When debating social justice issues, it is wise to bear in mind that deconstructing one particular thesis in a vacuum offers little more than intellectual showboating; much of the social justice narrative describes small and seemingly-trivial barriers cumulatively forming concrete obstacles. For a better metaphor, Marilyn Frye writes in The Politics of Reality:
"Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon."
This myopic focus seems to be more common on technology forums than elsewhere. I am interested as to why this is the case. Probably, a technical education lends itself well to analyzing the validity of individual details but not reasoning at a structural level.
i love the analogy, but you're overthinking it. most people on technical forums have never been poor, so they've never been in the cage and have only heard about second-hand.
i didn't understand what poverty was like until i started smoking weed all the time, neglected most aspects of my life and got heavily into debt. i still wan't poor, but i started to understand why people without money, who are constantly hounded by debt collectors, tend to focus so much on the short term.
Just to lay my cards on the table: I'm registered as a member of the US Green Party and have been involved with various left wing activist movements since I was fifteen. I've also been poor, living in a junkie hotel and doing day labor for cash. My most upvoted comment on hn (before I ragequit my previous account (for basically leftist grievances (!))) was one describing what that was like.
Still, I find the intellectual attitude that you've described deeply unsettling. As you've sketched it, the "social justice narrative[0]" is unfalsifiable: what claims does your theory of politics actually make about the world if any given piece of it can be overturned without making a dent in the theory itself? A theory of social inequality can't be correct in general without being correct in particular cases. Refuting (not "deconstructing") a particular thesis is not "intellectual showboating", it's engaging in argument. What else is someone who sincerely disagrees with you supposed to do?
I've seen this happen with depressing regularity: a self-styled social justice advocate will make a claim, and sometimes that claim will get demolished by an intelligent opponent. (Yes, this can happen, and it is a portent for the future of the left that most activists never learn to take a drubbing from a perceptive conservative.) Rather than taking stock at that point, the social justice advocate throws up a polysyllabic ink cloud ("institutional", "systemic" and "societal" seem to enjoy heavy rotation) and jets away. Whether it is true or not that nebulous social forces conspire to constrain outcomes for the poor in the way that the social justice advocate believes, I have no idea why such verbal behavior should be considered convincing.
This is especially frustrating if you actually sincerely think that the left has good ideas about social policy that should be argued for in earnest and implemented.
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[0] The heavy rhetorical weight placed on the word "narrative" also gives me goosebumps. What happened to plain old arguments-- a set of propositions intended to establish (or at least raise the probability of) the truth of a conclusion? I would hate to think it's because "narratives", unlike arguments, are impossible to demonstrate or refute.
The key word here is vacuum. It's pretty easy to come up with compelling arguments against individual examples of inequality, but these really only hold up on their own and yes, fall apart at the structural level.
I agree retreating to argue on the structural level is rhetorically weak. That's all that can really be said against it, and it's unfortunate, because someone saying how really you are a member of the oppressed (as seen in white supremacist and MRA groups) is much more alluring than some intangible narrative about structural inequality.
I say narrative because that's the form it has taken, and indeed had to take. Mary Wollstonecraft couldn't spend her time arguing point by point in a council chamber. She wrote books, compelling novels which had to fight viciously for every inch of ground on which they stood.
You've seen how easily people convince themselves that gripes of oppression are baseless, today, 200 years after A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. We've had academics write and study and provide rhetorical tools for generations now, building a narrative, because that is what is needed. To truly argue against it, it must be met on that same narrative ground.
It's the old statistics vs story narrative. People don't relate to stories of the masses. They can relate and react to the story of an individual though. So governments and organizations need to be focused on the broader statistics to know where to focus their efforts, but if you want to reach individual people you have to relate to them on a personal level.
I will agree the value of a put-together appearance is valid, in many contexts. and i wouldn't take from that at all.
However ... it's ridiculous to use this to defend a $2,500 handbag purchase. the purchase was inadvisable at best.
marshall's, target, JCP etc have a massive business strategy around making sophisticated looks available on a low budget. so there are plenty of ways to accomplish the objective of self respect, presentation and budget.
there's an old essay by tom wolfe called "mau mauing the flak catchers" - watching the CEO of barney's defending himself, I think that fits just about perfectly.
I agree. Two different things being discussed as one.
1) Everyone should have at least one outfit that is super classy. A cheap solution is a Salvation Army or Goodwill store in a nice part of town.
2) People who live on the dole and buy things they clearly don't need or deserve. Rocking an iPhone 5 while using your food stamp debit card at the grocery store to buy junk food is the typical "Stupid" poor person move most people hate to see. There's no justification for that.
Man, the iPhone 5 really is not a very good example here.
If you wear your super classy outfit to an interview AND you have the iPhone 5 instead of a prepaid Android phone (or worse -- a prepaid non-smartphone), it's going to show that you "belong" and that you're not poor.
Some people really do pay attention to what kind of phone you have, particularly for these gateway-straddling jobs that the author talks about in the article.
They aren't talking about using a phone in an interview.
A smart phone is a valuable tool for a professional. Being able to send an email or call from the road when you're running late, or to receive same when your counterpart is running late - people expect this nowadays.
Of course, during the actual interview, it should go without saying to put it on silent and leave it in your pocket or purse.
Counterpoint: after the novelty of wearing the super classy outfit and waving the iPhone 5 wears off once you have a job, what else do you now have to purchase -- outside your means -- to convince your co-workers that you "belong"?
It would be cheaper to look for a job in an environment that is more interested in what you can do rather than what you tote.
That's not a counterpoint in poor-person logic. It's a counterpoint in you-the-guy-who-has-more-correct-assumptions logic.
This is what I'm trying to get across with my posts on this topic.
People keep using reasoning from within a higher-class group where you already know the rules and assumptions of the game. The whole point is that the people below don't.
You probably genuinely do believe that, but the tech industry is notorious for superficial judgements - consider that you would know exactly what I meant if I described someone as a "suit". Maybe he's just a guy who likes to dress well? Maybe he was born in a more conservative culture and that's just what people wear? But God help him if he shows up to the interview in it.
It would be awesome if HR people only ever judged people on skill, and not on appearance or presentation. But if there's one big takeaway from this article, it's that there really are gatekeepers that filter people based on whether they "belong". Faking that belonging can be incredibly important to escape the poverty trap.
>Man, the iPhone 5 really is not a very good example here.
The iPhone 5 is a great example. The iPhone 3gs or 4 is hardly distinguishable and costs 1/5 the price. You cannot play some high end games with those phones, but that shouldn't prevent one's economic improvement.
Here's a trick: get your measurements, accurately, have someone do it for you with a tape measure. Then scour eBay and be patient. Eventually a suit that was hand-made for someone of your exact dimensions will come up, then you have to grab it. Whatever you pay won't be a fraction even of what it cost originally.
That implies the following:
-you have a computer
-you have internet
-you have an email address
-you have any idea what ebay is (no seriously...that's not a reasonable assumption to make)
-you have the money to buy THAT suit (oh, and a credit card and a paypal account)
-you have somewhere safe to have it shipped
-you even understand the lingo of suiting enough to what to look for.
The company I currenlty work for recently hired a technician. The role is something we would call technical today but probably 15 years ago would have been the product of a vocational education. Those programs have been eliminated and pushed on companies to train for instead, companies that usually want experience before they will train. This week, our new guy (24 years old, self supporting, has a kid and a house) sent his first email. Obviously not all of these apply to every situation but the level of abstraction required to understand why this makes no sense to people like us isn't easy for most people.
Deserve? Where does deserve come into this? Posessing money makes it easy to aquire things, but having it or lacking it doesn't say anything about if someone deserves something or not.
