Random Fashion Thoughts (Part 3: Style farmer strikes back) - our general discussion thread

[dieworkwear]

This sounds great and all, but is the reality not that the few times citizens vote, the candidates they're voting for have hard-line stances that align with their parties and what is expected of them? In that situation there is no room for subtleties of thought or critical thinking, just if it fits your current bias or if somehow in the meantime your prior bias was able to be swayed. People seem to get committed to certain issues and vote for that, regardless of the repercussions in other aspects of policy.

That's true. No policy is going to solve all the issues, but I think better education would help move the needle.

In the 2016 general election, just within registered GOP voters, those with college degrees were more likely to defect from the party than those without. That was largely because they actually cared about certain issues, such as free trade or liberal norms. They didn't just vote along party lines. There were a lot of single-issue voters who stayed with the GOP (both with and without college degrees), but also a lot of confusion and misinformation that was just ... bad. And I think that's made worse when media is decentralized, people have distrust in institutions, and there are conspiratorial theories everywhere. Some of that would have been better if people were just better educated and exposed to a broader range of subjects in school.

Maybe put another way: if policy preferences were set at the top and enforced on down through party lines, we wouldn't have seen the tremendous shifts in party alignments over the last few years (starting with the Tea Party). Clearly there's a bit of back and forth -- voters push politicians to move in certain directions, the party then mobilizes voters. I'm totally fine with two-party, center-left, center-right politics. But there are crazy fringes popping out of the wood works these days, conspiracy theories, and a breakdown of institutions that I think is generally bad for the country.

 

[Parker]

I like to read NYT when I want to know what $1.6 million dollar apartments a 22 year old is shopping for or what $400,000 wedding a couple had or what $35,000 vacation everyone is going on. It's a good source of information for these sorts of things.

Hah! So true.

 

[skeen7908]

I like to read NYT when I want to know what $1.6 million dollar apartments a 22 year old is shopping for or what $400,000 wedding a couple had or what $35,000 vacation everyone is going on. It's a good source of information for these sorts of things.

I guess those are things that people who buy $300 shirts and $500 pants would be interested in ?

www.nomanwalksalone.com

 

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]

yesterday, less than an hour after i read the exploration of the free instagram watch thing ( http://www.jennyodell.com/museumofcapitalism_freewatch.pdf ) i found one at my mom's house. she said my sister had found it at a thrift store. i guess i gotta ask my sister what she paid for it.

 

[mmmargeologist]

People vote on the issues that matter most to them. Incontrovertible truths like climate change just don’t move the meter of most down home folks. I think the rise of trump and sanders, and even May and Corbyn are evidence that inequality is beginning to take its toll. It’s short sighted to call the proletariat stupid because they value things differently than a bunch of dudes who can spend thousands of dollars a year on silly clothes they don’t need.

No one is arguing that trade schools are the same as a Harvard education. One should never be compared to the other. However I don’t see how the adoption of trade schools is competitive with the idea of a more educated society. If trade schools were embraced, then those who are less scholastic will have more options than being funneled into university. The benefits of which would include less student debt, a higher return on educational investment, and a higher standard at the universities.

A skilled labor force motivates the labor market to hire more people, to increase wages for equivalent work, and results in higher quality goods. Higher quality goods also incentivizes the marketplace to buy American goods, mitigating the effect of globalization without creating a trade war (again, see: Germany).

When wages are no longer stagnating and job satisfaction is better, people will stop voting solely on those issues.

 

[whorishconsumer]

yesterday, less than an hour after i read the exploration of the free instagram watch thing ( http://www.jennyodell.com/museumofcapitalism_freewatch.pdf ) i found one at my mom's house. she said my sister had found it at a thrift store. i guess i gotta ask my sister what she paid for it.

"Urban warrior". Ew.

This would bolster Fuuma's comment that critical discourse has degraded to the point where we're just analyzing pop culture - or in this case, social media. (Although, Fuuma also linked to a PoMo dissertation that opens with quotes from Foucault and Baudrillard). Object analysis can be a stimulating exercise, but only in a classroom or, again, over drinks. And its interest-factor is inversely correlated with the number of times the word "capitalism" is used.

Edit: I also used the term "critical discourse". It's a zero-sum game.

 

[conceptual 4est]

I don't want to speak for Fuuma, but I was under the impression that he was saying the current trend of discourse for educated people is focused more on stuff like, I don't know, analyzing a Breaking bad episode and what literary allusions or geopolitical metaphors or whatever it has in it. That "thinking man's pop culture" became one of the main platforms for socialization and any energy towards critical discourse is funneled into that.

 

[conceptual 4est]

I guess those are things that people who buy $300 shirts and $500 pants would be interested in ?

www.nomanwalksalone.com

I don't see why me liking nice clothes means I can't make an intended-to-be-humorous critical look at a newspaper. The weekend (all I ever subscribed to, In full disclosure) is full of fluff! It's beach reading, and that's ok!

