Wealth provides attention

Chapter 8 of James Williams' Stand Out of Our Light quotes Adam Smith as saying that attention is the reason we seek fame. "To be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose to derive from [wealth]." One attains wealth, so that in expending it, people pay attention.

To "pay attention" is to "attend to" which is to "wait upon," isn't it? Is wealth, therefore power, really just a way of making people wait to see what you will do, what you will want?

That's interesting, since it's not really the typical view today. Today we think we can do something with wealth. But what can we do? Purchase things? Go on holiday and show off? I suppose the "go-to" positive use of wealth is philanthropy. But in reality that's quite rare; most expenditures are about living. Even rent, perhaps; to show off one's house, to show off where one can afford to live.

Perhaps there's a bias today against what Veblen calls conspicuous consumption, but it could still be true that this is the main reason to accrue wealth.

Seems to relate to the humble-brag, the idea that we want to show off, but without looking like we're showing off too much (because showing off too much could have gotten us killed in evolutionary time; see tall poppy syndrome).

Williams concludes: If Smith is right, all economies are ultimately attention economies.