, religious groups, right?
The anger is experiential and doesn't doesn't require uh an ironclad logic to be deployed when it hits rich people. And I think that we've seen um over time, right, like more and more of that anger being um recognized as stemming from decisions made by economically powerful individuals. Um you've had them becoming um sort of universally recognized like nobody was surprised what Louis Manion did.
you might approve of it or not, but um we we're at a point where even the lower rich, right, even the mere rich are starting to get pissed off at Bezos and his ill.
>> Yeah, I want to I want to pick up on that because I think there's two things that we should both look at and separate out. And I think Google's dead on.
>> But one of the things we have to look at about what changed in the teens versus the '9s is, yeah, there was ma there's anger at corporate malfions and whatnot, but uh the cost of neoliberalism really hadn't hit the working class super hard yet. It was beginning to in the early 1990s. Then uh and then the fall of the Soviet Union and the sub subsequent boom that came after that seems to have starved that off. Like look at look at if like to do cultural stuff about like Gen X for example. Look at Gen X media products and stuff from like 1992 and their concern and their economic anxieties versus like in 1996. Even though it's only four years apart, they're radically different.
um >> uh when you think about one of the things that's happened today and people go oh it's just you know it's just inequality but people are still doing well off and yet yeah in like a global sense Americans are because you know most of the of Western Europeans and Americans are because the average person in the world lives on less than $32 a day million people only I mean eight billion people only one billion of us make more than $32 a day but relative to historical norm terms what you started seeing was the was the impoverishment of sections of let's say elite strata of the working class and the petite bgeoisi uh what we might call the labor aristocracy and the petite bwoisi which we often called we often lump together as the PMC um that they were being emiserated too and also it became clear that it was not just systemic in like this corporate sense the way Koopa was talking about but also like there were individuals taking [ __ ] from you and you could identify them like and when you talk about corporate malfions and think about the 90s when everyone's getting uh tech stuff is new everyone's getting pushed into these um like you know everyone gets pushed into passive investment into the stock market because of 401ks um etc etc etc you see all these use changes and people can still believe that, you know, even though a lot of people even as early as the late 1990s were actually surviving off of debt, that there was a way that they could get out of it, baby boomers still believe it because they have that accumulated wealth uh as as a cohort. We cannot generalize every baby boomer before people come at me. There are plenty of poor baby boomers I know. Um, and actually there's a very big distinction between uh the the first half of the baby boom and the second half of the baby boom because the second half of the baby boom uh was forced into these 401ks and the first half had pensions and it actually has shown a pretty massive different and late in life outcomes. But if you look at where we are right now or even even 15 years ago, it's not just that I can it's not just that like these people are so rich, but like we are watching people get obscenely rich and it's also clear that they're getting obscenely rich um from things that are not just structural like they're making deals with the government and the government's picking w uh winners and losers. um the nature of profitability has changed and so people are very mad not just at the ultra wealthy or at corporations but also the individuals involved in them in a different way because it's just so hard to deny. And if you think about like that compared to the developing world, this is just us looking a lot more like I don't know uh Guatemala City or something like that. um where like you know the the the the inequality is massive and there are I mean like even third world countries have their their small scar of the super rich. It's not it's and the anger at them is often profound. Um but I do think we have to like think about what's happened to the quote unquote middle class uh you know what I would call labor aristocratic workers and they've been emiserated. So I think the anger is real and it's pinpointable to people as well as to structures. Like yes, everyone's mad at the structures too, but we're also mad at the individual people because how blatant it is and how corrupt it seems even by capitalist standards.
>> You know, you make a good point. Let's talk about some of these individuals and what they look like. So, here we have for our audio listeners, we have uh Bill Gates uh doing his best attempt to be Mr. Rogers.
>> Yeah, that's what I think.
>> Uh Zuckerberg is shown wearing a hoodie that says Kim is my lawyer.
And uh we have Elon Musk looking like a Reddit monitor wearing a t-shirt that says tech support with a jacket and a hat that says make America great again.
So my question is why are modern elites trying to perform informality, normality and relatability?
