Memes

I think this is a more significant point than most people want to admit, it's not just iPhones, people choose status over fairness pretty much every time - they'd rather pay more to feel better than others.

The car market, computers, clothes, food - literally everything. It's true in all the porest and richest circles even when like iphones and a lot of fashion the more expensive product is objectively worse.

It's not capitalism inventing this it's always been a thing and capitalism simply leverages it. I move in probably the least capitalist circles as an open source obsessive and dev, people choosing to share their work free so others can benefit but the mentality is there too, its in the eco obsessive communities too - I don't think it's totally universal amywhere but it's prominent everywhere.

I've come to belive that the Marxist ideals don't cover enough of what people really need, they're idealistic and somewhat how we'd want to think of ourselves but it's similar to dieting, deciding in a serious mood to eat only kale and beans feels like who we want to be but when we try and live that way we realize that we're not that person.

We need to focus on achievable steps in the right direction which allow us to feel good about the change we're making while also letting us fill our needs, even those lazy and embarrassing ones that the idealized version of of lacks.

We need to learn to understand and enjoy other forms of status but also we need to learn to reward those status symbols in others just as we reward economic status symbols even if we pretend to ourselves we dislike them. People in expensive clothes get treated better because it symbolizes the power they have to make an economic difference - even the fact iphones are feature restricted money milking machines only plays into this, it signals that you've got enough money not to worry about them adding $500 to the price for no reason or stinging you for a dozen subscriptions and this makes it seem like you're the most likely person to be able to help them if they're in trouble or give them things they xouldnt otherwise have.

Yes this is bad greedy nasty thinking and no one wants to admit it's part of them but this is how the math in our brain works. We can't help it, and when we ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist or that we can wish it away that doesn't change reality.

I don't know what the solution is, I'd like to hope we can at least shift it from being solely economic to respecting skills too, I dont know but we need to make it socially rewarding to be a benefit to society rather and make good choices.