You are a loony. If I walk into a shop with a ton of money, then I can walk out with far more stuff and with much less effort than trying to steal from the shop or beg for free stuff from it.
If you are on the dole and you are a buying things that aren't necessary to survive, you are stealing.
A relative of mine owns several condos and some of his renters are "Section 8". The state pays for 90% of their rent, they only need to come up with 10%. One guy who couldn't come up with his 10% (and got evicted) had an xbox connected to a big screen TV. How is that not stealing?
If you take money from others to pay for your food or for your rent you don't deserve an xbox, a TV, an iPhone 5. You deserve to go the public library and learn something to make yourself more marketable. You deserve to work 3 jobs until you can pay your own way for necessities.
Unfortunately, when the very thing you're trying to do is status signaling, it's not how "sophisticated" your outfit looks nearly so much as it is the brands in your outfit. High-end brands signal status by their very high-end-ness. An off-brand, but sophisticated outfit signals far less status than a perhaps less sophisticated, but visibly branded outfit, assuming the "right" brand.
It probably depends on the circles one is attempting to break into, but my selection bias of reading/interacting with the fairly affluent really don't put much stock into brands. In general, the brand-ists I come by, typically are those yet to have "made it" that have nothing better to base their judgements on.
The problem is that when you're aiming at a group that's higher than you, you don't know exactly what they do and don't know and what they can and can't tell the difference between. Thus, you may think that you have to have something extremely nice and not just simply nice. Additionally, the huge name brand over the acceptable-looking thing may buy you status within your own group, not just the group you're trying to move into.
There are countless movies having 2 well-dressed people side-by-side where the "in" person looks at the new person in the group and says "Get rid of that cheap suit." or similar.
The problem is that while you and me know that you can get away with the cheaper stuff as long as it's well-pressed, clean, etc., not everybody is sure of that.
Certainly true. There are very nice designer handbags for a fraction. Even if you think the $300-500 brands aren't good enough (Coach, Marc, Kate Spade, etc), there are even more in the $800-1200 range (Louis Vuitton, for one..)
I know this because I have a wife with tastes for such things :)
Then you should have her check out Lollipuff (YC W13): designer auctions pre-screened by experts for authenticity (ie. eBay without the fakes). It also amazes us. Why would people pay full price when the "lightly used" ones sell for 80% off?
FWIW, my wife was delighted when I sent her to Lollipuff yesterday. She thinks it's a great idea.
I guess one thought is that I don't know if I would ever gift her a used bag. Even if I trusted the source (which has always been a deal breaker before).
But her buying for herself, I can see her definitely purchasing something previously owned.
Do you think that people who buy expensive stuff -- the gatekeepers in the original article -- can't tell the difference? That they don't know brand names?
The goal isn't to meet some objective standard of looks-close-enough. The goal is to signal in a very specific way, through brand names. You may impress other poor people who don't know about brand names and such, but you will not impress people who do know their stuff.
Beautiful analysis of privilege, class signifiers and race.
Technology culture and employment in the United States is dominated by straight white males, usually with some form of class and economic privilege--people who haven't had to navigate within their society with an extreme outsider status--but there are welcome signs of a growing critical self awareness.
Over the years on HN, I've seen many posts questioning the economic value of a four year college education, particularly an education in the humanities. This right here is a great post to keep in your pocket the next time someone says something like that.
And yet she shows the barrier to entry for a woman to be other women in HR who were of the same race. How is 'critical self awareness' of straight white males going to help that?
I've talked about this before at length, but assigning the term 'privilege' exclusively to 'straight white males' is fairly intellectually dishonest. The problem is bigger than that - our culture values behaving like a 'normal person', our definition of 'normal' just happens to have a lot of white people in it. Some poor white people living in trailers with heavy accents and unkempt clothes would have had (and do have) similar problems.
Privilege is not exclusive to straight white males, it just so happens that in this country, at this moment, straight white males enjoy an order of magnitude more of it than everyone else. It becomes convenient to point at the largest elephant in the room instead of fully qualifying the point.
But white privilege, straight privilege, and all other forms of privilege affect not just those who have it, but everyone else around them. The barrier to entry for this woman was other women in HR, of the same race - who have internalized and normalized straight/white/male/etc privilege.
Normalization is privilege. Without normalization you don't have privilege - you don't have thoughts like "that's not a black guy job", or "that guy's too fruity to interact with my clients". Privilege is the unfair treatment of people based on their deviation from a perceived norm. The perceived norm may be perceived even by people who are on the losing end of the particular proposition - whether it is their race, gender, orientation, or other.
When one thinks of judging people by choice of fabric combination or wearing specific designers, "internalizing and normalizing" straight white male doesn't exactly come to mind. I think there are limits to how much this idea can explain.
The barrier to entry was knowing the set of codes, knowing how to communicate nonverbally. Knowing how to tell someone 'I belong in your group' in the way that you speak, the way you dress, the way you move. It's very difficult for people 'on the inside' to appreciate how difficult this can be.
Also, to clarify my earlier point, I would never suggest that the concept of privilege is exclusive to straight white males, and I agree that social and economic class are the basis for discrimination and exclusion. I was just trying to say:
1) Technology industries in the United States are dominated by straight white males, often with some form of class and economic privilege. By this I do not mean that there are no exceptions.
2) The posting and discussion of this blogpost on this website is reflective of (I hope) a certain self awareness surrounding race, gender, money and privilege, and the importance of considering it--not dismissing it as an irrelevance.
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think her arguments are very strong.
I personally think people make bad decisions to buy things or do things not on the premise of it being an "investment", but because most of us are very weak.
We do the things we do because we are victims to advertising and peer pressure. You think they spend billions on advertising for nothing?
If you read this and you are thinking, "No I am not." You are 1) in denial 2) above average. If you are above average, then you should realize averages exist because half of the people are below it.
I lived with a girl that seemed to make a lot of poor financial choices. I don't agree with the article, but I'm just sharing a story that seems on subject.
She had about $300 in her bank account, told me she was broke, and began selling off a few extras around the house. She ran her business from home and the holidays were coming up. I continued to work as usual, and ask what she's up to. Well, she was closing up shop for 2 weeks, because hey, it's the holidays, that means no work. I thought that was a little strange, you're struggling to pay bills, and not paying your one or two employees on time, but refuse to pickup the phone to make a few sales during the break. Anyway, we decide to make dinner for the holidays, so we go shopping. She wants an elaborate dinner, so we spend $300 on groceries and alcohol for the two of us. This seems outrageous, but I figure we'll have leftovers for a week, and I'm not broke, so I'll toss in my half. Anyway, great dinner. Next night, she doesn't want leftovers, she wants to go out for dinner. Ok, I'm down. Where does she suggest? A fairly upscale restaurant, and we burn another $150 on the two of us. The rest of the holiday she continues to complain about being broke, and I continued to scratch my head.
I also met another guy, who was completely broke, with all of his credit cards maxed out. However, he always insisted on paying for everyone. We go out for coffee with a dozen people, and he jumps up, and tosses it on his card. Out for lunch, he sneaks away to pay for the group. Broke, living with his parents, full of debt, pissing away money, and fighting to get finances for his project. Last time I talked with him, he was selling off childhood items, and business equipment to pay the bills.
With regards to your female friend: I think what she meant by broke is that she isn't really broke, she just doesn't have enough money for the lifestyle she's accustomed to or desires.
I think you misread, I mentioned in the first line I was simply sharing a story. None of the people involved were American, and I didn't claim this resulted in poverty or validated the article in any way.
Gosh dang it. I knew one day I would make this mistake and be embarrassed by it... Oh well, I guess I'll just own it. I already know I am below average.. haha...