Kuba, >> I think that there's part of it you have to recall that few of these figures, few of the sort of avatars of um contemporary the ultra wealth actually come from that level of money originally. They're all within the understanding of um the American class system, right? Self-made millionaires.
So, they recall what it was like not to be super wealthy. And they also recall how they felt about people who were super wealthy when they weren't. And I think that that's a very strong prompt to consider how you present yourself. You have more um I think that especially in the case of the Mr. Rogers um Bill Gates look >> right. He is dressing up like his friend's dad's, right? That's the appearance that he's sort of fallen into. And it's just an updated version of the business casual vice principal middle class um office guy, right? Straight office guy.
Um Zuckerberg, he became wealthy very young >> and his last period of to the extent that you can even call it contact with regular people is probably college and probably Harvard undergrads, right? So, it's the dorm culture of playing video games and liking hiphop but not knowing any black people. Um, vibe >> taken to its logical conclusion, right?
Then updated by exposure to California, throw in a dash of Joe Rogan, right? Um, and yeah, what you what comes out of the oven is freshly baked suck.
>> It sucks.
>> Yeah, somebody passed me the zuck corn.
>> Pascal, some people call this look quiet luxury or it's in the ballpark of quiet luxury. Is this kind of thing actually more elitist than just wearing bling?
>> It's not in the ballpark. It's just in the balls.
>> Nice.
Okay.
Um let's go to the next slide.
Uh so relatability has become a status strategy it seems. So, here we have Kim Kardashian comparing her divorce to a young woman's cancer. Uh, Zack Efron uh for MLK Day talking about how he was grateful for MLK and for 10 million followers on Instagram.
We also have celebrities pretending to be influencers eating the gigantic $20 strawberry at Arowan.
Uh yeah, what what are these uh what are these celebrities doing? Why are they trying to be relatable to us?
>> They're trying to get market share of consumer base, man. It's about increasing file. Don't forget in the age of the internet, in the age of particularly Instagram, the individual image becomes a product. It's not so much so you're just hawking your movie or your album or your song or your LP, but your image becomes a product.
You get likes, you get popularity, you become marketable. So they're trying to get influencer shits and giggle clicks.
>> True.
It's also >> Go ahead. Mhm.
>> Uh there's also um in some cases and I imagine that this is like a very psych psychologically fragile place to be in >> an appreciable amount of their income, their ability to project this kind of status um you know claim this status position comes from their interaction, their ability to command this audience, the ability to sell to all of these people.
Until you've accumulated enough to wean yourself off from audience exposure, >> there's a period of vulnerability in there where you could just lose your audience and be done.
>> True. Barn >> I like to a certain extent especially if what you're aiming for is this kind of famous for being famous uh life of um ease and luxury. I think that Megan Markle right really pushed the limit of that as a business model before landing on her feet. But um I don't know how much more runway there is and she was coming from an extraordinarily privileged position.
The Kardashians make a lot of sense as a family because by everyone being a slightly different kind of influencer, you actually hedge against the collapse of a specific personal brand.
I wish there was more vulnerability to it. Right. Unfortunately, at this point, I think very few of the people that I would like to be audience can cancel cancellable are still small enough to be vulnerable to that.
>> I mean, their strategy I there's obviously something to it. They're very clever in some of the ways they go about the things that they do. They managed to still be famous for kind of nothing for all this >> precisely right like that's your job just occasionally being obnoxious uh in front of uh journalists and it's like if I think about it it's nice work if you can get it.
>> You're being a total Courtney. That's what this person says.
>> Be a Courtney about it. Vney, you wanted to say something about this? Yeah, I I'm I'm confused by what I'm supposed to be drawing from from these comparisons because we're talking about different stratas of wealth and we're talking about different um so for example, all the people you put up as relatable uh were tech oligarchs. Every single one of them.
