Good morning, friends!

When my family moved from Bulgaria to the United States, I had to learn the rules of the status game in my new country. It started with Lisa Frank binders and escalated to North Face jackets.

Unfortunately, my parents were working several jobs to make sure I had a roof over my head, so I couldn’t exactly ask for a hundred-dollar jacket to earn some “social status” at school.

And so, by the fifth grade, I was already losing the status game.

Weird things give you social status at various points in your life. I remember going to college and seeing the “cool girls” wear oversized T-shirts paired with Nike shorts. Never in any other part of the world does this absurd outfit give you status, but when you’re an 18-year-old college student, it does. (Also UGGs. Ugh, remember UGGs?)

By the time I got into the T-shirt / Nike shorts / UGGs game, I had moved to New York City where a different status game was being played: One that involved thousand-dollar Canada Goose coats I couldn’t afford.

It was always something, and I was always playing catch-up. By the time I figured out what was cool, it wasn't cool anymore.

Rob Henderson, a graduate of Yale and a PhD student at Cambridge, says playing catch-up is just a function of the system. By the time things trickle down to be adopted by the masses, there's something new at the top. This way, you get stuck in the never-ending hamster wheel of spending money to earn status.

The status you yearn for always remains just barely out of reach, and that’s by design.

Henderson coined the term "luxury beliefs," which he defines as ideas and opinions that confer status on the wealthy, while inflicting costs on everyone else.

Take the idea that "monogamy is outdated," for instance. "Saying monogamy is outdated will give you some social cred from other elite college students," he says. "And it's kind of ironic because the upper class is most likely to broadcast these kinds of unusual luxury beliefs, but then they themselves are most likely to get married, and recapitulate the privileges they are critiquing.”

In other words, this is the idea or belief version of a Canada Goose coat.

Henderson writes:

Over time, luxury beliefs are embraced down the social ladder—at which point, the upper class abandons its old luxury beliefs and embraces new ones. Which explains why the beliefs of the upper class are constantly changing. It’s easy to see how this works if we look at actual fashion.

The author Quentin Bell, in On Human Finery, wrote “Try to look like the people above you; if you’re at the top, try to look different from the people below you.”

The elite’s conspicuous display of their luxury beliefs falls into this pattern. Their beliefs are emulated by others, sending them off in search of new beliefs to display. The affluent can’t risk looking like hoi polloi, after all.

In this week’s Dossier, I featured Will Storr, a journalist and novelist who writes about the science of status-seeking. He says we bestow status upon the people that we see as dominant, virtuous, or competent, and we begin to emulate them in hopes of becoming dominant, virtuous, or competent ourselves. This is how we become participants in the status game.

Here’s how the game works: We begin with a question, form a belief, and join groups that validate that belief. Once we join a tribe, we identify the most powerful high-status members and mimic their beliefs, tastes, and behaviors. “We do this partly as a gameplay strategy: by blindly adopting the opinions and habits of the successful, we hope to become successful ourselves,” Storr writes.

Ironically, we spend our whole lives unaware that we’re trying to win a game with no winners.

“Nobody wins the status game. They’re not supposed to,” Storr writes. “The meaning of life is not to win, it’s to play.”

There are many status games we play, and it’s important to know our part in them. A cancel culture mob, for example, relies on a virtue dominance game. It forces you to adhere to the rules with threat, pain, and punishment.

A virtue success game, on the other hand, uses competence to increase good. Someone running a marathon to raise money for breast cancer research is playing a virtue success game.

Although it’s impossible to opt-out of the status game, remember that you can always play with good intent. And, most importantly, you don’t need an overpriced Canada Goose coat to do it.

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PROFILES.

— The avalanche rescue artists
— The crypto mayors getting paid in Bitcoin
— The 22-year-old building chips in his parents’ garage
— India’s biggest influencer family
— The financial giant betting on crypto [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The avalanche rescue artists: Air-Glaciers is one of the most storied mountain rescue squads in the world. Air-Glaciers flies about 2,500 missions a year, and the group's roster of seasoned pilots has become famous in Switzerland for its rapid deployments in Alpine disasters. They've extracted the injured from deep crevasses and carried them down from towering ledges on high mountain walls. Meet the world’s most elite helicopter rescue team. (GQ)

“Even the birds go quiet. You can feel your breath thundering in your ears.”

