Will: Starbucks warming up to form of elitism

Many existing Starbucks are located to capture foot traffic in malls and shopping centers, which have been losing customers to online shopping. The original 30 Roasteries will be destinations where people will go to linger. So, by 2021, when there will be more normal Starbucks than McDonald’s, the few Starbucks Roasteries scattered from New York to Shanghai will be Starbucks’ entry into the positional economy.

Positional economy

Four decades ago, the economist Fred Hirsch distinguished between the material economy and the positional economy. Once a society has satisfied basic material needs (food, shelter, clothing), it turns yesterday’s luxuries (cars, air conditioning, college educations) into necessities. Because these are mass-market commodities, such material prosperity is a leveling, egalitarian force. Positional competition is emphatically not.

In the competition for an “elite” education or an “exclusive” vacation spot, one person’s success is necessarily a loss for many other persons because positional goods cannot be expanded indefinitely. Of course, Starbucks Roasteries could be expanded by the thousands, but this would make the “experience” banal and drain the stores of their positional power.

The political equality of democratic societies leaves ample room for, and incites, social inequalities, which are coveted because they counter the leveling forces of mass affluence. Furthermore, as inherited privilege has been replaced by social rationality, there is a residual human urge for irrational distinction. Such as savoring a $12 cup not just for the — let us stipulate — divine flavor but for the sheer fun of showing that you can and that your palate is so refined that merely very good coffee would be excruciating.

Where will the positional economy end? It won’t. Stanford professor Francis Fukuyama notes that it is a peculiarity of human beings that they desire some things “not for themselves but because they are desired by other human beings.” Hamsters have more sense. This characteristic of our species — the quest for recognition by distinguishing oneself from others — provides limitless marketing possibilities because for many wealthy people, “the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.” So wrote Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations,” published in the resonant year of 1776.

George F. Will is a columnist for the  Washington Post Writers Group. Email: georgewill@washpost.com.