>> Um they're not they're not >> they were trying to dress like they were relatable, >> right?
uh the influencer culture those that's you I can't think of anything nor more nuvo ree than rentseinking normies trying to look rich on the internet um and yeah that has a lot of some people get famous for that the thing is though the media operates by power law and um you know there's only so much room for Kim Kardashian Meghan Markles and uh Paris Hiltons, these the people of two decades ago are a Mr. Beast. You're not going to have that many other Mr. Beasts because that's now been established. Someone's going to have to do something else. The the other issue that you have with that kind of conspicious consumption is it's based on two other things that may not exist right now. So when we talk about marketability that requires a a market to be had that requires a consumer to exist for that market.
So when you're talking about marketing conspirac and of itself by being relatable, there's a limit to that right now because who the [ __ ] got money to relate to you? That's not a that's not even a point anymore.
Um, >> well, I think they try to be relatable in other ways.
Um, and the the image that I showed was them failing at that because the $20 strawberry experience is not relatable.
It was also celebrities acting like influencers, which maybe they were trying to do to seem more relatable as well. Um, it is a good question. Who are they relatable to? But they are still famous. They still have followers.
conflating fame and wealth, which is which is which is a mistake.
>> That last visual was definitely about fame. Sure.
Um, >> I mean I like there's only so much space for the social reproduction of [ __ ] in a tight economy which is which is I think more of the bigger issue with like you see the end of bling you know uh after the after the great recession right well that's not aspirational anymore for a lot of people it returned briefly as aspiration ational between 2020 and 2023. There is this whole thing about that. The economic reasons for that are twofold. One is influencers trying to to show their wealth. So much so that they became rental agencies for these luxury goods which by the way from the purpose of distinction in sociology means that they don't function as luxury goods anymore. If you can rent them or you can or you can fake them, they don't work. So, so the so what you've seen now is relatability as a way to m to market yourself if you're if you're an influencer or a failing celebrity. But a thing is these celebrities are also not particularly on the up and up right now, are they? And who's their audience? Like where are they making money? Their industries are also being decimated. Uh um so when you ask yourself like what we're seeing in terms of wealth, what is Zuckerberg wearing today?
What is Jamie Diamond wearing today?
Not, you know, what is uh Trump wearing today? Um I think we're going to see a wide range of things, but one of the things that we've seen is none of that signifies the same thing anymore. Um, and so what I think what you we're partly talking about this is relatability, but part of it is the experience of going to a stupid grocery store that only the very rich can go to.
That is an experience that you are buying. And while it seems relatable as an experience that you have, you are also doing massive sprees consumption because you are having an experience most people cannot have and it's temporal. And this was this was predicted um by a couple of different things as a trend that capitalism might go in. If you read uh Walter uh Walter Benine's um art in the age of of mechanical reproduction, he talks about authenticity as a way out of of the mechanical reproduction of commodity.
But there's a hint in that that even that could be commodified by when you get to a book called the rebel cell.
uh believe it came out in the as predicting that authenticity which you saw a lot in the 1990s particularly late 1990s being pushed as a value good would be more and more a way to have conspiracion and to show distinction because how who has the access to the authentic thing and how that cannot be replicable in a way that any bag by by uh Elorn can be replicable. I I've I've been to the markets in in Taiwan and and and Korea. I can buy an a a product that looks exactly like a Louis Vuitton and also is made out of the same materials. Um it might not be quite as well stitched together, but even that's kind of questionable.
Um, so when that is possible, the entire function be changed and you want to function on experience. That may seem relatable because you can eat a strawberry, but you can't [ __ ] eat that strawberry, can you?
>> Not that one.
>> God, no.
>> Well, you make a good point. I mean, sometimes I think they are trying to be relatable and also they fail. That whole last panel was them failing and these are considered fails as well. So here we have uh people buying Cyber Trucks and those Cyber Trucks getting vandalized.
Uh our ne this slide is showing uh people putting up signs over the Met Gala advertisement saying boycott Bezos and people are uh tracking Taylor Swift's private jet. Uh so now uh in in some in some instances at least conspicuous consumption triggers hostility and ridicule.
Um, why did the cyber truck become such a cultural disaster? Why are people suddenly tracking elite excess?
