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Notes -
I think it’s a negative thing. I think that a loss of respect for yourself and others is often shown by how we present ourselves in public. When you’re dressed well you treat yourself as a person worthy of respect and treat the rest of society as aplace worthy of being respectable for. When men wore suits it wasn’t just an empty signal but came with a statement of respect for others. A guy in a suit insisting on being called Mister and calling his boss Sir or Mister or whatever and who is teaching his sons to treat themselves as people worthy of respect and to respect others is contributing to a lot of very important and beneficial things for society at large. The practice of demanding excellence from ourselves and respect from other works to create a society in which excellence and respect are norms and that even those at the bottom of the social ladder.
When the rich choose to forgo those things it encourages others to do so when they can least afford the problems that come with it. A rich person can afford to talk back to his boss because he has enough cushion to weather a job loss. A rich person can be loud and proud about vices like drug use or drinking or casual sex because he can get access to things to fix any problems that come up. This often leaves a wake of people behind who emulated bad behavior without the means to avoid the consequences.
The other thing that happens is that it erodes the culture’s ability to demand good behavior. We lose the standard and the ability to enforce the standards. When you don’t feel the need to dress appropriately for going out, you also can’t say much about others taking it farther. You can’t get that mad about the people wearing pajama pants to the grocery store when you’re wearing sweatpants. You can’t say anything about being lazy when you’re lazy.
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