That's how it's often used. People might say something like, "half the people are below average". But if you ask the same person: What's the average of [4,5,9,10,10]? They'd answer 7.6 (after doing the math). This dual meaning creates confusion, and its why, at least those reporting on things, should clarify whether they mean the mean or the median. Similarly, as the old adage goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. People will take advantage of the misperception of "average" and report a mean as "the average", even though it hides the truth. For instance, around here people refer to the "average" income, some number like 50-60k, when the median income is actually around 40k. Or the average government employee salary, when again the median works out to be lower than the mean, which is what they report(here, won't claim mean is always greater than median as it can obviously be skewed either way).
That doesn't absolve those responsible for reporting figures (or misreporting figures) of the responsibility of clarity. Mean and median are often quite distinct, especially in economic and financial figures, and reporting one as the other because it makes the point they're going for is disingenuous.
Another instance of statistics reporting abuse: doing <something> will increase your risk of <something> by <some percent>. It totally ignores that the original odds were so far against it ever happening that that increase may be double the risk or even 5 times, but it's still 1 in a million odds. Since the typical person has little more than a high school level of mathematics, and probably not a statistical course in that, they're easily thrown off by this sort of reporting.
People have the arithmetic mean in mind, but their intuition of "average" is actually the median, or even more commonly the modus.
When somebody says "Average people are X", they usually mean "Most people I've encountered are X", which is the modus. Hell, I just did that in this exact sentence!
I have a friend who defines pulling oneself by the bootstraps: ran away from home in impoverished Texas, lived in homeless sheleters and on the streets until she could be and borrow her way into a lower middle class existence.
She doesn't celebrate Xmas, or any of the social holidays, because they remind her of the home and family she can't interact with any more; every time she has tried visiting home, her relatives and friends try to soak her for all she's worth. They don't want to present to the world - they are just crave the momentary thrill of spending money on frivolous stuff, that they rarely see otherwise, and consequently value out of all proportion.
Er yeah, averages aren't made by half and half, they're made by dividing the sum by the count. It's quite possible to have 90% of the population be below average if the 10% is significantly above the average.
Depends on the average (good lord I can't believe I'm posting this on hacker news). You're talking about the mean, there's also the median which would fit the definition pretty well.
In math, most of the time, mean and average are used to mean the same thing. I will concede that yes, I did mean the mean average, or more properly, if you wish to be pedantic - the arithmetic mean average, instead of just "average".
I don't think I've ever seen a serious maths problem not be specific about the type of average they are referring to. In general speech, all three common types are meant (mode being the usual meaning of "the average/typical person...") and the context usually explains which someone means.
> I will concede that yes, I did mean the mean average
Which is fine, but you were complaining that someone else was wrong even though one obvious interpretation of their statement was correct.
I have never in my time in 8 years of math classes ever heard the term "average" referred to as the median or mode. When median or mode has been meant, it has always been explicitly stated as such. The more vague "average" being left to implicitly reference the arithmetic mean average of "sum total divided by count of values"
You know what I most like about Hacker News though? That instead of bitching about the content of the article, we're busy debating the semantics of mathematical definitions that infer the "average" person's impression of society than caring about the content of the article... that's pretty neat :P
What? That was you! You complained about someone using an ambiguous word to refer to one of its meanings.
> Er yeah, averages aren't made by half and half, they're made by dividing the sum by the count. It's quite possible to have 90% of the population be below average if the 10% is significantly above the average.
I then replied saying that the parent was correct if he meant a specific type of average, subtly implying that you were being ridiculous for complaining about it. Now you're complaining about the thing you did?
One of the hard parts for me to understand about articles like this is the addition of race into a social calculation that may not have included race. If I see somebody I'm hiring has a clean car (one of the examples in the article), I'm not thinking "Great, a black person acting white by having a clean car, I'm hiring her", I'm thinking "Great, a tidy person with a clean car". I see this a lot. Obviously there are people who think the first way and I'd wager almost every person of color deals with these people every day so it's probably hard not to do that. But putting assumptions like that on every social interaction seems problematic to me. But as a white man I of course have absolutely no real sense (outside of reading and friends) of how it is to live as a person of color so what do I know. Just thinking out loud.
Please understand I am just trying to explain a viewpoint, not necessarily state my personal beliefs.
I think the argument is that you won't notice when a white male is tidy. You notice a black person with a clean car because subconsciously you don't expect it. So even a positive thought or comment (a tidy person with a clean car) becomes racial because it would never have come up with a white male.
I know some people think that way, and racialize everything.
I admit that I just don't get this point of view. I really don’t. I aim, and generally succeed, at being as color blind as possible.
To me a person with a clean car and nice clothes is a person with a clean car and tidy clothes. I don't get surprised when that person turns out to be a black female or a white man.
Same thing with a person at the opposite end of the spectrum - i.e. a nasty car and dirty clothes. While one could stereotype blacks in this situation (“ghetto”), or whites (“hillbilly”), why would you do that?
It can still be about race even if you aren't thinking about race when you make that kind of judgment. If you are black and poor, you may not realize that having a clean car is something you will be judged on, and the lack of knowledge might be due to racism. You have to be socialized into middle class culture in order to understand the somewhat arbitrary class signifiers that white people with more power than you care about. Due to poverty, segregation and poor education, you might not get socialized. And if you've spent time around genuine bigots, you might not want to ingratiate yourself to a white culture that you believe hates you just to get a job.
Some of these standards are reasonable on their own. They can become unfair and racist, not because individuals are necessarily bigoted, but due social policies that disadvantage minorities and the poor.
That is one of the most poisonous memes spread by haters who want to drag their peers down to their level, that a black person is "acting white" or a woman "acts like a man", when all they're doing is, in a completely race- and gender-neutral way, working hard and improving themselves.
I read the whole article and do not agree. Here in Silicon Valley the importance of appearances has become marginal. Yes, you have to be clean, presentable, but that's it. After that you need the skills, talent, knowledge and aptitude to perform your job. And you need that everyday, to keep your job, in this hyper-competitive environment.
I was a poor starving immigrant student at one point. I did fine without even mildly expensive clothes, shoes or cars. I've also hired poor resource-less college kids. Anecdotal, but the best workers (in our technical field) were the ones who cared the least about appearances.
Disagree entirely. Silicon Valley is just as superficial as the rest of them, except the points your'e being judged from are a somewhat different set from mainstream society.
In the Valley tech scene (and all tech scenes everywhere) the respect we afford people is heavily influenced by a lot of cultural markers. Access to newfangled gadgetry, neighborhoods we live in, even freaking toe shoes. Don't have the spare time or money to hobnob with other startup types at an expensive trendy bar? Whoops.
We may hire you without these signals, we may be happy with your work. But all else being equal someone as good as you, who presents the correct cultural markers, is going to be afforded a lot more respect and leeway.
The Silicon Valley "meritocracy" is largely a myth. The subculture rejects a lot of mainstream ways of brutally judging people, which is often interpreted as our culture being less judgmental. On the contrary, we simply have formed different ways of brutally judging people. Appearance is everything, tech or otherwise.
Hell, just look at the threads on hiring every time they show up on HN. Lots of people insisting that a candidate must have a fleshed out Github account to qualify - as if activity on Github is the same thing as programming aptitude. Lots of people insisting that side projects are necessary, or participation in open source - as if those things indicate or guarantee aptitude. The brutal ageism we suffer from in this industry is also an indication of just how superficially judgmental we are.
I think your post hits the mark pretty well--I don't live in the Valley, hopefully never will, but the cultural markers are similar in the Boston area.