 

[whorishconsumer]

I don't want to speak for Fuuma, but I was under the impression that he was saying the current trend of discourse for educated people is focused more on stuff like, I don't know, analyzing a Breaking bad episode and what literary allusions or geopolitical metaphors or whatever it has in it. That "thinking man's pop culture" became one of the main platforms for socialization and any energy towards critical discourse is funneled into that.

Correct.

I don't see why me liking nice clothes means I can't make an intended-to-be-humorous critical look at a newspaper. The weekend (all I ever subscribed to, In full disclosure) is full of fluff! It's beach reading, and that's ok!

I agree that the Times is a newsletter for the monied elite.

I still read it.

 

[Maxwellll]

Posted a bit back about Nina Maria Nitsche joining Brioni after Margiela and Vetements, well, they have parted ways already after two collections...

https://wwd.com/menswear-news/mens-designer-luxury/brioni-nina-maria-nitsche-part-ways-1202765878/

 

[LA Guy]

People vote on the issues that matter most to them. Incontrovertible truths like climate change just don’t move the meter of most down home folks. I think the rise of trump and sanders, and even May and Corbyn are evidence that inequality is beginning to take its toll. It’s short sighted to call the proletariat stupid because they value things differently than a bunch of dudes who can spend thousands of dollars a year on silly clothes they don’t need.

No one is arguing that trade schools are the same as a Harvard education. One should never be compared to the other. However I don’t see how the adoption of trade schools is competitive with the idea of a more educated society. If trade schools were embraced, then those who are less scholastic will have more options than being funneled into university. The benefits of which would include less student debt, a higher return on educational investment, and a higher standard at the universities.

A skilled labor force motivates the labor market to hire more people, to increase wages for equivalent work, and results in higher quality goods. Higher quality goods also incentivizes the marketplace to buy American goods, mitigating the effect of globalization without creating a trade war (again, see: Germany).

When wages are no longer stagnating and job satisfaction is better, people will stop voting solely on those issues.

The argument in the bolded section contains several logical fallacies and also does not hold empirically. There is no demonstrable causal link between the labor market and the quality of the labor, nor between wages and the quality of the labor force. There is similarly no causal link between higher wages and higher quality goods, nor between the quality of goods and the demand for them.

People are voting along identity lines. There are single issue voters, but at least in the last election cycle, these tended to be issues associated more with identity (see immigration, see Evangelical Christian voters).

 

[Benesyed]

I guess those are things that people who buy $300 shirts and $500 pants would be interested in ?

www.nomanwalksalone.com

@conceptual 4est

My friend's brother is a plastic surgeon and he spent 40k on the flowers alone for his wedding

 

[cyc wid it]

@dieworkwear has a lot of portfolios.

 

[Benesyed]

Posted a bit back about Nina Maria Nitsche joining Brioni after Margiela and Vetements, well, they have parted ways already after two collections...

https://wwd.com/menswear-news/mens-designer-luxury/brioni-nina-maria-nitsche-part-ways-1202765878/

That's sad. I liked the items a lot. I wonder what drove that

 

[mmmargeologist]

The argument in the bolded section contains several logical fallacies and also does not hold empirically. There is no demonstrable causal link between the labor market and the quality of the labor, nor between wages and the quality of the labor force. There is similarly no causal link between higher wages and higher quality goods, nor between the quality of goods and the demand for them.

People are voting along identity lines. There are single issue voters, but at least in the last election cycle, these tended to be issues associated more with identity (see immigration, see Evangelical Christian voters).

https://global.handelsblatt.com/com...-import-germanys-dual-education-system-754411

https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...o-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany

A quick read through the German economy wiki shows it’s the fourth largest economy in the world with 60% of its workforce having apprenticeship-level education. Exports are responsible for 1/3rd of its economic output and luxury brands like Daimler-Benz and Volkswagen are located there. Where the service economy is in decline in the United States it continues to flourish in Germany. How can you reconcile these differences?

While I agree with you that people vote along identity lines, I couldn’t disagree with you more that this is what decided the election. The same swing voters that chose Obama in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania voted trump in 2016. They’re not voting on identity, it was policy. It’s a worldwide trend showing that people are reacting to the shortcomings of western establishment institutions. Namely wage stagnation and poor job satisfaction. Meanwhile, petulant attacks by elites on working class people that characterize them as simple minded and xenophobic shirks responsibility altogether. Much of the xenophobia that fueled trumps win was itself fueled by the economic inequality that made those people prone to tribalistic scapegoating. I’m not excusing it but I’m also not excusing the piss poor policy choices and unwillingness of the liberal establishment from looking in the mirror and asking what they could have done differently in the last election, rather than admonishing disobedient swing voters as racist and attributing everything as a Russian plot.

I also find much of the discussion that you and dieworkwear hold as a part of the problem. It’s as if you have decided the vast majority of society are uncivilized brutes and it’s extremely off putting and elitist. Attitudes like these are counter to winning over the working class and further weakens actual fruitful discussion around what can be done to fix the dangerous and unfortunate political environment we are now in.