8 ms·

1. Are you a woman who wants bigger pockets? Those are for sale. Buy them! 2. Are you a man who wants no pockets? Those are also for sale. Buy them! That's re

by dlss 10y ago

1. Are you a woman who wants bigger pockets? Those are for sale. Buy them! 2. Are you a man who wants no pockets? Those are also for sale. Buy them! That's really all there is to it. Stores stock what customers buy, not the other way around. I'm sure Macy's would love nothing more than every woman on the planet deciding to buy a new wardrobe of pocket-laden pants... the weak link in that plan is not Macy's management, but rather women not wanting to buy those pants. OP sounds about as sane as a die hard haskell programmer claiming haskell books don't sell because booksellers secretly want to oppress programmers.

mc32 10y ago
And, importantly, more women than men carry purses or accessory bags which can divert the need for actual pockets. In some men's fashions the pockets are ersatz. There is no sack behind the sealed slit under the flap --all for show.
brenschluss 10y ago
> in that plan is not Macy's management, but rather women not wanting to buy those pants. And why do you think that is? Diagnosing the symptom is far easier than understanding the cause. You're doing the former. History allows us to actually understand how historical/societal trends have changed over time. To ignore that is to be overly simplistic. Like saying "Q: Why is the '<a>' tag used to make links in HTML?" "A: Because browsers interpret <a> as a link!"
- dlss 10y ago
  > And why do you think that is? Diagnosing the symptom is far easier than understanding the cause. You're doing the former. When you're talking about emergent behavior of extremely complex systems, "why" is incredibly hard to answer accurately and incredibly easy to answer inaccurately. I honestly have no clue why women en mass (apparently) don't care for pockets. All I can say is that would seem to be their aggregate preference. Can you honestly tell me that anyone can say more? For example, I also can't tell you why I exist. I'm aware that there are many groups who claim to know why (god), but in my opinion their explanations are wrong. I'm satisfied to simply #include evolution, and note that my female ancestors and male ancestors probably liked each other, at least on average. I also can't really tell you why I checked a bug into the project I'm working on yesterday. I can tell you what the bug was, and what the fix is... but why? I'm not sure. Maybe human brains just have a non-zero failure rate? I really didn't want to code it wrong, but it happened anyway. All I'm really sure about with respect to my bug is that the answer probably isn't because there's a historical trend toward bugs. Circling back, there are many areas in modern life where women have deviated strongly from their historical conditions. You might even say that deviation from historical trends is itself a historical trend. But you can't say that without giving up on historical trends as a useful explanation :p
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > I'm aware that there are many groups who claim to know why (god) This is a complicated example. The fact that people make these claims is itself a phenomenon with complicated, physiological explanations. Hence the process of investigation interferes such as to confound the investigation.
    - dlss 10y ago
      While I do agree it's a complicated example, I also feel like the phenomena of people claiming to understand why women in aggregate behave a certain way similarly confounds OP's investigation. So a complicated example for sure, but for fair reasons.
  - brenschluss 10y ago
    > "why" is incredibly hard to answer accurately and incredibly easy to answer inaccurately. Of course. Yet we should try, shouldn't we? Your life, and mine, are made out of millions of choices that have been made by people before you. The shape of the building you're in right now, the size and proportion of your chair, the computer, the width of the roads you drove on, or the form of the subway you were on. The fact that you're typing these letters on a keyboard in a linear sequence, from left to right. There are countless historical reasons why you To say "I don't know why any of these happened; I'm just going to look at the present" is fine. But it makes it impossible to evaluate any action in context. Your profile says you're a statistician - surely