What's wrong with the pettiness of the middle classes?

There has always been a certain hoarding element of the middle classes, but two forces make this an altogether different beast - globalization and financial technology.

Globalization is exporting the aspiration of the middle class to new territories, bringing them modern problems that many would have not anticipated. From the eternal problems of hunger and cruelty, different nuances are required to see ostentatiousness or materialism as just as threatening to happiness.

In emerging economies such as China and India, this is very much prevalent as disparities in wealth become wider and more visible in societies that have prided itself on spiritual/philosophical depth. Evolved over millenia, India is perhaps one of the most spiritual countries in the world, while Confucianism has long underpinned all that is great and cultured about China.

It is not much of a stretch to imagine these societies starting to contemplate in the oft-surreal, existential way that Japanese has raced through the modern age. After you have your assets comfortably protected by property and education, then what next?

But developments in finance will also exacerbate the position the middle class will find themselves in. This is because it is perhaps the natural tendency to securitise the assets (hard and soft) one already has. It is most recently evident in the Financial Crisis - with financial instruments taking advantage of the 'safest' asset there is: property. A few CDOs and CDSs later, sub-prime mortgages become front page news.

The next big bubble may come in the form of defaulting student loans, according to Peter Thiel. This is epitomised by the Harvard MBA being described by the Economist as a leveraged bet on someone becoming a finance director at a blue-chip company. Education becomes an asset, albeit a soft one, and a commodity which can be treated and marketed as such.

In safeguarding our own interests, we have quantified our most important social and capitalist values in a way that wider moral and cultural stability is at threat.