The one quibble is that I do ask for a Github account and I don't think it's the same sort of marker. It's a skill-based metric first[1], a cultural one a very distant second. Toe shoes don't provide a risk-mitigation signal. A Github profile does: it lets me see what you do. It's not unlike publishing in academia--it gives me a window into what you do, making it easier for me to hire the right person because I know what I'm getting. And I'd rather not hire than hire the wrong person, because hiring the wrong person hurts everyone.
[1] - Yes, it (probably) implies you have side projects and that you're writing open source. You're right about that. But the primary reason I want to see a Github profile is to make sure you can code.
"One of us". It's tribalism. Same applies to logo hoodies, conference t-shirts, and various other things programmers do, deliberately or otherwise, to provide authenticity.
It may have started as simply being too lazy to pick out clothes from the closet, but at this point it's a full-blown subculture, with signals and counter-signals. Notice that if you walk the streets of San Francisco you can spot the tech workers incredibly easily. They're not just dressed down, they're dressed down in an very specific way. Toe shoes is one such way - they've achieved a cult status in our subculture and almost nowhere else.
i must disagree. i have had foot and knee problems my entire life, to the point that i never enjoyed running or doing anything althetic becuase it hurt too badly.
since i started wearing the toe shoes, i learned to become more phsyically aware. my foot pain went away, and now i run regluarly and enjoy it. it's like night and day.
if wearing toe shoes gives people foot problems, it's because they've trained their bodies to wear shoes - and we didn't evolve walking on inch-thick slabs or rubber. our bodies weren't meant for it.
It's probably more because of the running surface in combination with the shoe, than the shoe alone. Using the same logic, our bodies weren't meant to run barefoot on concrete/tarmac for long periods. They're too hard.
I'm speaking from experience here, I bought a pair of vibrams, lost 70 pounds taking up running, and was doing great right up until I broke my metatarsal. Coming up on three years later I had to have surgery, a pin, orthotics, and I still need regular cortisone injections.
Silicon Valley is still somewhat an exception to the rule about appearances. In what other area do the rich people dress exactly like the poorest? Remember the hubbub when Zuckerberg wore a hoodie to a meeting regarding the Facebook IPO. That might be laughed off in Silicon Valley but I know many people in other parts of the country that would view it as insulting for someone to show up to a business meeting wearing something like that.
I don't think we're an exception at all. If anything we just flipped it upside down and called it a day.
In other industries you'd be mocked for wearing a hoodie to work. In this industry we mock you for wearing a suit to work. Hell, show up at most software shops in a pressed shirt and slacks and see what happens. Wear a tie non-ironically and we start assigning labels to you - "MBA", "suit", etc etc.
We've traded one superficial signal for another superficial signal, have no illusions about it. We've spent so long trying to be the anti-mainstream-business that it's no longer about letting people do what they want, and about conforming to the "cool software shop" cultural meme.
I don't think he's trying to be something he's not at all. I think he's trying to be the person he wants to be, and fuck everyone else's opinions on what that should or shouldn't be. At the end of the day, he's the richest guy in America, possibly the world(?), and largely he did that through his own efforts. So who is anyone to tell him what he can and can't do? If he wants to wear a hoodie, he will, if he doesn't, he won't. No amount of gossip and rumour about whose nose he bent out of shape by doing so, or people trying to tell him what he should and shouldn't waear, is going to change that. People like Zuckerberg largely don't give a shit about gossip polls or rumours; and much as I may like or dislike what has been reported on his opinion or policies at Facebook, I can relate to his disdain for being told what to do... and I think truth be told, if everyone in the I.T. industry searched their soul for the truth, they can on some level relate to that. Most people that think for a living tend to have some level of a problem with authority... certainly given Silicon Valley's disdain for suits, I interpret this is more about defiance of societal social rules than trying to be something he's not.
No. I just think it's posturing on his part. He's pretending to be something he's not, so that people see the friendly brogrammer instead of the ambitious "They trust me — dumb fucks" CEO who disregards privacy.
Call me crazy, but maybe he wears hoodies _because they're comfortable_. That's why I do it, and I don't see how making a bunch of money would have any effect on that.
The Buffet-drives-a-Buick school of being rich enough to not care about the social signifiers is, as mentioned in the article, a fully legit way to be filthy rich. Done right, it's a good way to fake being old money.
I always have trouble finding nice fleece sweaters. The best, nicest looking ones I know cost €6 at a common low-end shop. I'd have no problem wearing that if I was a billionaire CEO.
Tech is a weird culture, where the status symbols are totally different. Knowing weird programming languages, having open source contributions, and appreciating nerdy humor are all more important than clothing choice. (Though someone who accidentally wears something too "fancy" might not get taken seriously.)
But for pretty much anything other than "getting a programming job", this essay is pretty much spot on.
I think its important to understand that Silicon Valley practices are not representative of societal trends. The examples the author uses are about going to a welfare office and interviewing for an administrative position at a cosmetology school. Just because one trend doesn't exist amongst a class of wealthy people in San Francisco doesn't mean it doesn't hold elsewhere.
So its fine to disagree with this article but I dont think that the experiences in the current tech age in Silicon Valley do anything to invalidate her experiences at welfare offices in the Mississippi delta.
I agree with you for the most part, but I think the point the author's trying to make is that "poor" people may not see it that way; instead, to them, lavish riches create a sense of belonging.
We live in a culture where Fergie can get up and talk about living a jet set mentality and there are songs on the radio today talking about Maybachs, etc.
Couple that with a lack of education on financial well being, and suddenly you have people making unwise choices.
That's great, but did you notice that the author was talking about completely different than engineers? Surely you've noticed that even within the Valley the sales and marketing people dress up better?
This article is unconvincing at best. She claims that you can only look presentable on a tight budget, which is patently false. You can look classy with affordable items: it only takes a tiny bit of basic fashion knowledge and a little more money than for the K-Mart option.
I've seen plenty of people who bought brand items but used them in a vulgar or trashy way: the result was that you could immediately identify them as poor, defeating the whole purpose of the "investment".
Some researchers have outlined that poverty is debilitating and impairs decision making, but there clearly are some poor people who contribute to their own fate. Advertising is partly to blame, but most of the responsibility rests with them not to buy ludicrous products in the hope of some inchoate recognition from others. Simply accusing the "white male privileged life of the mind" doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
If you're an outsider to a social group, how would you know how to imitate them cheaply and convincingly? Your point about people buying brand items and using them in a "vulgar" way actually just reinforces how hard it can be for poor people to look presentable. They literally don't know what they're doing. And you expect them to dress well in a way that can fit their budget? That's unreasonable.
Firstly, you are dismissisive to the point of bigotry if you ever refer to someone as stupid, I don't care if they are rich or poor.
And while I'm all for personal responsibility and accountability...how many classes in public schools teach things like money and lifestyle management? Home Ec? Pretty sure all I learned there was how to cook and omlette.
This country refuses to blame the parents yet we do nothing to as a society to prepare future generations for the real world. Instead we teach to a bullshit testing standard that has taken the initiative out of the hands of our teachers during a time in history when creativity and drive is so vital to the global economy.
Instead ignorant people post ignorant messages about how some lady with a bunch of kids in a welfare line is sporting a Gucci bag.
Stop trying to stereotype the problem and start trying to look how collectively we can benefit one another through education and understanding.
None of them teach that - at least, no school I've ever heard of. Why? Because that flies in the face of what the school system is set up to produce - productive citizens.
What does that mean? Well, that we contribute to the society that we've created... and that means spending money and buying into capitalism and this system of government we're brainwashed into calling democracy - democrazy is more like it.
The thing that keeps capitalist economies functioning is spending money, when everyone stops spending money, it all falls to pieces. The entire U.S. economy depends on perpetual debt. If they teach money management to people in school, you run the risk that people stop living this lifestyle of perpetual debt and the economy would fail.
