Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

This is why I'm not such a huge fan of "but the market wants it" arguments, at least in our current society. The market has high barriers to entry (only one entity can make a Star Wars film, and very few can make a Star Wars-scale film) and is run by people who, evidently, have no idea what they're doing, and are still profitable and have no need to seek maximum profit. Their own jobs and raises are not threatened by the possibility that they could have been ten times more profitable, because there's no way for their bosses to know that. Rey action figures aren't on the market, so there are simply no numbers for how profitable it would be.

Same goes for startups. Given the barriers to entry in the software business, which are low but still very much nonzero (hence the need for VC), and given that VC can't fund all the possible ideas that want to enter, what's in the market is what non-consumer participants have decided in their wisdom that consumers will probably like. Which may well be very profitable, but is unlikely to maximize profit.

Which leads to a simple reply to PG's claim, "When you accuse Silicon Valley of x, you're implicitly saying x works well, which doesn't seem smart if you're against x." No, I'm implicitly saying that x works rather poorly, because Silicon Valley works rather poorly and is still profitable. It could be much more profitable.

Here's the money quote (literally):

> "maintain the sharp boy/girl product division"

You're assuming what they're doing is unprofitable and irrational. But a majority of families with two or more children have children of opposite sexes and a cultural taboo against different sexes sharing the same toys means parents need to buy more toys. It isn't hard to believe that this strategy is profitable on net.

So it's really showing the other thing -- not that the market isn't efficient, but that it can be efficient/profitable for the market to be sexist.

But that makes the analogous thing in tech that boys are encouraged to be programmers and girls are encouraged to be nurses. Which is a thing that happens predominantly in schools and at home and it isn't clear how the software industry would be a beneficiary of that -- which is perhaps why we hear many calls to do something about it. The profit-seeking behavior is to change it.

“So it's really showing the other thing -- not that the market isn't efficient, but that it can be efficient/profitable for the market to be sexist.”

“The market” is not some natural occurring phenomenon, but rather a complex mix of political and ethical choices.

It is our responsibility to be acutely aware of this and make “the market” accountable to our cultural aspirations.

That is, we must use whatever tools available to make “the market” not profitable when it encultures sexism or is overtly sexist. Find the people responsible behind these decisions and make it clear to them, and the companies that enable and protect them, that it is absolutely unacceptable.

The solution is simple: vote with your wallet. Encourage others to do the same.

The idea that all things should be reduced down to a quantization of money is a chunk of the toxic rhetoric that led to this.

We could apply the same hollow catch phrase to the election of government and reveal how ultimately toxic the trope is.

Quote from article, that brings up the trope:

“For far too long, fans searching for merchandise of their favorite female characters have been told that the onus is on their wallets. “Buy the toys that are out there,” the message has echoed, even as fans scour the unyielding shelves for a green-skinned assassin, a black-clad Avenger — and now a fearless young woman who hums with the power of the Force.

It is time to reverse the conversation. Toy and merchandise companies must stop taking a character’s gender into consideration when including them in products. Put Gamora with the rest of the Guardians. Leave Black Widow on her motorcycle. And when Star Wars: Episode VIII finally arrives, don’t make us ask “Where’s Rey?””

Yes, it'd be nice if we could be heard for more than our money.

But these people only listen to money, and even when they listen to people, there will always be someone who only listens to money.

The theoretical beauty of capitalism is that it uses greed against itself; in theory, the best way to become rich is to make something truly valuable. In practice, we're pretty easy to manipulate and we've unwittingly ensured the destruction of the very parts of capitalism that make greed work for its pay.

So yes, we do need to vote with our wallets, and we need to do it ASAP, because it'll only get worse if we keep buying it.

My recommendation would be to buy every goddamn Rey toy you can find. That'll make it clear that Rey is what sells. A broad boycott won't tell them anything, other than "we're angry".

We can vote with our cultural ethics.

Putting this on the front page of HN so that other media outlets pay attention is one such technique.

Conversely, by voting with wallets, we show support for the very minds that enabled and legitimized this toxic decision.

One, HN is not something I expect most media outlets notice.

