> There's a relationship between wealth and how you dress
There most certainly is not, full stop, and this is the psychological aspect to which I am referring and colorfully exploiting in my anecdote. Someone who hangs out on Hacker News should realize this, since our profession in particular has minted a large number of people who are exorbitantly wealthy and still wear Old Navy flip flops and hoodies. Poor people also inherit Prada, and quite a few hucksters within multiple industries dress in a particular way to exploit this psychological conditioning while having no money at all.
This is the entire point of my comment, and assuming that relationship exists says more about your subscription to certain expectations and conditioning about people than your remarks on "business." It's actually a disservice to yourself to assume there is a relationship between wealth and style based on customs that are increasingly becoming dated.
There most certainly is. You've pointed out some exceptions but do you really think that on the whole they're not correlated? Having more money means people can afford to dress better and are more likely to travel in circles in which dressing well is important.
This may be a bad thing, but it's a reality that people are attuned to - it's a useful heuristic even though it's imperfect. Should you treat people badly because of it? No, but you shouldn't treat them badly even if you were 100% sure they weren't wealthy. That's a separate problem.
Okay, but ask yourself if that's an actual correlation or an imagined one based on customs and psychological factors. (Which is my point.)
The assertion was that "there is a relationship," without any sort of qualification. I'm saying that relationship only exists because of the belief itself and if we all stopped believing it tomorrow, there would be no relationship any longer. So it's not really a correlation at all and only an imaginary one that has largely built itself up on conditioning, upbringing, and so on.
I'm not saying you're wrong nor denying a tenuous correlation, I'm saying it's faulty to assume a correlation where one only exists due to external factors, and that leads to the problems that both you and I point out with the correlation.
Similarly, money provides no power in society to the person controlling it. Because if we all stopped believing that it would continue to work in the future, it wouldn't.
... This is an obviously incorrect argument! There are things that occur only because of widespread belief. Nevertheless, those things do occur!
This is an extremely bold claim. You are claiming that within less than a generation, people stopped dressing as a way to send social signals. I think you are so off base you must live in a tech bubble.
> It's actually a disservice to yourself to assume there is a relationship between wealth and style based on customs that are increasingly becoming dated.
Curious why you think car sales folks are irrational. Do you really think the guy who targets the "likely to buy" customers based on appearance does worse than the guy who takes all comers?
I have a bridge to sell you if you don't think profiling like this works. Sure you miss the outliers, but the mainstream makes up for it.
Is it becoming dated? Perhaps if you're looking for a 3 piece suit. But there are still all sorts of "wealth" signals the vast majority of people probably don't even know they are giving off in the way they dress.
