Luxury Beliefs

Rob Henderson, the psychologist and writer grew up in nine different homes before his eighth birthday. He was born to an unwed drug junkie who died when he was three. His childhood, as described in his memoir ‘Troubled’ was typical of orphans growing up in foster homes in the US – abuse, neglect, teen gangs, crime, and zero affection. Henderson ended up in the US Army and the discipline of the armed forces saved him. With the veteran education options that the Army provided, he ended up with a PhD in Psychology from Yale. He is today widely known for his idea of ‘Luxury Beliefs’. Before, I explain, a detour.

In Economics, a Veblen Good is one whose demand increases when its price rises. This inverse price-demand graph is a hallmark of luxury goods and is driven by the uber-rich. An increase in the price of a Lamborghini will hardly make a dent in the demand for them. That’s a Veblen good for you.

Often, its not just possessing money that drives the demand for luxury goods. These are also a marker of class. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had written about the “triadic structure” of schooling, language, and taste that often marked out the higher classes. Mastery of these three put one at ‘ease’. (Little wonder I feel so lost in fancy surroundings and fancy people. I possess very little of these three.)

According to Henderson, today, with the increasing diffusion of wealth, the elites now resort to luxury beliefs to ‘stand out’ from the crowd. Luxury beliefs are:

ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. The upper class includes (but is not necessarily limited to) anyone who attends or graduates from an elite college and has at least one parent who is a college graduate

Examples of luxury beliefs are: Defund the police, Climate change is an existential threat, Net-Zero, Fat-shaming is bad, marriage is a patriarchal system to be demolished, promiscuity is to be celebrated, pronouns are the path to equality and so on… Each of these provides a moral halo to the holders of these ideas while its often the marginalized that bear the cost of these beliefs. By banning ‘fat-shaming’, the obesity pandemic disproportionately affecting the poor gets zero attention. By being fanatical about fossil fuels, the Global South ends up with a raw deal. And so on…

Henderson has written extensively on this subject. His substack, podcasts and YouTube lectures would be a good place to explore further.

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