>> Kuba, >> the cyber trunk is the cybert truck is interesting >> because it's right. Um the the main reason why it's its lack of aesthetic virtues, the well-known problems of its launch. I remember when um Musk announced it, he came out to demonstrate that it was so resistant, that it was so tough, it was so durable. Um he smashed it with a hammer.
this unbreakable glass which of course broke. Then he pitched a I think a hard ball or um stone some heavy object which was supposed to just bounce off and that just spiderwebed uh across the surface.
The delays in rolling it out. The fact that you can't park it anywhere outside since it's surface is so impractical and so vulnerable to different kinds of decay and natural >> um wear and tear from just exposed to the elements, right? You basically need to detail it every time you take it out.
And it's supposed to be a truck, right?
It's supposed to be this butch outdoor working vehicle. It's uh a complete absurdity. uh the distinctive look, the fact that it's immediately identifiable too makes it an excellent badge, right?
No one has one that isn't a loyalist in some way because anybody else would make a different choice and as a result it stands not only for um it's not primarily about consumption one way or the other. People go into debt, right? people who can't afford a cybert truck will buy a cybert truck for the other element um which is the ingroup signaling right um back when it really seemed as though Doge and Musk were going to to be a winning team.
That was how you proved that you truly were on it, that you were an altaca in the Musk army.
Okay. Well, I think that's a very good explanation.
Uh, let's see if we can explain what we're seeing here. So, this this slide shows a huge sheen hall. This other guy has a huge teu hall. Um the everyone seems to be using or a lot of people seem to be using buy now pay later apps and 60% of Coachella fans use buy now pay later to afford their tickets this year. So why are people performing performing wealth online even when they're materially struggling? Pascal, >> isn't that kind of the nature of American consumerism? Is that, you know, fake it till you make it?
>> I mean, are they all American, though?
It's got to be other cultures, too. Why would anyone want to do that? If you don't have money, why would you want to look like you do have it?
>> Fake it till you make it spreads.
>> H I mean, yeah, I think that's one reason. Varn I mean, consumerism is always going to be involved in this sort of thing, but the thing is capitalists need consumerism because otherwise your products will decline in profitability even faster than they do now. Um, if you're not constantly having to update and renew from either necessity because it's made out of [ __ ] or artificial scarcity because you're taught that you know um what your your fashion should change every what five to seven years.
Um and if you if you compare that to fashion even in the early ba period like in the beginning of the 20th century it was relatively stable for a long time.
Um I think the other the other thing that we're trying to parse is like uh one of the things that you can look at as far as like um uh conspiracous wealth versus versus non-wealth is something that I talk about in my book that I wrote there thought um uh called lumpinization. But what is driving this is actually a bit complicated. Um, so when you don't have the ability to even dream of being able to invest in something durable.
>> Mhm.
>> Investing in status which is cheaper may actually make sense even if the status signaling is only for people relative to you. So these status like these bleeding status halls are signaling status to other like workingclass people but it is signaling status. Um and yeah people are doing it because of the ease of credit which is going to dry up very soon by the way but um we're already seeing it dry up. You can't I don't think these uh one of the things that's going to change now is these buy now pay laterers are now going to start showing up in your credit report. Um um so one of the things to think about um when you with this is people buying status goods is actually more common when there's no possibility for them to invest in something that could get them relative wealth. Believe it or not, this is talked about explicitly in uh in a uh book by uh Nazi um former German historical school thinker, former Marxist uh Sart and why he actually wrote this in 1905 and why Americans aren't aren't socialist. Um and he talks about it's he actually talks about the the settler um nature of the land led the people to believe that there was a chance that their investments would matter through the acquisition of land which of course was taken by settlerism and blah blah blah. He didn't use that term because he he didn't you know that term didn't really exist that way yet. That's what he's describing was the offset of the land meant that people could foreseeably believe they'd have a chance to buy land in a way they would never have in Europe, which offset um uh proletarianization and investment and and all kinds of key issues. I think you compare this to Europe today, you can see a similar a similar dynamic that's reversed. like there is and it's declining rather rapidly in Europe but there is a chance because of the social dem the social democratic pack that still is hanging on by a thread in Europe that workers can get ahead they are more likely to invest in things in their future than that we are here whereas status goods which lead to an immediate payoff make a lot more short-term rational sense and I know that can feel like a just so story but it's pretty trackable across different cultures and time periods that when people don't have an ability to invest in something that will gain them wealth, they will invest in something that will gain them immediate status. And I think we've all seen this actually when you talk about the poor and the lumpinization of the working poor which is far older than this trend. What do I mean by that? How many of us have complained about different poor people spending money on things like cars that don't make sense or um this is not a new phenomenon. This is just being spread throughout um like basically we're all acting impoverished because we all kind of are.