you understand the value of understanding things in context? So, here's another example: Bob says: "I honestly have no clue why black males en mass (apparently) commit the most crimes. All I can say is that would seem to be their aggregate behavior. We should stop and frisk and detain black males based on these statistics. Can you honestly tell me that this is wrong?" Would you agree? Why examine pesky historical trends, and the history of slavery, the civil war, structural racism? After all, 'why' is incredibly hard to answer accurately. The facts are clear, after all. Isn't it okay to enact policies based on the present that don't care at all about the past? /devilsadvocate
    - dlss 10y ago
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > History allows us to actually understand I though this form of analysis (favored by Marx) was debunked?
gozur88 10y ago
Yeah, the idea that women's fashions are dictated by men is pretty silly. Women buy what they want to wear, and anybody who sells clothing is going to cater to their tastes. It takes a feminist to look at a sign of power (social and market) and see a sign of oppression - the women I've dated didn't feel the need for pockets because my pockets were their pockets. Or so I was told. And it's not like men's clothing is strictly functional. The first thing they tell you when you buy a suit or sport coat is not to put anything in the jacket pockets, because they'll stretch and sag. And WTF is a tie for, anyway?
Chris2048 10y ago
This is the "Say no to Bossy" campaign all over again... Seriously, these memes feed off patriarchy-paranoia, indicating there's far too much of it around..
norea-armozel 10y ago
Firms do not operate independent of the social institutions, norms, and beliefs which surround them. This includes the producers and the consumers. Trying to divorce markets from society is like trying to separate a fish from water and still expect it to survive (even fish with lungs still need moisture). And as proof of my point look at every venture that tried to run counter to social norms like private busing firms in the 1930s which tried to fight back against Jim Crow laws. They were promptly outlawed or bought out by those friendly to racist ideologies. Similarly, movable type printing presses were closely regulated when Catholicism was the only lawful faith in the HRE. Get caught without your license even in a liberal free city in the HRE expect your press ceased and yourself in a prison or worse. Social norms and institutions always shape fashion not the other way round.
- dlss 10y ago
  Every example you've listed has to do with subverting the free market though legislation. You didn't list other subversive forces on the market, but there's also a pseudo-regulation through non-governmental force (death threats, other threats), and boycotting / consumer groups (large groups of consumers form a sort of monopsony, refusing to purchase from corporations without a given policy). If any of these three hold in the case of the market for women's pants pocket size, please let me know. In that case I would agree there is sexism in that market, and sign petitions etc to stop the market subversion. Examples of evidence: * A law on the books requiring ladies pants pockets to be under a certain size. (If such a law does exist, I've just verified Amazon is violating it btw) * A police report that (for example) a Macy's executive has been threatened over the pocket size of the pants they stocked at a store. * The website of a large consumer group, officially boycotting a retailer due to their women's pants pocket policy. If such evidence doesn't exist, then you should strongly consider the null hypothesis: that the overwhelming force governing the size of women's pants pockets is Adam Smith's invisible hand. This is the default assumption when looking at markets because covert coercion on such a vast scale (literally all retailers) would require considerable organizational effort, and would consume considerable cost to maintain. We're talking government scale action, sustained over hundreds of years (see OP's story), with no leaks. All to keep pocket sizes small. That's simply not plausible. Again, I'm not saying it didn't happen in those cases you mention above -- which is to say I think you could provide such evidence as I'm requesting for your examples -- I'm saying you can't do that here because OP's theory is a conspiracy theory.