The crypto mayors getting paid in Bitcoin: The ballooning popularity of Bitcoin and other digital currencies has given rise to a new political breed: the crypto mayor. Eric Adams, New York’s new mayor, accepted his first paycheck in Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency, Ether. Francis Suarez, Miami’s mayor, headlines crypto conferences. Now even mayors of smaller towns are trying to incorporate crypto into municipal government, courting start-ups and experimenting with buzzy new technologies like NFTs to raise money for public projects. (The New York Times)

“Bitcoin is a great financial equalizer. It’s a hedge against inflation. It can bridge that wealth gap.”

The 22-year-old building chips in his parents’ garage: The pandemic has triggered a global semiconductor shortage, hobbling supplies of products from cars to game consoles. That’s inspired new interest from policymakers in rebuilding the US capacity to produce its own computer chips, after decades of offshoring. As a result, 22-year-old Sam Zeloof is building chips ... in his parents’ garage. He combines 1970s-era machines with homemade designs. His creations show what’s possible for small-scale silicon tinkerers. (WIRED)

“He has done things I would never have thought people could do.”

India’s biggest influencer family: The Singhs — mother and father Ramneek and Puneet, and their three preteen kids, Anaanya, Shanaya, and Siaan — is one of India’s most-followed social media influencer families. With six YouTube channels, five individual Instagram accounts, three Facebook pages, and two accounts on MX TakaTak, they have a total social media following of over 18 million. But behind the happy faces on social media, the reality of content creation involving families, and particularly children, can be complex and fraught with risk. (Rest of World)

“When spending time with the children becomes the job, the family fails to create memories that go beyond ‘content,’ and the children grow up to feel more alienated.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The financial giant betting on crypto: Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson, the granddaughter of the financial behemoth’s founder, checks the pulse of the investing world from an unlikely place these days: Reddit’s stock-picking forums. Fidelity has placed more bets than nearly any other big Wall Street firm on the future of cryptocurrencies and doubled down on other areas powered by individual investors—and the plan appears to be working. Seven years into Johnson’s tenure as CEO, Fidelity is more profitable than ever. (Wall Street Journal)

“I want to create a business for the future.”

✨ This installment of The Profile is free for everyone. If you would like to get full access to all of the recommendations, including today’s audio and video sections, sign up below.

AUDIO TO HEAR.

Marc Andreessen on the next 10 years: How does legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen see the next decade unfolding? In this podcast interview, Andreessen gives the bull and bear case for the next 10 years. He also discusses some of his favorite mental models, his decision-making process, and the future of education. This is a must-listen. (Link available to premium members.)

Michael Schur on the importance of structure: Creativity typically runs counter to deadlines and in-the-moment feedback. But one of the lessons that Michael Schur learned during his time as a writer on SNL is that creativity requires structure. “The thing that SNL teaches you is to not be precious with your own material,” he says. “You generally have about four minutes to do whatever you’re going to do.” In this interview, he explains why being a ruthless editor of your own material can make you a master of your craft. (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

Nadia Murad on the horrors of captivity: In this poignant interview, international activist Nadia Murad recounts the horrors that ensued when ISIS attacked her Yazidi community in 2014. She, along with a number of young girls, were taken to a large facility where they were raped, beaten, and sold. “Most people die once in their lifetime, but we were dying every hour,” she says, only 18 months after ISIS brutally killed her family. (Link available to premium members.)

Denise Shull on playing (and winning) mental games: Denise Shull has a thesis she’s backed up by research: Every decision that you make is based on how you feel. Shull is a performance coach who uses neuroeconomics and modern psychoanalysis in her work with hedge funds and professional athletes. In this talk, Shull shatters the notion that you should keep emotion out of investing. (Link available to premium members.)