And but if you look at like poverty culture, this sort of status buying is super common. It's also super common amongst teenagers historically. Why?
Because they don't have any access to invest in real wealth. So like now that most of us really don't have the ability to afford even the the like partial part of of of of real property values in a lot of the west. Um I think you're going to see a lot more of this this kind of conspricious consumption. And it's not to look rich. It's just to look like you have relative status compared to your peers, which matters a lot in intraclass competition. So, >> well, um, also I I think that there has been a shift towards creditbased consumption for a long time now.
>> Mhm.
>> Basically, the 90s incomes hit a brick wall for most Americans. And at the exact same time, certain essential services and um essential costs begin to go up faster than inflation. We're talking Medicare, education, housing.
So, your immediate buying power starts to erode and diminish. the only way that you can afford the types of experiences that you want. And we're not even talking about status signaling. Just you want to go to Kovacella because you love the music.
You want to go to Burning Man for a good time. You want to travel across the country to visit your beloved aunt Gertrude, right? Like you want to see Italy for the first time. All of these things cost money. Um and your peers, your parents, right? you were able to do these things um as a kid if somebody's parents were willing to pay for it. It feels weird that you can't do it now.
So, you borrow a little because it doesn't feel like an irresponsible type of consumption. It doesn't feel like you're asking too much.
you have increased um people start to monetize their um their equity in homes, right? You see this a lot with older people and then you have different kinds of debt increasing in the United States.
It's just part of the economic life cycle of many Americans that are just shy of the upper middle class, right? like uh student loans, then mortgages, then different that credit card loans uh to the point where you know you're buying burritos on layaway. And I think that if one is inclined to take such a view, and I think I've been massymaxing a little over the last few days, so I don't know how much of this is um sound thinking, but if your national economic model is based on constant deficits and borrowing and not just at the governmental level, but if you look at every major American corporation, there's a tremendous amount of debt being shoveled between them and the AI boom has required incredible financing from um that's just sucking in in money, right? Like these firms, the the trillionaire will have a trillion dollars of claims against him. Um I think that this economic situation where debt has been completely normalized forms the basis of the money supply right government spending is completely delin from from revenue. Um it is conducive to a culture of debt financed uh consumption right like you follow the model that you're given.
Yeah, I would I would I would even add to that. I would only my only caveat would be that government spending being delin from revenue is for national policy, but for domest for for like local and state policy, which in our country is where all your welfare um network really comes from except for social security and Medicare and Medicaid, but even half of that um comes from things that are fiscally constrained. But like look at Mum Donnie, he's he's already having to balance the budget. people are super happy about it, but he did it through ammonization, uh, rebalancing and whatnot. Some of the stuff he did is fiscally smart, but it's not from taxing wealth. The peditary tax barely matters for that, and it he's not going to be able to do it again. Um, the reason why I bring this up is that, uh, I do think it's interesting like when we talk about elites right now, trying to figure out what their actual wealth is. And by actual wealth, I do not mean nominal wealth. I mean the amount of wealth they could actually valorize on the market and turn into things of use value even to themselves. is very hard to figure out because of the amount of debt uh in the money supply. And I know the M& is popular and blah blah blah, but if you look at finance economies versus produ versus um economies and more industrial phases, uh industrial phase economies tend to be debt shy. Uh they tend to want to grow off of the off of the surplus generated from exploitation and commodity production. Whereas um um consumer economies tend to be debtrone because that expands the money supply and the nominal money supply keeps wealth looking to move. Now there's still production undergirling all of this like and I think people can sometimes forget that. Um, but it is kind of a major issue right now. And I think, you know, we can all talk about how you like I do like one thing I'll tell people that might shock people. I think personal financial discipline right now is a revolutionary thing to teach people to do, not because I believe in it, but because they are so you can get so debt captured. And you know, when you think about the fact that like if you have a car and a student loan, you probably 40 $50,000 in debt right there. Um you don't want a lot of additional debt. And things like um the pay now, buy later uh the buy now, pay later stuff can seem minor. It can even seem better than credit cards. It has about the same interest rate. Um you pay it off in a year versus however long you can screw yourself over in in five years. So it seems kind of rational but then you start buying groceries on it which is like the ultimate perishable consumption. So that's that's not and that's a survival consumption which you need that is not sustainable at all. CLA is actually a perfect example of this.
