Rory Sutherland

And that's why some things need to be expensive because then it's a costly signal.

It's peacock's tail.

So the guy who rescued the British sparkling wine industry effectively did so by improving quality by 10%, 20%, and then putting up price by about 150%.

Because price is a signal.

Because in the champagne business,

It doesn't matter how good the drink is.

If people think you've bought it for $8.95, it's not doing the job it's supposed to do, which is to signal generosity, to signal hospitality, or to mark a special occasion.

You know, oh, I see you've taken out the good stuff because it's my birthday.

And that's, I mean, you're a Canadian, right?

Potlatch was, I think, a practice by the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

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.