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orthonormal comments on That other kind of status - Less Wrong
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Your story makes sense, but you are missing the strong human urge to split into tribes. We want to show our people we are committed especially to them, and we can do that by putting effort into symbols of status that work much better for them than for other groups. Investing in generic status symbols does not signal loyalty to one's group.
A neat example of this point was the instantaneous display of American flags after 9/11 in most comunities. As David Foster Wallace's article at the time illustrates, the people couldn't effectively articulate why the urge to participate in this way was so strong, but the explanation of "showing you identify with and support a particular group over and above other loyalties" makes perfect sense of it all.
(Of course, once flag-displaying reaches a critical mass within a community, the pressures of conformity suffice as an explanation; but the speed with which communities ubiquitously reached that threshold has to be explained otherwise.)