The essential idea here is intuitive and probably qualifies as folk wisdom. It was articulated by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1961 short story "Harrison Bergeron". In Vonnegut's futuristic dystopia, the Handicapper General uses a variety of handicapping mechanisms to reduce inequalities in performance. A spectator at a ballet comments: "it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two hundred pound men." Zahavi interpreted this analogy to mean that higher quality peacocks with bigger tails are signalling their ability to "waste" more of some resource by trading it off for a bigger tail. This resonates with Thorstein Veblen's idea that conspicuous consumption and extravagant status symbols can signal wealth.