So it's unlikely they'll ever start teaching money management or lifestyle management, or anything that flies in the face of the status quo - at least, not in state subsidized schools, because they wouldn't contribute to the continual cycle of craziness that is mandated by society.
The real world is that the rich rule the world and everyone else is groomed to fit into a society that will continue to maintain that status quo. You've got two choices, spend your life swimming upstream and fighting the status quo in the hope that eventually you'll make a significant contribution to its downfall, or fall in line and play the game, but play it better than everyone else.
If you want an easy life, you fall in line and play the game like everyone else. If your morals and ethics don't allow you to be placated and sit by and watch everyone else succumb to the machine, then you're in for a life that's sure to be full of headaches :P
Exactly this. We don't teach what we want people to know as adults, unless you realize many politicians would rather have ignorant populous they can lie to with impunity. We should teach basic economics from early years until they graduate and can't be fooled any more.
I don't mean to be a pedantic jerk, and I'm only mentioning it because I would want to be corrected similarly: I think the word you meant to use was 'populace', not 'populous'.
Anyone who wants to "belong" to a league of people who would waste 2500$ on a handbag IS stupid. Whether they are poor or not is immaterial. It is also a huge leap to say that being "presentable" is the same as wasting money you do not have on status symbols. They aren't the same thing.
You're assuming there's no derived benefit from belonging to that league of people, but she makes the case that there is a benefit (or benefits) to it, despite admitting it's kind of lame.
It's not the strongest argument, I'll give you that, but I wouldn't know.
I am not making that assumption really; people that are able to really provide someone with benefits, whether it is knowledge, capital, power etc, would scoff at, and see right through the 2500$ handbag. My point being, either 1. you think you can access a level of person that will help you out by owning a 2500$ handbag (stupid) or 2. That there is a group of people that will allow you into their social sphere because you own a 2500$ hand bag, in the end people who think like this in that social sphere, will not be able to do anything for you.
The price of membership is not a $2500 hand bag. It's having a certain level of presentability. The author makes a poor choice by conflating these two. One can be presentable without blowing a limited budget. But spending 10-25% of your annual take home on a hand bag is, simply, poor decision making.
Another one of these "I'm a member of special group that you can never understand. We are put down by other groups. I am going to emote a bit to make you feel guilty." I hate these things because they defy honest feedback. Instead, it's jump on the bandwagon or be called names. So I'm calling bullshit on this general type of article on HN. Having said that, I find this article as good as any of the example of the genre.
Remember, this article is about poverty. As such, it fails miserably to make its case. Yes, people buy things to socially signal. Yes, many poor people buy expensive status symbols.
But there's a lot to be said for attitude. Most of life is just showing up and having a positive attitude -- far more than what kinds of boots you're wearing or how much you spent on your coat. Yes, like most people I'll happily make spot judgments within about 5 seconds of seeing you. But those judgments are not based on fashion. They're based on hygiene, facial expression (are you happy? That makes me happy), demeanor, and body language.
A much better social signal is elimination of dialect, as the author mentions. Every culture has a "high" language and several medium or low languages. So get rid of that deep southern dialect if you want to make a good impression. Costs nothing. Instead of spending a lot on an expensive suit, pick up something wearable at the local Goodwill store. Practice entering a room, walking, sitting down, and chatting in front of a video camera.
Social signalling is just the way we're made. But it doesn't have a damned thing to do with being poor. Or rather the signal in this case is easily gamed in very cheap ways. At least for purposes of getting out of poverty. Obviously, if you're selling stocks, the game is played at a different level. But even then, there are lots of tactics that don't involve writing big checks.
In short, don't be a putz. Instead, cultivate inside of yourself something of real value, and make sure that the things that you have and do allow that to shine through.
Article strikes me as too much rationalization and not enough reflection. To one person, a $2500 bag may signal that you're middle class. To another, it may signal you're really bad with financial decisions. I don't think that argument that it's a survival mechanism really holds as it's really speculative and not supported by any data.
I cannot speak to the gendered or racial points (white male, here), but during my time in NYC I experienced first hand the escalation of opportunity that tracked with my escalation of signaling clothing and accessories.
I was lucky enough to be poached from my job as a movie theater cleaner/attendant by the manager of a 5th Avenue Kenneth Cole. At the time I was struggling and would eventually end up temporarily homeless, and I didn't have the clothes required to work at the store. The manager insisted I at least have 1 clean, all black outfit that was brand new. I went to H&M and did exactly what the author here describes, I skipped meals to afford it. I paid my share of the rent late, but I got the outfit and I started the job.
Given the opportunity, I started to excel and as we were paid commission, my financial outlook started to improve, but I was still in serious debt and couldn't get enough hours to get over what seemed like an endlessly far away threshold of financial stability. Right before Christmas we had a regional manager come in and watch us work for a few days, as he was leaving he gave me ~$200 of "KC Cash" which was used to reward talented employees. I could use it, with my discount, to buy things we sold. I was so excited because it meant I'd be able to buy Christmas presents for my family.
Instead, my manager insisted I buy clothes and accessories for myself so I would be more presentable in the store. I went along with his demand and bought myself a couple outfits and a nice leather portfolio messenger bag, and gave my family nothing for the holidays, which they all understood.
In January, commissioned sales on moderately high end clothing drops off dramatically, as did my hours. Suddenly the threshold of stability vanished into the distance again and I needed to make a change. I wanted 40 hours, I had been without health insurance for a couple of years, and I wanted the chance to pay down my debts and move forward with my life. I started asking around and applying to office jobs for which I had no experience and no degree.
I landed an interview at a data processing company and I wore my Kenneth Cole clothes, I had a copy of my resume that a friend put together on their computer tucked into my KC Messenger bag. And when I was hired for a job I knew nothing about and had no prior experience with, it was from a pool of applicants who weren't signaling their status as strongly as I was. I remember how confident I felt, sitting in their lobby with a dozen other people around me, none dressed as well, and the few who tried not having items of the same quality.
As I've developed more marketable skills (graphic design, web dev, etc.) I've been able to signal less, but the article struck a chord with me. I remember going hungry to get the better job, skipping the christmas gifts for family to get the clothes my job required and that eventually let me get my foot in the door to a better life.
I'm also a white male and reading the article I kept thinking "The requirement for speaking and dressing well doesn't have anything to do with your skin color." The old adage about dressing for the job you want is true for everyone. I'm not suggesting that people of various colors, or women, or gays, or whatever other group does not face a greater degree of difficulty in these areas, but if you want to be one of the ducks, you gotta walk, talk, and act like a duck.
It might not be related to skin color, but it is related to being poor. Or appearing poor, versus appearing respectable.
I also think it depends a lot on the job. Jobs just above the low-end might have a stronger interest in filtering out the supposed low-lifes, than a job that requires a good education before you can even be considered. I can dress however I like, partially because the dress code for coders isn't terribly strict, and partially because my CV sells me much better than any suit could possibly do.
On the other hand, maybe I would be able to get a better job if I wore a suit. But because my income is good enough, I can afford to ignore jobs that require nice clothes. But if you're poor, every step up is a step away from poverty, and you can't afford to ignore that.
As for skin color, I think black people are still much more strongly associated with poverty than white people, so for them, avoiding the appearance of poverty might still be more important than for a white person of similar wealth. Anything to dodge the stigma.
You've hit the nail on the head. This is why I don't get when people say that, for want of a better term, geek culture is hostile to group X, when really, if you want to be or be accepted by "geeks" then it's on you to fit in, same as it would be in any profession with a strong culture. Want to be a lawyer and dress like a slob? Good luck with that. Want to be a tree surgeon but hate heights...?
