Status-seeking is a human universal, Eric Falkenstein reminds us:
The anthropologist Harold Schneider studied hunter gatherers and noted they had an almost absence of hierarchy, which he saw as the resulting from the maxim that ‘all men seek to rule, but if they cannot, they seek to be equal.’ It’s a reasonable solution for a society without division of labor. Unfortunately many progressives see the world the same way, and thus like the Rawlsian solution that everyone has the same outcome regardless of one’s talents or wealth. Now, that’s fine for a camping trip, but in modern society unnecessarily.
Reality shows like Top Chef, Project Ink, Project Runway, or Deadliest Catch show people passionate about activities I do not care about in the least, all private sector jobs. With thousands of different remunerative specialties that complement each other, this allows us to focus and then trade with others to get the benefits of other’s specialization focus. In modernity status isn’t limited to one dimension, and so you can be an important part of something bigger than yourself without joining a religion: you are part of a complex network of specialists in a market economy of individuals maximizing their status in their own individual way.
Everyone wants to live on in the future in some way, as part of heaven or something worldly that needed or at least appreciated you. If you obey the laws and social norms, including The Golden Rule, and generate more revenue than you cost, you are making your tribe better off. The egalitarian solution where we have a single-payer state for everything has no risk, but like Hegel’s farmer, promises little potential for self-actualization or what the Greeks called arête (‘excellence’), which in the modern world is consistent with specialization, trade, and productivity growth (arête incents one to do things better than before). We shouldn’t base our norms on hunter gatherers, which is why most people don’t.