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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

Yes what I think is fascinating is that the younger generation is usually the one to virtue signal about the environment, equity, labor conditions, capitalism etc., but none of that matters when you can get "cheap stuff for cheap".

It fully exposes the hypocrisy of it all.

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I disagree with your analysis. The younger generation is genuinely concerned with those issues. However we live in a culture which has so long suppressed any discussion of where our products come from that no discussion of this is part of our normal lives. If younger people buy fast fashion it’s because they are young and they haven’t learned how the world fully works yet. But also young people are not a monolith and I’m sure a good percentage of the youth do understand the harms from fast fashion.

The desire to get things for cheap is deeply rooted in American and western culture and simple claims of hypocrisy don’t do justice to the pervasiveness of these ideas.

Young people also aren't rich, and live amongst the awful rent seeking economy built by those who came before. So it's not hypocritical to want to buy cheap, it's an unfortunate necessity. Also, the whole point of the push to make sustainability a mainstream concern is so that 'all those awful young people' can afford to buy sustainably produced products. Right now, unsustainable enterprises get to externalize the environmental costs on everyone else, and thus make sustainable & quality goods extremely pricey. It's a tax on morality - so let's eliminate that first and then point fingers about hypocrisy.

>However we live in a culture which has so long suppressed any discussion of where our products come from that no discussion of this is part of our normal lives.

It's also not our jobs. If something is so destructive that I have an obligation to boycott it, it should be illegal. It's the government's job to create and enforce sensible policies to protect the innocent. That's why they take a third of my paycheck.

But they've largely abrogated that responsibility, with a lot of help from corrupt businesses. Now it's my job to ensure not too many child slaves were harmed in the making of my T-shirt.

> It's also not our jobs.

> Now it's my job

I think the reality is, it has always been up to us. Collective action is important but we need to understand when the status quo is insufficient and act accordingly. Certainly I agree government action would be very helpful here, requiring accountability and living wages, but these structures are always vulnerable to abuse by the powers that be.

People should do the right thing no matter what. "Not my job" is not a valid excuse for supporting slavery. But not everyone is equally culpable. The people who shirked their duties are worse than those who failed to pick them up.

A quick Google search shows that there are 2.3 billion people between ages 20-39 years. Even if we make a generous assumption that Shein has 100 million users within that group, that's still around 4% of the total population. So, your thought is not really as "insightful" as you wished it to be.

Most people are hypocrites. That's one reason we choose to bind ourselves with laws. The fact that everyone is individually inclined to go against their values is an argument for collective action.

Maybe it's possible that X% of the "younger generation" cares (rather than your dog whistle "virtue signals") about the environment, equity, labor conditions, capitalism etc. while another X% likes buying cheap stuff. There's no hypocrisy at all when you understand that the "younger generation" consists of more than one person.

Any annoyance I might have had at the "dog whistle" that is the term "dog whistle" goes right out the window when I see the group logic fallacy pointed out.

My entire life is "well sure, some boomers..." and "who specifically believes that?".

True, I really didn't need to use the term "dog whistle" there as the GP was pretty much outing themselves with the entire post. To decide that one entire group holds exactly the same opinion requires either a pre-existing distaste for that group or a complete lack of critical reasoning.

People who complain about "virtue signaling" are nearly always ridiculous. They try to deflect criticism of their own moral failings with vague insinuations of hypocrisy. They mock children for actually holding the values our society claims to teach them. They virtue signal about how much they hate virtue signaling, yet ignore that the most spectacular virtue signaling comes from their "side". Like this:

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...

That doesn't make it a dog whistle. Everyone knows that accusing someone of virtue signaling is accusing them of being a champagne socialist. The meaning is not hidden.

This is a dog whistle:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/02/15/we-must-secure-border-an...

Most people won't recognize the riff on the Fourteen Words, but those who do will recognize the call for genocide.

> the younger generation is usually the one to virtue signal about the environment, equity, labor conditions, capitalism etc., but none of that matters when you can get "cheap stuff for cheap".

I really doubt these are the same group...

"virtue signal" is incredibly hand wavy

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