I like wearing suits. I like the tailoring. I like wearing shirts and ties. I'm glad I get the opportunity to do so. I strongly agree that if you like wearing the clobber you feel good doing so, and that helps with confidence, especially in interview situations.
There is some antipathy among a few HN readers about people who wear suits, so I guess there's some important cultural differences.
> I paid my share of the rent late,
A minor point. In the UK it is very important to try to pay rent above any other debt (apart from anything from courts).
Non payment of rent is one of the easiest ways for a landlord to evict a tenant.
Non payment of utility bills is, if you must not pay something, better.
Regarding the rent, since he says "share", it sounds like he had roommates at that time. He probably wasn't stiffing the landlord, but was in fact asking his friend/roommate if he could "pay him back" that portion of rent a couple weeks later once he had his situation together.
That's precisely right, though it was more of a "I know Doug pays the rent for all, then we cut him checks, I'm going to make sure I'm not around the apartment for a few days until I get a paycheck" sort of thing :\
I spent many years having a very difficult time admitting when I needed help and asking for it, instead I would duck and dodge and keep spinning the plates as fast as I could to keep things together.
that's interesting! As the comment that followed yours says - I was sharing payments with roommates, so I was late paying them, rather than the landlord.
That said, I say its interesting because my experience in the states, especially my hears in Massachusetts has been starkly opposite. It is incredibly difficult to evict someone, even for non-payment. That said, I've never missed a rent payment to an actual landlord, so I've never put the system to the test.
Parents and siblings. And that actually brings up an entirely other privilege I had at that time. When I first got my job at the movie theater, I was asked by nearly every floor employee how many kids I had. I was one of only a handful who were yet to have children, despite all of us being ~18-26. I can't guess how restricted I would have been in my mobility if I had children to think of at that time.
Oh god, take this 'privilege' stuff back to Tumblr. Not having kids isn't privilege, it's choice.
Edit because I don't want this comment to come off too aggressively: you sullied a perfectly nice set of comments and truly interesting anecdote about your life by discounting it as privilege. Since when are wise choices privilege?
Hi! Thanks for going around to all the poor families and explaining to teenagers proper family planning and sexual education, making sure that all birth controls methods are both used and failproof, and guaranteeing that no one is coerced into carrying out a pregnancy due to cultural beliefs.
It's good to know all of these things are choices. It makes it a lot easier to be condescending and close-minded about the shit others go through.
I think your privilege — and lack of awareness thereof — is showing...
Re: your edit, it's not the choices that are privilege, but all too often, the opportunity even to make them. As a white male, I have choices, and opportunities to make them, that women and non-white people simply don't. That's privilege: not what you do with the choices you do have, but the choices you have available to you.
Again, you're misunderstanding the nature of privilege. Having the choice of whether or not to have children at — or after — 18 is a privilege. There are parts of the world (arguably, even parts of the US) where young women don't get that choice, whether through (lack of) education, (lack of) access to contraception, forced marriage, or otherwise, those women have had that choice taken from them.
To have the choice is the privilege, not whether or how it's exercised.
He didn't. Calling it privilege didn't discount it to me, and I doubt it discounts it to those who have a basic understanding of privilege. I found it respectful that he was able to recognize it, call it out, and acknowledge its influence on his perspective.
The only person discounting his contribution is you.
I think when you read my comment you may have been reading it with an eye toward whatever story you have of yourself?
I didn't make any wise choices. That one guy, my manager at the Kenneth Cole, made those choices for me. I wanted to get my family gifts instead of getting interview clothes for myself, I would never have even thought to apply to Kenneth Cole, instead I was poached away from a job that paid me so little that I was gathering leftover food from the theater floor for meals. And within a year or so of the context of this story, I also found myself worrying that I may have gotten someone pregnant.
What I did have, that I always had, was an outgoing personality and a strong work ethic. The rest of it was a series of chance events and one forceful personality on the part of that manager. I think that maybe the larger connotation of the word "privelege" may be what has rubbed you the wrong way. How about this:
"And that brings up another stroke of luck"
I wasn't out there making wise choices, I was getting lucky, and I when I can ask myself what has allowed me to be lucky, I can learn about myself and the larger context of my life. When I can learn about myself and the larger context of my life, I can better understand and empathize with others.
You give yourself too little credit. I am not discounting luck -- I too have gotten very lucky in my career -- but without good decisions and hard work luck is wasted. You didn't have to accept the job at KC. You didn't have to go along with your boss' demand to spend the money on wardrobe. You didn't have to do well at that job. These are all things you did that nobody forced you to do.
> without good decisions and hard work luck is wasted
I disagree. Luck can go a long way. Ever heard of Paris Hilton? Do you see hard work and good decisions, or simply a big pile of luck?
Or how about me? I'm a fairly successful programmer, making quite a bit of money as a freelancer right now. But I don't work hard, nor did I really make a lot of hard decisions. I just kinda wound up where I am. I just went with the flow. I'm lucky to be blessed with a good brain for programming, and to be born in an academic family that loved computers. My dad and my older brother are programmers, and I just followed the family trade.
There were plenty of other things that I would have liked to do, but all of them would have required a lot more decision and discipline. This was the easy road for me. I wouldn't even know how to apply for a different kind of job.
The only tough step I ever made, was to switch from being a salaried employee to a freelancer. That was seriously a really big and hard step for me, and one that I messed up quite a bit. But miraculously it all worked out tremendously well.
Wow. When you put it that way, you make it sound like he's a soldier obediently following orders. I've never thought of it like that before. I've never thought of wisdom as synonymous with obedience before. ...religion makes a lot more sense now.
He was, in fact, an interesting person, and far more so than I ever gave him credit for at the time. I was actually perpetually oblivious to all the things he was trying to do for me until much later.
In my first 2 weeks working he signed me up to have breakfast with him, one other employee, and Kenneth Cole. Like, the actual guy. He put it on the schedule, but didn't see me in advance of it, and I didn't actually look at the schedule (literally didn't know where we kept it yet) so I missed it. He and the other employee showed up to work where I had been standing outside, freezing, wondering where they were and they couldn't believe I had skipped breakfast with Kenneth Cole.
I couldn't believe he had apparently invited me...he used to pull me aside all the time and critique my sales. I have a very hard time with selling things to people so it always rubbed me the wrong way, and I found it especially frustrating because he never seemed to do it to anyone else.
When I finally quit he fought very hard to keep me, and I just couldn't understand why. He was always critiquing me, and I felt like I was terrible at the job. On that last day he showed me the sales numbers for all of our employees, and it turned out I had the 2nd highest sales. I was flabbergasted.
Cleaning out my locker I asked a girl that I didn't know very well what it was all about, why had he been constantly critiquing me if I had such strong sales? She turned to me and said,
"Don't you get it? You were Joe's little star. He was grooming you."
I did NOT get it. Not at all. About a year later I returned, wanting to see Joe and other old friends. I had realized a handful of things.
First, that Joe poaching me at all was a huge leap of faith.
Second, that the "KC Cash" I got was probably as much his doing as that regional manager and he wanted me to be dressed in our clothes to show me off better to the higher ups.
Third, that our store was a season ahead, which was more important than I realized at the time. We were the smaller store on 5th, and we were meant to showcase what would be coming down the line for the next season. Our customers were more unique as a result, and my private client book (customers you shop for, come in on a day off to dress, etc.) had a couple seriously trendy, affluent people in it.
The job, the clothes, the critique, the breakfast I missed with Kenneth Cole, I didn't see any of it at the time, but I can only imagine what a different life I would be living now had I pursued what Joe was putting in front of me.
I'm not at all disappointed at how things have turned out for me, but it's kind of startling to look back on a major turning point that you were completely oblivious too at the time.
