> “...the point that much of elite schools is about chasing status.”

it’s important to note that everyone is chasing status, and that status is (highly) multidimensional, so we can all have it along different dimensions. i’d go so far as to posit that status has more degrees of freedom than the number of people. it isn’t zero-sum by any means. “high-status schools” is just one of those dimensions, perhaps one that’s more visible than others.

>it’s important to note that everyone is chasing status

While I do think that is the general rule since humans are social animals, I'm curious as to why you don't think there are exceptions. By definition, to chase status means to pursue things that society values. It seems to me there are certain people who do not chase such things because they have value systems that don't align with the society they are a part of. Perhaps I can agree if we lax the assumption on what defines a society. If your family or a church is sufficient as a "society" I could agree, but I was using a larger definition to include people one wouldn't know on a personal level.

>status has more degrees of freedom than the number of people.

I don't know if I'd go this far. Status is by definition relative social standing and thus defined by the society at large. It can be relative between cultures (some societies may give teachers more status than lawyers and vice versa) but it can't really be relative within a culture and still meet that definition of aggregate consensus. Naturally, within cultures some dimensions will be more valued than others as the ones that give prestige.

but that’s just the point, when you break down social structures into finer and finer units (the individual, at the limit), you realize that status has all sorts, and is relative to many social groups. hence, the position that statuses outnumber people through both the multidimensionality of social groups as well as the multidimensionality of status itself.

a singular global social order is a fiction we don’t have to choose to believe.

Personally, I think that extreme relativistic stance waters down the idea of "social" status to be meaningless because it negates the social aspect. At that point, it's no different than saying "people chase what they value". That's trivially obvious; the chasing of social status is a subset criteria meant to say "people chase what they value, and what they value is social standing defined by their desired in-group". That can be quite different because the trivial condition can have people chasing all sorts of non-socially minded goals. Regardless, the original point was that when people can't concretely define what they value, they often defer to chase that which their society values.

Using a "singular global social order" is a bit of a straw man. It doesn't have to global, just like it can't be individual.

> "Using a 'singular global social order' is a bit of a straw man. It doesn't have to global, just like it can't be individual."

and again, that's the point. neither extreme is realistic, but we have a bias toward one that we should actively compensate for. most of our esteem derives for the few hundred to a few thousand people that forms our social system, but our thinking tends to stray to where we stand in the wider, unfathomable society. it's a component of why social media tends to be corrosive rather than creative and supportive.

Maybe, but that's not been my experience. I've found people tend to value the social standing of that "few thousand" people that make up their immediate society rather than the global collective. If anything, I've noticed a tendency to rail against the massive collective value because of it's juxtaposition to that of the value system closer to home.

As a silly example, a giant pickup is a status symbol in cattle country while a tesla is a status symbol in some parts of CA. Both sometimes look down their nose at the other. I'm not making a case as to which is correct, just that I doubt people make their value judgement in response to some global society.

Since I have little presence on social media, I may just not have a good handle on how that skews the whole dynamic but it certainly feels more locally biased to me.

i'd suggest that the subject of status schools (the takeoff point of this discussion) is itself a global appeal to status, rather than an immediate one. most people who place high status on them have no real idea why, just that they have such reputations. the very comparison of 'truck vs tesla' depends on a global, and contentious, notion of status.

this bias is especially pervasive in, and because of, the modern connected society. how do we contend with extreme interconnectedness? that, the contention (and potential resolutions) of a global social network, will be a defining feature of our times to future historians i think.

>most people who place high status on them have no real idea why, just that they have such reputations.

I think this is a very good point and it reminds me of discussions during my undergrad days.

>the very comparison of 'truck vs tesla' depends on a global, and contentious, notion of status.

This is the opposite point I was making about the status of each being non-global in nature.

As I've moved around the country, I've come to realize the local effects on university status. Some schools, like those Ivy League institutions are almost universally revered. Others seem to have local reverence that doesn't translate well. I've lived in some areas where the local universities have a supremely high status for reasons that aren't valued elsewhere (athletics comes to mind -- some schools are 'great' because they have a good football team while having an almost non-existent basketball program and vice versa. It's a bit strange to me how this can confer status to students who only interact with the programs as spectators. Academics similarly; having an MIT degree confers status even if it was in liberal arts). Outside of that local bubble, people put almost no stock in said school but within that bubble it carries a lot of status if it's on your resume because of local cultural (i.e. societal) bias. And people seem to make choices more biased by their immediate social group. As you allude to, much of it seems to simply be inertia of what the herd mind reinforces. It's high status simply because everyone has agreed it's high status. But I still contend that requires a reasonably large social component biased by the local bubble.

It will be interesting to see in the coming decades if social media dilutes those local effects.

Anecdotally when I was in college I remember doing a lot of observing of all the kid in various programs. I distinctly remember thinking all my pre-law friends and acquaintances seemed to be really looking for something... at the time I thought they were looking for "who they are", but status actually makes a lot more sense, even if it is a bit of "who they are" as well.

That's not a judgment about them good or bad, just something that seemed to stick out to me about many of them.