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Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
By now, you’ve heard of a concept called “luxury beliefs.” It’s a recurring thing these days, unfortunately, and it’s not difficult to identify. Luxury beliefs are, in essence, beliefs that are used to accumulate status among those who are financially well off.
Basically, they need a way to signal they’re good people, so they spout certain ideas that cost them absolutely nothing, even if they are taken seriously and actually happen.
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For example, someone living in a gated community with an army of private security patrolling the neighborhoods, advocating for defunding the police, is someone who is spouting a luxury belief. Even if the rest of the city becomes a lawless hellscape, their neighborhood will be fine because the armed security patrols will keep them safe.
At least, that’s at least part of their thinking on the matter.
I mention it at all because David Strom did a piece at Hot Air about them and the impact of these beliefs. He notes that billionaires often “dress down” these days, making it harder to signal one’s social status than it used to be, and that luxury beliefs create an outlet for accomplishing the same thing.
I can buy that. It seems to fit, at least to some degree.
However, expensive clothes and expensive cars might be ostentatious and crass, but unless someone doesn’t know how to drive that Lamborghini, they’re unlikely to cause harm to other people because of that.
Luxury beliefs, however, are very different.
While they signal status among the in-group and are largely meaningless to the rest of us, the danger is that they allow individuals to pretend they’re good people without having to deal with the societal ramifications of what their advocacy causes.
For example, the idea of “restorative justice” and advocating against the deportation of illegal aliens, gives us stuff like this:
pic.twitter.com/kS5x46Ypyl
— @amuse (@amuse) May","full_text":"LAWFARE: Biden judge ordered the release of Dominican illegal alien with an Interpol Red Notice arrest warrant for murder. Judge Melissa DuBose doesn’t care about you or the law. Congress needs to start impeaching judges before it is too late. ","username":"amuse","name":"@amuse","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/ /-U2Ynl9y_normal.jpg","date":"2026-05-01T15:16:35.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HHPj-aaWYAAWcE-.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/kS5x46Ypyl"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":91,"retweet_count":499,"like_count":1013,"impression_count":13523,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">
It can also lead to, say, a convicted child rapist getting a pardon from the governor of Minnesota, in which the pedophile is given significant credit for his “work.” That work, though, turned out to just be having a job. That’s it.
However, since he lost his immigration status when he was convicted, and is thus here illegally, he was pardoned as a middle finger to ICE.
A child sex predator was pardoned, so he doesn’t have to be on any lists of sexual predators because Tim Walz has the luxury of not having to deal with whatever comes from his behavior.
The examples of luxury beliefs are numerous, of course, and they all seem to fit neatly into a framework of allowing people to say things that make them sound like good people, at least to their country club friends, but they often have no relationship with reality.
What’s more, it’s not difficult to see that they don’t have this relationship.
Strom, for example, includes a bit about a city cancelling a contract with a company called ShotSpotter, which uses acoustic technology to detect gunshots, then notifies the police immediately. The controversy? ShotSpotter tends to get set up in higher-crime neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are often black ones.
Many of the people who live there welcome the technology. They hear the gunshots and don’t like it. They might call the police, or they might not, out of concern that nothing will happen, but the ShotSpotter can’t be ignored, so they’re thrilled by the technology.
But wealthy white progressives, whom my friend Michael Z. Williamson coined the term AWFUL—Affluent White Female Urban Liberal—to describe, see the devices in black neighborhoods and scream racism. They swarm to city council meetings and mayors’ offices, all to denounce this horrible, racist technology without ever thinking about whether there’s a reason for them being there.
The correlation between high crime and black neighborhoods is strong, and while I refute any claim that it’s because they’re black neighborhoods, the reality is that the Venn diagram of those two kinds of neighborhoods often looks like a top-down view of a stack of pancakes.
