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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have some darker interpretations. If you look at pictures on childrens school bags, workbooks etc. the boy version is a spiderman sending the message to hang on net ropes like some idiot tarzan and the girl version is some little magic fairy princess sending the message just be there, be pretty, don't do much. So both are very, very detached from what they are supposed to do at school or in adult life. It is a "be useless!" kind of message. Is it perhaps an anticipation of a world where 80% will be unemployed?
Without this hypothetical anticipation of a world of 80% unemployment, would you expect children's bags, books, etc., to be decorated with pictures of people sat at office desks working on spreadsheets, or plumbers fitting pipes together, or something? Were children's bags, books, etc., ever decorated that way before?
I think the explanation is much simpler. Children enjoy imagining themselves as superheroes, princesses, etc.; movies, television shows, books, etc., featuring such characters become popular; children buy (or get their parents to buy) products with their favoured characters on. No conspiracy needed. And why are the superheroes and princesses and suchlike not shown doing anything interesting? Because extra clutter in the imagery would make the presence of the characters less obvious and so reduce the immediate appeal of the products to their target market.
My view on economics: businesses exist to serve customers, where the customer is defined as the person who pays, not the person who uses. For example we are mere users of Google, not its customers, those are the advertisers. And in this case it is the parent. The rational vendor caters to parents, not children. He thinks: what kind of message do parents want to send to children? And while of course it is not something boring or dull, Dexter the cartoon scientist beats the Spiderman and the fairy-princess in the cater-to-parents domain. BTW before, as far as I can remember, they were pretty plain items, not too decorated, in my childhood, that is not ideal either.
Right, probably not a conspiracy, it just happens to send wrong messages...
It's not clear to me that
because the things parents want include (1) happy children and (2) children who aren't complaining about not having the stuff they want. Accordingly, if children prefer Spiderman and fairy princesses, they will often get them.
Sounds like too many parents being a bit undisciplined and giving in too easily. I can empathize with that, having a 14 month old, but still I wish we could be as adamant as our parents, whose "no" was really a 99% no, and not like our "no, well, unless you yell a lot, in which case yes, as my nerves aren't made of steel and avoiding pain for me is not always less important than principles".
No, it sounds like a lot of parents prefer to have happy kids without a message rather than unhappy ones with one.
Happiness is not simply getting what one wants, often it is closer to learning to be content with what one can have. Seriously, simply fulfilling childrens wishes, hoping this will make them happy would be seriously bad parenting, they would quickly become spoiled and basically want everything right now, the difficult yet necessary trick is figuring out how to make them happy while not getting everything they want to.