by dlss 10y ago

mc32 10y ago

And, importantly, more women than men carry purses or accessory bags which can divert the need for actual pockets. In some men's fashions the pockets are ersatz. There is no sack behind the sealed slit under the flap --all for show.

brenschluss 10y ago

> in that plan is not Macy's management, but rather women not wanting to buy those pants. And why do you think that is? Diagnosing the symptom is far easier than understanding the cause. You're doing the former. History allows us to actually understand how historical/societal trends have changed over time. To ignore that is to be overly simplistic. Like saying "Q: Why is the '<a>' tag used to make links in HTML?" "A: Because browsers interpret <a> as a link!"

dlss 10y ago
> And why do you think that is? Diagnosing the symptom is far easier than understanding the cause. You're doing the former. When you're talking about emergent behavior of extremely complex systems, "why" is incredibly hard to answer accurately and incredibly easy to answer inaccurately. I honestly have no clue why women en mass (apparently) don't care for pockets. All I can say is that would seem to be their aggregate preference. Can you honestly tell me that anyone can say more? For example, I also can't tell you why I exist. I'm aware that there are many groups who claim to know why (god), but in my opinion their explanations are wrong. I'm satisfied to simply #include evolution, and note that my female ancestors and male ancestors probably liked each other, at least on average. I also can't really tell you why I checked a bug into the project I'm working on yesterday. I can tell you what the bug was, and what the fix is... but why? I'm not sure. Maybe human brains just have a non-zero failure rate? I really didn't want to code it wrong, but it happened anyway. All I'm really sure about with respect to my bug is that the answer probably isn't because there's a historical trend toward bugs. Circling back, there are many areas in modern life where women have deviated strongly from their historical conditions. You might even say that deviation from historical trends is itself a historical trend. But you can't say that without giving up on historical trends as a useful explanation :p
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > I'm aware that there are many groups who claim to know why (god) This is a complicated example. The fact that people make these claims is itself a phenomenon with complicated, physiological explanations. Hence the process of investigation interferes such as to confound the investigation.
  - dlss 10y ago
    While I do agree it's a complicated example, I also feel like the phenomena of people claiming to understand why women in aggregate behave a certain way similarly confounds OP's investigation. So a complicated example for sure, but for fair reasons.
- brenschluss 10y ago
  > "why" is incredibly hard to answer accurately and incredibly easy to answer inaccurately. Of course. Yet we should try, shouldn't we? Your life, and mine, are made out of millions of choices that have been made by people before you. The shape of the building you're in right now, the size and proportion of your chair, the computer, the width of the roads you drove on, or the form of the subway you were on. The fact that you're typing these letters on a keyboard in a linear sequence, from left to right. There are countless historical reasons why you To say "I don't know why any of these happened; I'm just going to look at the present" is fine. But it makes it impossible to evaluate any action in context. Your profile says you're a statistician - surely you understand the value of understanding things in context? So, here's another example: Bob says: "I honestly have no clue why black males en mass (apparently) commit the most crimes. All I can say is that would seem to be their aggregate behavior. We should stop and frisk and detain black males based on these statistics. Can you honestly tell me that this is wrong?" Would you agree? Why examine pesky historical trends, and the history of slavery, the civil war, structural racism? After all, 'why' is incredibly hard to answer accurately. The facts are clear, after all. Isn't it okay to enact policies based on the present that don't care at all about the past? /devilsadvocate
  - dlss 10y ago
Chris2048 10y ago
> History allows us to actually understand I though this form of analysis (favored by Marx) was debunked?

gozur88 10y ago

Yeah, the idea that women's fashions are dictated by men is pretty silly. Women buy what they want to wear, and anybody who sells clothing is going to cater to their tastes. It takes a feminist to look at a sign of power (social and market) and see a sign of oppression - the women I've dated didn't feel the need for pockets because my pockets were their pockets. Or so I was told. And it's not like men's clothing is strictly functional. The first thing they tell you when you buy a suit or sport coat is not to put anything in the jacket pockets, because they'll stretch and sag. And WTF is a tie for, anyway?

Chris2048 10y ago

This is the "Say no to Bossy" campaign all over again... Seriously, these memes feed off patriarchy-paranoia, indicating there's far too much of it around..

norea-armozel 10y ago

Firms do not operate independent of the social institutions, norms, and beliefs which surround them. This includes the producers and the consumers. Trying to divorce markets from society is like trying to separate a fish from water and still expect it to survive (even fish with lungs still need moisture). And as proof of my point look at every venture that tried to run counter to social norms like private busing firms in the 1930s which tried to fight back against Jim Crow laws. They were promptly outlawed or bought out by those friendly to racist ideologies. Similarly, movable type printing presses were closely regulated when Catholicism was the only lawful faith in the HRE. Get caught without your license even in a liberal free city in the HRE expect your press ceased and yourself in a prison or worse. Social norms and institutions always shape fashion not the other way round.

dlss 10y ago
Every example you've listed has to do with subverting the free market though legislation. You didn't list other subversive forces on the market, but there's also a pseudo-regulation through non-governmental force (death threats, other threats), and boycotting / consumer groups (large groups of consumers form a sort of monopsony, refusing to purchase from corporations without a given policy). If any of these three hold in the case of the market for women's pants pocket size, please let me know. In that case I would agree there is sexism in that market, and sign petitions etc to stop the market subversion. Examples of evidence: * A law on the books requiring ladies pants pockets to be under a certain size. (If such a law does exist, I've just verified Amazon is violating it btw) * A police report that (for example) a Macy's executive has been threatened over the pocket size of the pants they stocked at a store. * The website of a large consumer group, officially boycotting a retailer due to their women's pants pocket policy. If such evidence doesn't exist, then you should strongly consider the null hypothesis: that the overwhelming force governing the size of women's pants pockets is Adam Smith's invisible hand. This is the default assumption when looking at markets because covert coercion on such a vast scale (literally all retailers) would require considerable organizational effort, and would consume considerable cost to maintain. We're talking government scale action, sustained over hundreds of years (see OP's story), with no leaks. All to keep pocket sizes small. That's simply not plausible. Again, I'm not saying it didn't happen in those cases you mention above -- which is to say I think you could provide such evidence as I'm requesting for your examples -- I'm saying you can't do that here because OP's theory is a conspiracy theory.