So it makes sense to use the technology where it will do the most good, especially since taxpayer money funds it. You don’t need it in the ritziest parts of the city, in part because those neighborhoods are going to call the cops in the rare event there’s a shooting. The ‘hood, though? A lot of people who live there have practically been conditioned to not even hear the gunshots through repetition.
Those who spout luxury beliefs don’t think or care about what the actual ramifications of those beliefs are. They’re not worried about preserving underprivileged neighborhoods from the scourge of gang violence. They’re worried about being more righteous than that bitch Carla, who held a rally to free a serial rapist who was arrested by ICE after his 53rd arrest for sexual assault.
The ramifications of their beliefs are irrelevant because they’re not likely to experience them. When others do, they simply ignore it and continue to double down.
The problem we have here is that the prestige of their beliefs is completely divorced from their ramifications. As these people also tend to hold a significant amount of power over local politicians eager to get campaign contributions, it’s not just an innocuous exercise of someone’s First Amendment rights.
What it actually is, though, is the worst excesses of the wealthy reframed through a different lens. It’s privilege personified.
As human beings, I believe we have a duty to preserve our society for the next generation. We need to be good stewards of what we have here and now so that we can hand it off after our time is over, and that our children and grandchildren will have something worthy of continued preservation.
When status is derived not by preserving and protecting but by advocating “RightThink” as the only moral, positional good, then we’re taking a turn down a dangerous road.
For all the vilification of some of the robber barons back in the day, they also took steps that were clearly intended to make society better after they were gone. Andrew Carnegie funded libraries in numerous smaller communities throughout the nation. Cornelius Vanderbilt funded a university bearing his name. James Buchanan Duke created an endowment for Trinity University that prompted the school to rename itself after its benefactor. Any college basketball fan will recognize Duke University, after all.
Wealthy people of bygone eras created institutions that many of us benefit from today. They looked at their place in the world and, while not always espousing smart political opinions, also took concrete steps to leave something of worth behind.
Yes, some of that might well have been about their own vanity, but if society as a whole actually benefits, does it really matter?
I’ll take good work from bad motivations over bad work from good motivations any day of the week, if we’re being honest.
What I fail to see, though, is how anyone can look at things like deporting illegal aliens, especially those with criminal convictions, as anything but a net positive for American society. I cannot see how anyone can look at situations like that and engage in the luxury belief that not only should those people not be deported, but we should let more of them into the country.
I just can’t wrap my brain around it.
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It was bad enough when the luxury belief was simply getting rid of the SAT for college admissions, which was stupid but not horrifically earth-shattering, but then we got calls to defund the police, to abolish ICE, and to whatever the next brand of stupidity is.
This is all part of the limousine liberal mindset, where they’re convinced that not only do the “little people” not know what they need, but that anything they espouse is proof of them being good, decent people no matter the outcome. It’s silver-spoon socialism with an unhealthy dose of self-delusion.
If someone wants to make the world a better place, the first thing they need to do is take a step back and think about issues as more than just Team Blue versus Team Red. They need to think through the ramifications of what they’re advocating, and they need to start trying to consider the worst-case scenario.
The would-be nuclear physicist who gets deported to Guatemala with their illegal alien parents can, actually, still become a nuclear physicist. Or a doctor. Or whatever. Those pathways still exist in other countries, and while it may be more difficult, those who are driven will find a way.
That’s the worst-case scenario of enforcing immigration law, for example. Someone who might do something great will have a harder time achieving greatness.
The downside of not enforcing immigration law is Laken Riley times tens of thousands.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is a no-brainer. And it’s like this on so many other policies out there.
Luxury beliefs lead to luxury self-destruction. The woman who wants the police defunded while living protected by private security will, in time, should she get her way, find out that rent-a-cops are no match for armed, ruthless gangs who decide that her neighborhood is the epicenter of their problems. Or just decide they’ve got nice stuff and it should be stolen.
Which would be poetic justice were it not for the fact that she’s likely to get a whole lot of people hurt before she ever experiences her FAFO moment.
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