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I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

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Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#151

Post by mvzink »

rglullis wrote: post #130
mvzink wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree, but there's a missing element in this economic model, though one that others have mentioned (cf. sunahsuh's comment): marketing. If you look at Marx, or even Smith, it's clear that the wants and demands of the consumers are not always organic, but are often fabricated by the companies themselves. Smith thought this was cool, Marx thought it was evil; in any case, you are right to some extent, but few…

I'm not so sure Smith thought it was cool: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same…

It's possible you're right, but that quote is irrelevant. That's about monopolies, specifically in the form of trade associations. Smith thought any kind of monopolies—trusts, unions, import duties—were bad, that's for sure.

I was talking about fabricated demand, which I don't have a quote for because I don't have my notes or copies of Wealth of Nations or Theory of Moral Sentiments with me at the moment. But my basic argument, even if he didn't explicitly treat the subject, would be that fabricated demand is an accumulation of capital, thereby increasing national opulence, which Smith holds as the highest good.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#152

Post by iy56 »

zokier wrote: post #61
javanix wrote: post #2

Look: I will fully admit that these sets are really, really cool. My son is getting a gigantic Millenium Falcon set from Santa this year (DON’T TELL) and both my wife and I are excited to play with it too. But it’s a model kit. We will put it together once and we will play with it a lot and that will be that. It won’t get remixed, won’t get hacked. Eventually it’ll come apart and be put away and not rebuilt because 1…

One problem (afaik) is that the pieces are more and more specialised. A single regular lego piece can be anything . Look at the old ad; almost all pieces shown are regular rectangular pieces. And it even says Universal Building Set. But now you just get 1000 distinctly "millenium falcon" pieces.

Except that's not true at all. http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/4504-1 is the brick list for the Millienium Falcon set. The minifigures are clearly specific to the Star Wars franchise, but aside from the minifig accessories and maybe half a dozen pieces that have decorative patterns, everything else is quite generic. I remember hearing that there's even an official Lego policy against introducing new pieces unless they have 3 different sets to put them in.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#153

Post by pbhjpbhj »

DarkShikari wrote: post #60
ericabiz wrote: post #3

As a girl geek who grew up on Legos, this makes me really, really sad. From the NPR article linked to from the article above: "Lego also consciously aimed for boy customers when it embarked on its stunning turnaround. Boys were easier to sell to than girls." headsmash "The new Lego girl minifigures have names like Stephanie, Olivia, and Emma, and the building sets include a veterinary clinic, a hairdressing salon, a…

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal The most staggering thing about these assumptions is not merely how they contradict current scientific understanding, but they contradict reality . Pink used to be a boys' color: the idea of pink as "girly" didn't exist 100 years ago. Ironically, this commonly-given-example is itself a fantastic example…

>'The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.'

Perhaps instead of picking strawmen then we could address something closer to the real questions being asked: whether girls prefer to mimic nurturing behaviour or act out creativity in their play (and the converse, that boys prefer aggressive or constructive play) and that blacks are genetically predisposed to excel at sports similar to basketball (I'd have probably picked East Africans and long distance running).

Surely biologically speaking females should prefer play that mimics nurturing behaviour? (No, not exclusively, nor indeed every female, but generally as a population compared with young males). If males carried the developing human in utero I'd expect it to be different.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#154

Post by arctangent »

hvass wrote: post #128
nostromo wrote: post #53

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give peo…

I've always wondered if Steve was inspired by the movie "Network":

"We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF..."

