I thought of one more positional-goods related policy: limiting the number of hours in a work week. In other words, forced spending on leisure, which as this survey indicates is non-positional:
Do You Enjoy Having More Than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods http://www.handels.gu.se/epc/archive/00002855/01/gunwpe0100.pdf In a personal reply Robin suggested that the lack of heavier regulation on positional goods may have to do with issues he wrote about in this article: http://hanson.gmu.edu/fairgene.html. While not disagreeing with that, I suggest another reason may be that if we didn't have to spend money on positional goods, the most productive among us might choose to work 1/2 or even 1/10 the number of hours we do currently. A majority of voters would lose because of reduction of income redistribution and positive externalities from science and art.