For Joe's part, he wasn't there when I went to visit. I've never talked to him again. Fun fact - he was, I believe, a Philippino B-Boy before coming to NY, and the only person I was still friendly with at KC that day I went to visit implied he had returned home.
On the off chance that he comes across this extended series of comments about my time there, someday - let me say that my memory of all of this is over a decade old now, so I may well be getting some of the bits and pieces wrong.
EDIT: I have an inkling of what he saw in me, now, and I think it is all personality and my genuine joy talking with and sharing my expertise with strangers. It was a huge asset at the time, though I didn't realize it, and something I'm learning to make better use of myself now.
That's very interesting, thank you for the response. Your joy talking with strangers and sharing your expertise with them (exemplified here too) sounds like a very good asset to have, for salesmen and for hackers too.
This is really fascinating, thanks for the post. I also have to add that you were a bit lucky to run into Joe. In my first job (big investment bank) there was too much politics and the only people I could trust (and who somewhat mentored me) were not only from different teams, but the managers of our managers were also different people.
Everyone makes mistakes. No one has perfect knowledge of the future. No one makes all the right choices at every point in their life, especially when they are young (and fertile). And people's economic situations change over time, sometimes for the worse.
The economic freedom to be insulated from poor choices, mistakes, and the vagaries of the myriad uncontrolled factors that we call "life" is a huge privilege.
The article raises a good point, but it also frames the dichotomy as an either-or question.
In other words, is there no middle ground between buying an Hermès Birkin bag and dressing in rags? At least in the US, discount stores plus some fashion sense can compensate to some degree for raw dollars and a personal shopper.
Where I think the upper class pulls away from the lower class is in access to experience at a young age. Except for very rare exceptions, children are of the social class of their parents, and tend to have the experiences associated with that class.
>We could, as my grandfather would say, talk like white folks. We loaned that privilege out to folks a lot.
I think that speaking well, or being articulate, is not a privilege but an ability. It is not an ability that everyone has, but it is an ability that almost anyone can acquire with practice. This is true both in verbal and digital communication.
If you are not articulate, you will be at a disadvantage throughout your life. Period. The color of your skin has nothing to do with it.
Yes, it's important to be articulate. But the author is talking about speaking a different vernacular. I imagine one can be articulate in Black English* without being fluent in White English. "Talk[ing] like white folks" means speaking the same language at all, not merely "speaking well" on some counterfactual continuum.
cuz I been done dat, and you know, like dat idea where, you know, it's like, when I been tryin', but it ain't gud nuff 4 dem, cuz dey white foke be thinkin dat I can't do it when I can!
versus
Because I've done that, and you know, the idea where, I-have-been-trying-but-it-isn't-good-enough, makes them think that I can't do it when I can.
versus
The impression I left with them portrayed a lack of capability, when in-fact, that was not the case. I felt it unfair, that I may have been the recipient of a snap-judgement and to add insult to injury, I did not have the opportunity to re-impress upon them my talent.
A lot of people equate speaking-white with [more-]proper sentence structure , but the true differentiator in articulative ability is an expansive vocabulary capable of conveying in-intricate-detail or not, the abstract ideas necessary to communicate on a team.
Incredulity reflects how people really believe that other people may, in fact, operate in some sort of rational world. When we think of ourselves, for the most part, we tend to think we would make rational decisions in all circumstances we were faced in, especially those we are NOT in.
Irrationality of consumers is great for the retail economy, though, and while it defies years of economic logic, behavioral economics has been in the spotlight for many things these days, more so than simple rational-consumer theory.
(perhaps it's simply the logic of smart poor people in a stupid/deranged society?)
The marketing machine behind many brands is highly effective at establishing "status". The marketers place their products across multiple media platforms and those around you simply cannot escape its reach.
While I agree that $2500 on a purse is ridiculous, some less expensive brand signalling across multiple pieces of clothing might be equally effective. I am reminded of this experiment using the Lacoste and Hilfiger logos: http://www.economist.com/node/18483423
I think one of the hardest systems to break out of is that of the "vicious cycle". It's very challenging when outputs feed into each other like that.
What I remember about being poorer is that vicious cycles are far more common when you are poor. You need the used car to be able to get to the job that will give you the money to afford the used car. The struggles of poverty are full of cycles like that.
The only way to break out of a vicious cycle is to shock the system, which tends to mean an asymmetric infusion of force - in poverty's case, that is usually the form of cash (or debt). It's the sort of action that is traumatic, and it often looks like it doesn't make sense. It's usually a short-term pain in exchange for the hopes of long-term improvement. "Breaking the cycle" is usually a traumatic, difficult action.
Now, I don't know much about buying a $2500 purse - it's hard to defend something so specific. But I do know that the forces that break cycles can look ridiculous or shameful in some way. A sudden windfall that you didn't "deserve", accepting help from a stranger in a way that feels humiliating, being selfish in a way that is not accepted in your social circle, showing "status", etc.
I am just reluctant to judge those choices from the outside, because I firmly believe that the poor have to deal with these cycles more than people of means, and that sometimes it takes a desperate act to break out of them.
The other day, I was hanging out with my uncle, who is a devoted hi-fi nut.(like tubes and lps and voodoo cables kinda hi-fi nut) He took me to a fellow 'enthusiasts' home who has spent the kind of money on a hi-fi system that I couldn't see happening even if I were a multi billionaire. This guy had the $160,000 US msrp(though he got them at the bargain price of only $60,000 plus a trade of some other equipment) Focal Grande Utopia EM(for electro magnet being used on the subwoofer) http://www.focal.com/en/utopia-iii/184-grande-utopia-em-3544...
He also had 750watt tube amps that were approximately 3x3 cubes on his floor and surprisingly for being valve amps of that magnitude didn't create the heat of the sun. He had a dedicated power circuit installed by the utility company so that he could separately condition and wire everything to use only the best 10,000 dollar cables available.
While this guy was certainly well off, his home probably more than doubled in value when he took that stereo inside the front door. He was retired and didnt need a large home, and this was an older 2500-3000 sq ft home in Dallas.(which is still somewhat reasonable per sq ft, compared to say silicon valley)
This guy was SOO proud of his stereo, that he has listening parties every tuesday night to show it off. Sure it sounded good, but as I said, even if my last name was Gates, Buffett or Zuckerberg I dont think that would ever be on my radar as a purchase decision. In many ways I think this persons stereo and an indigent person buying a 2500 dollar purse are the same impulse. Both seem horribly frivolous, but who are we to judge really??
The clear dividing line is - can the person truly afford it?
If a person spends an absurd amount of money that he has (i.e. that he actually earned and saved) on something that seems crazy to most people, that's OK - he's making a personal choice with personal funds (i.e. hi-fi enthusiast man)
On the other hand, a person with a minimum wage job making the decision to buy a $2500 purse out of some speculation that it will help her make the jump to the next level? Frankly, that just seems foolish. Why not take $200 for a purse, $200 for a new suit?
It’s not the shopping for image and upward mobility that bothers people - that decision actually makes some sense.
The problem arises when that shopping crosses the line from reasonable spending that a person can afford and/or justify, into a place that’s completely insane and truly unaffordable.
There is a difference between investing money in quality goods as tools & means of improving one's condition, vs. squandering money in luxury goods with no reasonable expectation of return on the expense. The author points directly at this difference without recognizing it.
I read the first half of this piece as a (strong) case against the administrative discretion and power of the bureaucracy. The second half seems to be a rather sad and puzzling anecdote, whose ramifications I do not fully comprehend.
I don't care if someone has a $2,500 handbag. It's whether or not they have a $1 attitude or a $2,500 attitude - that I care about and primarily judge people on.
