Concerning Status
Apropos of my recent post on status ... .
I've recently spent some days at a fairly fancy hotel in a moderately poor part of the world. One thing that struck me was how many hotel employees there were hanging around ready to help the guests at any opportunity. In part, of course, this is a natural result of the low cost of labor. What's puzzling is that there are so many, mostly doing nothing, as to give the impression that the marginal product of the last few must be very close to zero.
It occurred to me that perhaps what they are really there for is not to do but only to be. Humans value status. Having lots of people around you who are visibly lower status than you is one way of giving you the feeling of high status, which you may well enjoy.
Along similar lines, I was thinking about the difference, in the U.S., between fancy hotels and nice but not fancy hotels—consider a Hampton Inn as an example of the latter. The space and comfort of the accomodations isn't very different, although the fancy ones have more polished marble in the bathrooms. I wonder if a good deal of what you are paying for, and what makes the difference in characteristics between the two sorts, is status, provided in part by surplus employees.
Apropose of which, my wife remarked during our most recent summer trip that she feels more comfortable in the kind of hotel or motel where it seems natural for her to hold open the door for the properietor or a worker who is going through it with an armful of laundry.