Two, short of a march held in front of Mattel's doorstep (or the doorstep of whoever refuses to make Rey toys), voting with "cultural ethics" is not going to be noticed by the kind of person who says "no boy will want a toy with a girl on the front".

Three, "cultural ethics" is a vague term in and of itself. Are you referring to the culture of expecting boys to like boys' toys? Or are you talking about taking that culture and replacing it with another? What's the difference between cultural and personal ethics, and if personal ethics exist, then how do cultural ethics have an effect?

Fourth, voting with our wallets beats the corps at their own game. By consciously deciding to only pay for products that fit our ethics, we force companies to follow our ethics (or, at least, the ethics of the masses). If we do not buy, they don't make money, so what we buy directly affects their decisions.

Finally, I don't understand the "toxic" label you keep using. What is toxic about it? An idea can't be poison; ideas do not inherently do anything. Only actions can be harmful--or helpful. Voting with our wallets is only as toxic as the thing we decide to vote for.

But that's only one way of interacting with the market, and not clearly the most effective one. Writing news articles and opinion pieces is another. Tweeting hashtags is another. Writing letters to companies is another. Getting jobs at companies is another.

As mentioned in another comment on this thread, "vote with your dollars" doesn't work when there aren't any other candidates on the ballot, making it a relatively ineffective approach in this case.

it is absolutely unacceptable to you. Should people who believe that anything other than their specific branch of Christianity amounts to Satanism force their view on "the market" as well? What do you mean by "our" cultural aspirations? Are you talking in the royal We, or so you have a mouse in your pocket?

What you're actually saying is that you want some outcome other than what the market, which absolutely is a naturally occurring phenomenon despite your beliefs, has produced. And, like everyone else who wants to force their own outcomes, you propose to do so based on a view of morality that you want imposed on everyone else.

The market is the result of a multitude of people making their own independent judgements and decisions about the value and desirability of goods and services. That's it. Anything that interferes with it to produce specific outcomes isn't "shaping", "influencing", or even "interfering" in the market. It's an attempt to replace the market, and thus the right of other people to act on their own judgement, with something else.

Whatever that something else is, it's not a civilized society.

Right.

Giving female characters the same exposure as male character, and equally, giving women equal voice as men, is exactly like a faith based decision making process. Perfect analogy.

“What you're actually saying is that you want some outcome other than what the market, which absolutely is a naturally occurring phenomenon despite your beliefs, has produced”

The market, again, is not some natural occurring phenomenon. It is steered by culture and the existing power dynamics within it. That includes pervading issues of sexism, classism, racism, and countless other facets that shape it.

If you do not believe this, you are ignoring at least fifty years of sociology.

Further, if this concept were so alien, so outrightly crazy, so radical, the chances that it would be getting any attention at all is unlikely.

Everyone cites profit, profit, profit as what makes Market Capitalism work, but even more important than profit is competition. Disney owns an intellectual property monopoly on the Star Wars universe. If the Star Wars toy lines have a ginormous blind spot and completely ignore the huge market of female consumers, then no one else can fill that gap--no one else can compete. The only recourse consumers have is to complain on social media, blogs, and in the news and hope the corporate overlords deem their consumer demands worthy of fulfilling.

Monopolies completely undermine capitalist economies. We see the same thing with utilities, where one company has a regional monopoly on the electric grid, internet service, or water, consumers suffer from the lack of competition. So the government steps in to regulate.

I'm not saying the government should regulate the Star Wars universe to ensure female consumer demands are met, people should instead flock to science fiction/fantasy universes that meet their needs, but--as you note--those other universes don't have the corporate backing to get films into theaters. I enjoy Star Wars and Star Trek, but after 40 and 50 years of playing around in these mythoses, I would really like to see new worlds explored more deeply by the mass public.

First, I'd like to mention that The Expanse is pretty damn good hard sci-fi.

Secondly, the main problem of making scifi flicks is their cost. The Expanse is getting a TV series because George R.R. Martin is backing it and the books sold amazingly well.

You'll need a pretty big Kickstarter to match that.

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