The author's mother had the right attitude (the determination) to help her neighbor. I know several people who can get things done and get what they want. They aren't rich or buy expensive things, they just have the determination to get an answer, find the right person, discover the right process, etc.
I think the author associated correlation with causation.
There is a good deal I disagree with in the post, and there is one point that I think is missing.
Most of us on HN have usually lived in a world with a margin of security, where $1 saved at the end of the week might be $1.05 this time next year. Below a certain level of security, that's not something one can count on. It could just be another $1 swept away in the next disaster. Someone who has seen enough bust cycles will likely get into the habit of spending it while it's there.
The old chestnut, "Fake it till you Make it" comes to mind.
In some cases this can be helpful, ie pretending to follow the Champions League to get along with the fellows in the office, but following this as a blueprint for life can hurt much more than it helps with tons of unintended consequences(over spending, loss of your true identity, being a liar.....)
One of my mentors, the late David Crane FAIA, clearly articulated how to understand what poor folks want. They want the same things as folks who ain't. Better than nothing, starving and shivering aside, means the same to them as it does to me.
Only it couldn't because that's not even close to what the article was saying.
It was pointing out that looking the part gives opportunities which might otherwise be closed. Therefore spending your meagre savings buying fancy clothes can be seen as an investment.
I'm not addressing the validity of the article's point vs yours, but the summary was not correct.
An equally good question is why to poor people vote republican? Because they want to belong. And through financial osmosis people who vote republican become rich, right? That is the thinking anyway.
why to poor people vote republican? Because they want to belong. And through financial osmosis people who vote republican become rich, right? That is the thinking anyway.
This is needlessly insulting tripe. Poor people vote Republican because they believe in the platform that the Republican party states they support as they understand it.
Just like the reason people vote for the Democratic party.
It's all based on a mix of imperfect understanding of imperfect honesty.
You have an interesting profile as well:
HN has become a very negative site as of recent. I see no place for me to contribute here. From now on I will not be posting or submitting
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." -- John Steinbeck
I don't generally support socialism, but your statement is completely wrong. What about Scandinavia and Germany? What about worker's rights? The US itself has plenty of measures which were deemed socialist years ago[1] but are now so common that we take them for granted.
[1] Note that socialism designates a vast array of different ideologies and its meaning is continually evolving. It certainly did not mean the same thing in Steinbeck's time as it does today.
I consider myself poor, and although I vote for a third-party I do vote against programs that would help me financially. I do so because I consider them unfair to others and poor government, so on principle, I vote against my own financial interests at times.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
-- John Steinbeck
Although I do not actually support socialism, I think this quote is one interesting take (of many) on the problem you've outlined.
Edit: looks like someone beat me to it by one minute.
"Lower-income and less educated whites also have shifted substantially toward the Republican Party since 2008. The GOP has largely erased the wide lead Democrats had among white voters with family incomes less than $30,000." [0]
Although the graphs on [1] tell a slightly different story.
The gist of it is the "religious right" got in bed with all the big money/exploit-the-world old white men.
Then, messaging to voters becomes "I LOVE GOD!" instead of "All your money flows up to me." The "poor people vote republican" line of thought follows from people believing poorer/more-religious people vote only on religion above all else without regard for how much their representatives also want to exploit/maim/kill/cancer them.
Recent evidence doesn't entirely support that conclusion, but it makes for a convenient story.
What we end up with is the representatives not keeping up to date with reality. The reps stay "god god god religion god god jesus" while the world drifted more to "Uh, actually everything is pretty okay. Just stay out of our way." You can see that effect in southern "we hate all the gays" politicians while most real people don't want oppression/repression/persecution of them at all.
But—to get your way—all you have to do is scaretivate (scare+motivate) a small vocal base into voting for your overton candidate. (See: 2004 GWB election where "kill the gays" was set as a constitutional amendment in a dozen states along with "Vote for GWB!" — Drag the crazies out to vote for their delusional pet social bigot issue while also catapulting your candidate pet back to victory (well, victory against a droning sedated sloth, but victory nonetheless))
I don't know the statistics off hand but I remember reading that there were poor counties in the US in which Romney did not receive a single vote. So yea I'm not sure what context OP is referring to.
You need to keep reading the ballot! There are usually at least one "alternative" candidate who doesn't represent the Democrats or Republicans.
I didn't even agree with the Libertarian candidate on many things but I voted for them to satisfy my right and responsibility to vote while not endorsing the Single Party we have here in the US.
Among the Religious Right in the US, it's very largely manufactured. Meaning: groups of people very deliberately chose two key issues (abortion and gay marriage) and created opposition movements where there weren't any before. A number of authors trace this, but you could try Randall Balmer for starters.
It's a mostly tacit agreement between a relatively small group of career rabble rousers and carpet-bagging politicians, building 'issues' to root their respective industries in.
If I had to put myself in a poor Republican voter's shoes, maybe I vote Republican because I'm too proud to admit that I need help lifting myself out of the shithole of my life. Maybe I don't want to be pandered too by the Democrats because I am working my ass off and I can't seem to catch a break. Maybe I don't want to be where I am today, but I don't know how to be somewhere else tommorrow.
I've known a lot of people in bad situations and most of them where hard working men and women that take nothing for granted.
The ones that do...well when you reduce the budget of a welfare system to the point where every dollar HAS to go to those in need, you don't leave a whole lot to oversight and investigation of fraud.
There is a big fallacy with the reasoning behind this article. I grew up in impoverished areas (both the inner city, and in rural areas) with the typical high minority population. I have observed a LOT of poor people and their spending habits. Here are my thoughts.
(I am not disputing the claim of the author's story and that experience, I am merely pointing out that his example is not the case most of the time.)
It is true that a very small minority of people dress and talk nicely because they realize that they will be treated better by the middle and upper class. Now in this group, some spend lavish amounts of money (like in the article), and some shop at thrift stores and/or buy knock off designer purses, belts, ETC. This fact alone blurs the argument that the author is presenting. It is very possible (and proven so) to live in poverty in America and dress well by choosing alternative resources.
The other (and more devastating) counter argument that applies to other poor people is merely by observation of what the status symbols that many in these groups purchase.
Let me use the example that was laid out in the article. The typical poor black women/man in a white world scenario. Well then why do the majority of poor black men and women who make expensive status symbol purchases look ghetto and drive "ghetto" cars? I don't mean beat up and worn out clothes and cars, I mean the style of clothing/jewelry and pimped out cars. These same people aren't talking "nicely" either. Their heavy use of Ebonics/Redneck/Slang and constant expletives while wearing their gold chains, starter athletic jerseys and Le-Brons (expensive basketball shoes) ETC. Tell a different story. They are seeking status among their piers, not the middle/upper class that they envy. They are not doing it to help them work their way up economically. It is in fact keeping them down. How are they better off overall now? They could have saved that money and invested it on going to school or moving to an area of better geographic opportunity. Now instead they just look like more expensively dressed thugs.
My personal belief is that most poor people live for today. They don't have long term goals and plans. They were never taught good habits like saving up money and conveying to the non-minority class that they don't have a ghetto mentality or live in the rap/hip hop culture (during job interviews ETC).
They have no hope, because they have no vision or dreams. All that they typically observe is their small world and the twisted fantasy of television/movies/commercials. Sure, it feels great to go into a department store and feel wealthy for a day, wear expensive things and feel better about yourself, but most poor people buying designer status symbols - this is what it is really all about. Living a fantasy with no real benefit to their actual social, economic, or productive member of society status.
"Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon."
This myopic focus seems to be more common on technology forums than elsewhere. I am interested as to why this is the case. Probably, a technical education lends itself well to analyzing the validity of individual details but not reasoning at a structural level.