X-Message-Number: 29778
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Re: Attitudes to resources
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:09:29 -0700

John de Rivaz writes,

>I have always found this attitude of "the market" disturbing and indeed 
>irrational, if true. If the market had this attitude about other things, no 
>one would take a holiday. This is usually a family's biggest annual 
>expenditure, apart from taxes and other costs of citizenship that do not 
>provide a direct 1:1 benefit.

Evolutionary psychologists argue that humans evolved to deceive ourselves 
for the "real" reasons for much of what we do. Regarding vacations and other 
seemingly "irrational" expenditures, it looks to me that humans engage in 
them as a means of signalling relative social status to other members in the 
tribe. People spend money on them even when they can't afford to as a kind 
of economic "stotting." Even married men with minor children will engage in 
this signalling to advertise their reproductive fitness in case they have 
the opportunity to trade their "40" for two "20's." ; )

Having cryonics arrangements, by contrast, seems to send a signal of 
reproductive un-fitness, despite the stereotype about how only narcissistic 
rich men can afford it. Perhaps cryonics' mortality salience subtracts from 
whatever value it has as a form of "stotting."

"There was a time before reason and science when my ancestors believed in 
all manner of nonsense." (Narim on "Stargate SG-1")

Mark Plus

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