Great article. Money is a sort of distilled modern extension to social status that lets us cooperate with complete strangers by assigning them an “effective status”. Something like money is neccesary when the social graphs become very sparse, because we otherwise won’t know how much to cooperate with our (largely unknown) neighbors.
A thought: Think of the relative influence of money and social status as an exchange rate. The less connected a social structure is, the more status ambiguity, and the greater the relative influence of money?
Great article. Money is a sort of distilled modern extension to social status that lets us cooperate with complete strangers by assigning them an “effective status”. Something like money is neccesary when the social graphs become very sparse, because we otherwise won’t know how much to cooperate with our (largely unknown) neighbors.
A thought: Think of the relative influence of money and social status as an exchange rate. The less connected a social structure is, the more status ambiguity, and the greater the relative influence of money?