In commenting on "17. Defining a Status Good more carefully", Arthur Cordell has written thus:

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What happens if "back to the earth" and "living with less" becomes a status good and status way of life?

The sale of bicycles and walking shoes and tents and backpacks all rise. But are these aspects of the new status life enough to power the economy?

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This is a very interesting pair of questions. I've been thinking about the first one for many years -- bear with an introductory paragraph before I (attempt to) answer it

The last 150-200 years has been a period of extraordinarily cheap energy. Besides energising almost all our methods of production, cheap fuels has also seriously distorted our mode of living so that most of the Initiatory Class (that middle-class part of the population which buys Status Goods first) live far away from their place of work. Cheap fuel and commuting (though expensive in time) means that, while individuals can obtain some sort of status satisfaction from the social environment in which they live by flaunting their goods in a rather ostentatious way, they gain most of their real satisfactions from the social circle in which they work and in which they have their true status. They don't need to flaunt so much because their peers know their abilities so much more intimately and accurately than by the things they possess. If, therefore, we imagine that fuel starts to become steadily more expensive in the coming decades, then we could reasonably expect that the trends of the last 200 years will gradually be reversed and the present separation between home and work will steadily decrease.

Now to the answer itself. I can well see the day when the supply of Status Goods will have plateau'd (mainly due to energy costs, other contraints and, probably, simply lack of time to enjoy any more by the Initiatory Class), and that "back to the earth" and "living with less" may well become desirable because we will revert to much more subtle and personal methods of status appraisal and ranking (which will remain as necessary as ever due to our genetic inheritance).

Now to your second question

Yes, I can see the day when the sale of "bicycles and walking shoes and tents and backpacks" will indeed rise. However, their production and sales can't possibility empower the overall economy in the same way that Status Goods have done so throughout the past 75,000 years. I think there is little doubt that the future energy economy will have to be based on hydrogen. I happen to believe that the most successful method of producing hydrogen will be that of bacteria powered by sunlight. Several streams of genetic research in different countries (America, Germany and China in particular) are now directed towards this end. This is going to need the most detailed understanding of genes, and of their actual expression by means of the even more complex arrangements of the nucleosome wrappings around the DNA. Given the know-how, this will in due course enable quite small communities to be able to produce a very great deal of what they want in situ (given that there is usually sunlight of sufficient energy in most habitable parts of the world). In one way, we will have turned the clock back by 75,000 years (in the sense that we would be able to live in relatively small communities if we wished to), but we can then have the opportunity of striking out in a different direction and avoid repeating the train of economic events that led to our present system. Mind you, once the peak of oil/gas production has passed all this is going to take 300 years or more at least. The descending slope of oil and gas production will be flatter than its rise -- it's a skewed curve. (But at the end of it the basic ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo will not so much be contradicted, as simply not applicable any longer in those new conditions in which the only things that will need to be traded will be intelligence and know-how. Why move things from one end of tghe earth to another when they can be made on the spot?)