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Notes -
I'm starting with a ramble about historical city government
There's a tendency for fantasy settings(which is how most modern westerners are familiar with medieval operations) to portray everything as running according to very strict monarchy/feudalism- they're usually kinda confused as to the difference between the two things, but with enough oversimplifications as to make the distinction meaningless. But historically, that's not how any cities were governed- a hereditary lord just isn't how urbanites organize themselves. Instead, there's a largely-hereditary(but in the medieval case open to new admittance on a theoretically meritocratic but also super corrupt basis) social class which elects city leadership- usually a board of senior figures, a few magistrates doing specific tasks, and some generals. That class- which we call 'citizens' in Greece and Rome and 'burghers' in medieval free cities- makes up the military as citizen-soldiers who provide their own equipment(yes, even in the middle ages). The city might owe allegiance to some overlord, say an emperor, and might be in alliance with other similar cities, but it's probably not under the direct overlordship of a local noble.
It's the burghers that I want to focus on today. Entry into the burgher class required either guildsmanship or enough wealth to buy membership. Obtaining it practically guaranteed your sons full membership in a guild(acceptance as apprentices, not laborers). Their burgher status was tied to a specific town, and it was- by implication- tied to their service to a specific town. With the heretofore unprecedented pace of technological change beginning in the high middle ages, highly skilled work(and I do mean work, here- these people are largely technicians and skilled craftsmen, not engineers) becomes ever more important, and they naturally live in cities, which are ruled by corrupt political machines dominated by the guilds. Increasing technology and trade makes these cities more and more valuable, both economically and by enabling more effective military activity, giving the cities more bargaining power to wrangle special rights for their citizens. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time in history that it is prestigious to be meritocratic. There are roman accounts of wealthy freedman- invariably they are negative. But it seems that the medieval working class aspired to be guildmember burghers and not to be nobles. Now, you(maybe not you personally, but if you're an able-bodied twenty year old male reading this and you're not sure what to do with your life you should consider it- apply and take an aptitude test) can learn a trade today through a union which is functionally a guild, but nobody thinks of the IBEW or UA as aspirational, despite the high salaries. In non-european parts of the world at the same time as the middle ages skilled crafts/trades were passed down through clans, not guilds, and while artisans were often taxed differently from farmers there are straightforwards and obvious reasons for this in non-monetized societies rather than it being an expression of a special status.
Know your place. At the end of the day, society has to be made of lots of different members doing lots of different jobs, living in different ways. The high middle ages with its social classes- peasants who farm, nobles who fight, clerics who pray, study, and do white collar work, townsmen who do artisanal work, merchants who move things from point a to b, with wealthy and prestigious and respected examples of each(and there were wealthy peasants- the term 'yeoman' actually descends from one subcategory thereof). We have, as an urbanized and technological society, very similar roles in society that need filling. We need people to study and push the frontiers of theoretical knowledge. We need people to do white collar administrative work. We need people to move things around. We need people to physically make things and do things, many of them highly skilled. We need people to defend us. Etc, etc.
But increasingly, the only roles which are prestigious in modernity are those of white collar undefined-what-the-value-add-here-is jobs and those of pushing the bounds of theoretical knowledge(much of it actually more the philosophy of fartsniffing). UA HVAC techs make more than either(and that's assuming minimum payscales and no overtime), but it's nowhere near as lionized as the girlboss middle manager in an HR department at a startup that bills itself as Uber for cat psychics. I wonder if that's upstream of many of the motte's obsessions- let's take the fertility rate here. Having kids will not fuck up your career as a k-12 teacher, or accountant, or RN, or for the vanishingly few female long-haul truckers. 'Explain this gap in your resume' being met with 'I was a SAHM when my kids were in diapers' will not stop normal average jobs from hiring you. It's only awesome girlboss career track progression that will be derailed that way. Now, ideally, 'housewife' is a role that society lionizes the same way it does professor of queer fartsniffing or founding HR manager at uber for cat psychics. But it goes beyond just that- the motte fixates on admittance to very selective colleges. But society has far more unmet demand for electrical linemen than it does for another hotshot lawyer or Mackinsey consultant(I don't actually know what the latter does, except that it is pointless, well paid occupation for Ivy league grads). Now sure, whatever it is Mackinsey consultants actually do, it's probably more comfortable and easier than electrical linemen. But at a certain point, shouldn't we as a society go 'it takes all sorts to make the world go round, why don't we make the top of every field prestigious, give everyone someone to aspire to. In the words of country music, every sort of person should have something to be proud of(https://youtube.com/watch?v=PXg8E0kzF1c)'.
I remember when movies had a trope- I'm not defined by my work, I do x from 9-5, but all day long I'm a dad- one who happens to do x to pay the bills. The idea of an identity to be proud of, genuine pride in our differences and diversity, was singing its swan song. It's now dead. How many of the world's problems are actually downstream of that? I'm reminded of the several AAQC's about why South Koreans aren't having kids(my answer is pretty simple- it's not fun. Rednecks have kids because they look forwards to going to t-ball games. South Koreans don't because they don't look forwards to twelve hour study sessions).