I highly recommend it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(film)

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#155

Post by mbesto »

ericabiz wrote: post #3

As a girl geek who grew up on Legos, this makes me really, really sad. From the NPR article linked to from the article above: "Lego also consciously aimed for boy customers when it embarked on its stunning turnaround. Boys were easier to sell to than girls." headsmash "The new Lego girl minifigures have names like Stephanie, Olivia, and Emma, and the building sets include a veterinary clinic, a hairdressing salon, a…

> By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument

Does it negate any evidence for the fact that for hundreds of years our predecessors were hunter and gatherers, whose roles were distinctly filled by men and women? There is a theory that hunters (men) largely looked for large blue horizons (hence a blue sky) to go hunting for animals and gathers (women) looked for berries (hence red, or a hue of red) and thus why we are drawn to those colors. I'm curious as to how far back in history her books relates back to.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#156

Post by maximusprime »

lubutu wrote: post #137
maximusprime wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected people would take issue with it. Unfortunately some people really really want it to be the case that girls and boys are only different because of their environment. Given the way evolution works, doesn't that seem ridiculously unlikely? Given the way we evolved to have clearly defined roles, and how we have obvious physical differences to enable that, doesn't it seem pretty obvious that we evolved our brai…

Is it not possible that it's a bit of both ? Given this scenario, which is clearly very likely, enforcing gender stereotypes could dissuade a child from walking a certain road down which their nature would have led them. Boys and girls are naturally different, yes, but as demonstrated by the many women in science, that doesn't mean that all females want to grow up to become hairdressers or models. Stereotypes do affe…

Yes it's obviously both. It's genetics, and sometimes bad stereotyping parents/upbringing.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#157

Post by kin »

So I played the Lego board game series Heroica recently and at first I thought it was brilliant. It's pretty much a simplified version of D&D where you build the map with Legos. Then at the end I realized that the game-play pieces were set specific and you couldn't do what I thought was the point.

What I thought was that you could use any lego piece you want and add it to the set and use any lego figure and add it to the set and simply follow the same gameplay mechanics to a map limited only by your imagination. Let's play Heroica with Harry Potter pieces. Nope can't do that. You have to purchase their overpriced sets and only play what the sets let you do.

Looks like they're just looking for cash based off of numbers. Bummer.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#158

Post by billpatrianakos »

lemming wrote: post #121
billpatrianakos wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need more girl scientists and geeks? I'll never get that. Will having more women in roles traditionally held by men somehow make the world better? Will the woman scientist have a better chance at curing cancer? Will the woman construction worker lay better brick? I just don't get it. It seems like there's a subset of women who are into science and are smart and are going after or currently holding roles tha…

True, but if they never try to do it because society tells them that they shouldn't (devil's advocate here, not claiming this is what happens) then we're missing out on 50% of the potential cancer-curing talent who, by your argument, are equally capable of doing so but end up shampooing dogs or whatever instead.

But then if they're equally capable but prefer shampooing dogs then is that really a problem? All of us are capable of things that we prefer not to do. I was on a track to become a doctor but decided to program instead. I'm capable of both but prefer not to be a doctor. See what I mean?

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#159

Post by someotheridiot »

dgabriel wrote: post #17
joelhooks wrote: post #6

The BrikCrate has changed how my kids approach Lego. It was completely "build the set, forget about it" prior to installing it. Now they build like crazy in free form. http://www.brikcrate.com/ Our daughter enjoys building too.

We just have three enormous rubbermaid bins with lids. Half the fun is searching for the right piece, and possibly finding an old lollypop stuck to it. The sound of kid hands pawing through a vat of legos is awesome.

I'm waiting for the day I have enough to do a Scrooge McDuck and swim through mine :)

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#160

Post by chernevik »

maximusprime wrote: post #70
pbreit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier for a single company to make some changes than it is for a single or even very large group of consumers to drive a change. It stinks, but every complaint about products asks for an Apple comparison. I would say both Apple and Pixar have demonstrated that sticking to the purity of your craft can be both fulfilling and extremely lucrative.

You assume people want a change. I do not think they do. Do people want an end to gender specific toys? Certainly some do. But the vast majority do not. I firmly believe, through interacting with people in general, and my own children, that female and male brains are completely different. They are hard wired to like different things, and behave differently. I don't see anything wrong with that, and don't see any reas…

Well, yeah. But it's no excuse for some witless profit-maximizing / revenue-stabilizing Danish corporate drone to subsume all nuance into Boy and Girl.
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