Rory Sutherland

Was that right?

Where they destroyed possessions.

I think it was tribes in the Northwest who practiced this potlatch thing where you destroyed things of value as kind of a signaling mechanism.

There is a serious question here, which is can we take an innate and immutable human instinct and harness it for good rather than for ill?

And Geoffrey Miller's example here is let's imagine two parallel tribes.

Bluntly put, in one tribe, the men folk signal their desirability as mates by fighting each other with axes.

That's a negative sum game.

In the neighboring tribe, they signal their desirability of mates by going hunting and trying to bring home meat, which they then share with the rest of the tribe.

That's a positive sum game.

So there is this really complicated question, which is undoubtedly human pursuit of status has both positive and negative externalities, depending on the currency you choose to signal.

And also, it's not totally easy to...

to say whether it's negative or positive.

I mean, no one, you know, I'm sure... By the way, I think also a lot of valuable goods are affordable now by everybody because they started as luxury goods.

Yes.

So I always mention this because it's such a silly boast.

My grandparents were the fourth family in Wales to own a dishwasher.

And it cost about a hundred and something pounds at a time when their house, which was a very nice house, cost them 4,000 pounds.

It's still working.

They bought it in 1959, 61, something like that.

And it's like, yeah, I'll be ready Tuesday week.