Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted. A car dealer needs to know immediately how much effort to put into selling vehicles to the dozens of people who enter his dealership each day. He can’t make a detailed enquiry into the personality and wallet of each individual. Instead, he uses social cues – the way the person is dressed, his or her age, and perhaps even skin and hair colour. That is how the dealer immediately distinguishes between the rich lawyer
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