Cliners have cloners beginning to crash um for a couple of reasons. Some of it has to do with their choices around implementation of AI, but some of it has to do with the fact that a lot of people can't pay that [ __ ] back because you're borrowing money for food. Well, the thing is you have to eat tomorrow, too.
You cannot offset your food for food for very long anyway. I, you know, at most 18 days and it's not like Americans generally go without eating at all. So if you think about that um it seems like we are looking at a culture that is that is dead incentivized at every level. And I want to like make that clear also a little bit like how much it is. People who come in from like Europe will be shocked that to get, you know, even if they have money and they want to rent something, they often are told they need to open up a credit card uh to get debt to do that, even if they can prove that they have the money to pay the debt because being in the debt system is more proof that you are that you are um useful as a source of revenue for capitalists, aka a source of rents, than being a consumer is even. And if you look at like the collapsing of the distinction between credit capital and commodity capital, aka like how does the how do the car companies make most their money? It's not the cars, it's the financing on the cars because that's a rent and a rent is more stable. So I I think you're going to see in a low profitability environment, which I know is controversial to to say, but like when we talk about profits in GDP terms, every bit of those financial transactions that are debate, that are debt based shows up as GDP increases. It does. Um, so you can just move this [ __ ] around and make it look like on paper like you're increasing your wealth.
Paper wealth matters because it gives you the leverage to get more credit, which gives you the ability to buy use items. But when it collapses, what happens? And it often does collapse.
Um, and so, you know, I don't know. I I think I think we should be looking at that because to me, these are signs of things getting pretty dire even with the capitalist. Um, and maybe I'm also massie pill. The MMT are going to yell at me for saying that that that debt matters at all, but you know, they're wrong, so I'm going to shut up.
>> Okay. Well, let us answer this question.
Uh, is Bling dead or simply mutating?
So, we have all of this.
Are we at a moment where people are becoming more class conscious? Where is that energy going to go or is it going to go into resentment? Pascal first.
>> I do not think we're at a time where people are becoming more class conscious. I think as long as we can get cheap entertainment, people can watch Netflix, food is relatively inexpensive and they can find some way to distract themselves, we will not have the necessary rise in class consciousness. I think Americans are particularly avert adverse to class consciousness because there's so much tribalism in the society.
Kuba, >> I think that what I think that the status signaling um is shifting your part of the benefit that comes from having high status in the let's call it Clinton Obama version of America is that there's enough of a middle and upper middle class especially um meritocratic hegemony that people think that you your status is deserved and therefore um you can claim it with um there should be some respect some admiration going your way. Um, now it feels as though um all that signaling wealth does is make a power claim that you're rich enough to get things done, rich enough to make things happen. Um, but the connection between that and some kind of civic wisdom or virtue is is completely severed. But more important, I think, than signaling your economic allegiance, when you have politics as intensely polarized as they are now with the stakes that we're looking at, um, all of a sudden you wonder, is the Cybert truck going to be an excellent investment over time?
Because the people who bought them, the people who have held them through thick and thin, right, their loyalty, their belonging to the the heron voke hardcore of um the new Ma Republic is beyond question.