Darnit, I wish I'd written this before trying to revive the user viewpoint focus series(@netstack how's yours coming?).
This isn't necessarily directed at you in particular, but it seems like a good excuse to talk about it:
I often see sweeping generalizations about "prestige" on TheMotte that betray a very particular kind of coastal, Blue Tribe, upper-middle-to-lower-upper class perspective on what counts as prestigious and why. But not everyone in "society" shares that perspective. Ask yourself, the types of guys who are actually working these trade jobs, do they know about your concept of prestige? Do they know what you consider prestigious or not? And if they do know, do they care what you consider prestigious or not? It's not a rhetorical question, I'm legitimately asking. I don't exactly have a foot in that world either.
Think about a black teenager growing up in the projects in inner city Chicago. He's a part of "modernity" too. What does he consider prestigious? He may be aware to a more or less vague degree that people think that being the President is prestigious, or that being Elon Musk is prestigious. But what he considers most viscerally prestigious, his "revealed preference" for prestige if you will, is being the local drug dealer, or the most feared local warlord. That's what actually matters in his world. Or maybe he could aspire to be a major rapper or athlete; those are things that "society at large" finds prestigious as well. Those positions are certainly compensated well enough. But even then, they're the sort of thing that the more well-to-do Blue Tribe perspective might look down upon as "tacky". Note that a couple comments here have already given their personal shortlist of what they consider prestigious, and "being Jay Z" and "being Tom Brady" haven't made any of the lists so far.
I once read a comment here that said "being a doctor is one of the most prestigious things you can be". And I just thought... really? Really? I mean it's an important job, don't get me wrong. Thank you for your services. I'm happy for them that they're making a lot of money. But at the end of the day it's, from my perspective, still just another job. Doctors are, modulo individual technical skill, fungible, and fungibility is antithetical to prestige as far as I'm concerned.
Now, if I were in the same room as say, I dunno, David Chalmers or Slavoj Zizek, I might find myself stumbling over my words in a vain attempt to make a good impression, because those people have achieved social positions that I do consider to be highly prestigious. But this is hardly a universal opinion! Many educated and well off people of good repute have never heard those names; and if I were to explain to these same educated and well off people that they were philosophy professors, a common response (particularly from those of a more conservative bent) would be "well they're just parasites who are stealing our tax dollars and filling young peoples' heads with nonsense, so why the hell would I think they're prestigious?" (In fact your reference to the "philosophy of fartsniffing" indicates that this would likely be your response!)
The TL;DR is that there are almost as many conceptions of prestige as there are people, so before we say that the prestige of such and such a thing is motivating people to do XYZ, we should establish what model of prestige the individuals in question are actually operating on.
There's a game I like to play whenever I go to a new country or region, and that game is 'what job does this culture value most?', as measured by 'what careers do parents, but especially mothers, try to push their children towards?' Or, more flippantly, 'where do the best and brightest get pushed towards?'
There are absolutely countries where being a doctor is uber-prestigious. Korean mothers had (still have, presumably) a reputation for pushing their children hard in that direction. By contrast, an adult who, say, stayed in the professional military beyond the conscription requirement had the stigma of 'maybe they couldn't cut it.' If they were better, they'd get a better job.
But as you note, that sort of prestige isn't a given. Doctoring doesn't get any easier, but there are places in the west where they aren't as respected / striven towards as, say, lawyers. Or financial services. And let's not get into truly different cultures. There are cultures where a military service is considered prestigious (often when access to the military is selective/limited, as opposed to 'scraping the bottom of the barrel). In parts of the middle east, a religious education / islamic religious certification is something broader families take great pride in. Etc. etc. etc.
The game I referenced before comes from how inevitably, any sort of socio-cultural 'list your top X most prestigious jobs you'd be proud of your kids having' tends to leave more than a few highly relevant jobs off for those who are not as good or gifted. It can be fun to (gently! in good faith!) tease out those gaps in social values versus social impact. Surprisingly, not as many people as you might think put 'going into politics' as 'prestigious' for their best and brightest kids... and so who can be surprised when politicians are viewed as midwits? Or 'just' government service? And so on?
If you ever need a cross-culture icebreaker conversation on a low-key social drinking, that's a good one. It's a good way to get your counterpart to open up about their background, why they are in the job they are in, and even what they feel about it- all of which are good for your personal/professional relationship. It's also an opportunity for some comradery, since no matter where they are in their own country's relative preference stack, there's usually another culture where their job would be in as high or even higher esteem (and thus you can signal recognition/respect that their culture may not ascribe to them). Alternatively, if they are highly placed and they know it, you can get them out of their normal headspace by inviting them to wonder what other jobs they might have had in a different context- something which gets them outside of their familiar context of knowing all the things they need to know.
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