![](https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/fadc583a-16cd-4089-9c3d-208055d8f6b2.webp)
![](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d3d059e3-fa3d-45af-ac93-ac894beba378.png)
This stuck with me: Years ago, someone on Reddit described their middle school in the ‘70s having to have an assembly to stop a potlatch/arms race between kids stacking Izod/Lacoste shirts. There were well-off kids wearing three or more stacked Lacoste shirts every day, and poorer kids wearing cheap generic polo shirts under real alligator shirts to try to keep up.
I may have an outdated sense of what a potlatch was. I was using the term in the sense of destroying value, per this kind of definition:
“A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader’s wealth and power. “