Um, and just ask Lebanese, just ask Yugoslavs.
There are times when you that tribal identification signaling that you belong to the right group is much more important than signaling that you've got blame to throw around.
>> Bar, >> what do I mean by class consciousness?
Um I I I mean one I I don't think food is going to stay relatively cheap. I I don't actually. Um the percentage of food uh of income that's going to go to food is probably going to increase. Um two um there's a variety of reasons for that too actually. I can go into them. Part of it energy cost. Part of it's the decline uh the declining availability of of cheap sources of nitrogen and other things that you need to fertilize the soil. Part of that is um uh just because people have monopsiny power and they can um by people I mean um corporations and and capitalist interest. Um I think when we talk about class consciousness um uh we are probably going to be in a weird um place where I would say uh class consciousness is probably increasing to a degree for individuals in their perception of reality. But there is not a uh yet a and I'm gonna try to not jargonify this a lot, but there's not yet a alignment between subjective and objective conditions in the developed world. By that I mean um class consciousness is still relatively limited to the downwardly mobile parts of of the professional managerial strata that has been proletarianized because they're now under the subject of wage labor. Um and they are being they are being relatively emiserated. This is going to be increased because of the effects of um AI and other forms of automation not just AI actually and also um other forms of automation allowing more outsourcing that we don't talk about because it's not obvious because it doesn't revolve giving anyone a visa. If you can telecommute in from uh from Austin into Silicon Valley, you can telecommute in from ba Beijing too if you want to. Um the the the thing that I think it makes it a little bit more difficult though is does that lead to broad-based class solidarity? My answer right now is no.
It doesn't. All right. Which is why you're likely to see things like more Luigi manionis but not like an actual people's militia or whatever.
Um the reasons for that is also that even though we feel stratified, there's still such a removal of parts of the working class from wealth that they can still idolize it even though that's that is disappearing and I think it will continue to disappear. But if you look at like who looks up to the wealthy, it actually and I I know I'm going to sound like a liberate conservative, but it's it's it's sociologically borne out. It is a lot of the blue collar elements of the working class and it's it is it is because they are so removed from that aspiration. They don't know that it's not really a possibility for them. Um now that makes nobody happy. That makes nobody happy. Um, I mean like if you think about this, if you want to like look about it in racial terms, like which group was more likely to think hustling was going to get them out of systemic poverty? Um, people of color, particularly black people, to be quite to be quite direct here, or white people and more well-off immigrants. It's kind of obvious that this is a this is a psychological mechanism that comes from a kind of alienation that exists in in class. We can be aware of there being more and more rich people. We can be aware that we're all poor, but if we are removed from that struggle profoundly, we can still believe that there's a way for us to get there. Although, like I said, I think that's going to go away.
Uh, and two, we can also believe that the main people stopping us from getting there, and we see this not just in America, but in Europe, maybe Canada.
I'll let Kuba speak to that. can speak more to Canada than me is some other group that you're in competition with.
So it's, you know, it's it's like, okay, well, I can't make it. It must be the immigrants fault, not the actual people who run the country because in some ways I'm still identifying with those people.
That to me is the biggest block to to class consciousness in every demographic category.
um is that we believe at some at some in some way that by having more representation of people like us in elites that somehow that will make it more possible for us to have the possibility to become elites. And as long as we think that, I do think we're going to have a limit to the development of what we might call class in any objective sense. And the other thing that needs to happen um is one of the things that Lennon talked about that I think he's right about um is that there also has to be a crisis amongst the the the the ruling classes, the Bisi and other and other groups for there to be something that prompts class consciousness because you also have to believe there's a way to fight them and if they look unified that doesn't look true.
>> All right.
>> Okay. Uh, did did uh Pascal or Q did either of you want to say anything else to wrap up?
>> Nope.
>> All right. Well, then uh thank you guys so much for being here. I super appreciate it. I know that this was something a little different for us. Uh I tried out some new things. Um everybody, please leave us some comments. Uh we really appreciate your support and we are >> out.
>> Thank you.
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