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Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

I don't see that she stated outright or even implied that LEGO was evil, as such. Just an overpriced, indifferent corporate empire with brilliant, unnerving meta-marketing. I would say that meta-marketing is the focus of the article, with the LEGO movie merely being the centerpiece. And I'm really not sure where you got "apparently LEGO is being held responsible for girls liking pink now" - the only reference to pink was a quote from the movie in question.

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Legos are manufactured to an incredibly high standard. Lego knock-offs just aren't the same; they don't snap together and stay together as well, and they are easily deformed.

Source: I was a child once.

Later on, I learned Lego manufacturing tolerances are measured in micrometers.

I didn't call them overpriced, she did. I was about to defend her by noting the massively increased price of LEGO sets over the past few decades versus the (I would assume) relatively static economics of manufacturing plastic bricks - but then I googled it and it's all a lie[1]. Guess I'll file that one next to "there were more thunderstorms when I was a kid".

[1] http://flowingdata.com/2013/02/07/analysis-of-lego-brick-pri...

This is so true, my parents have my 35 year old Lego that my children were still playing with until quite recently. Apart from a few odd pieces it's all as good as new.

> "Overpriced"

Legos are priced at what people are willing to pay for them. If they were overpriced they would not sell and there would be no Legos. Maybe you are suggesting that Legos should be cheaper because the material cost do not justify the prices you see, well again, Legos are priced at what they sell at and clearly people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are worth greater than the sum of their parts. It would be a disservice to Lego's investors to price them in accordance with the wishes of people who think everything should be accessible to everyone. For-profit companies should responsibly capture all the value they can.

All hail the global superintelligence known as Market. From Him all purpose and justification floweth. There need be no other.

No, there are clearly real problems with market based economies and issues of social responsibility. Selling plastic block toys, for which there are cheap enough alternatives, doesn't really seem to fit in this picture though.

Your original comment basically just stated the same tautology four different ways, as if it were the last word on the matter. Besides judging the large-scale results of the system (eg your reference to 'social responsibility'), we're also entitled to judge the small-scale details vis-a-vis our own heuristics, even when they are at odds with a market's state.

I'm not sure I understand what your point is. I explained why Legos are not overpriced, and made some probably unnecessary judgement statements about why people would call it overpriced. I didn't say Legos are not overpriced because they are not overpriced, I said they're not overpriced because their products are selling. Where is the tautology?

Your original comment is basically just different ways of saying that Legos are priced appropriately because Legos are selling, and Legos are selling because they're priced appropriately. While this is the extent of the analysis in terms of simple market mechanics, your main point seems to be to insist that the only way to judge pricing is how the market responds. This is in fact trivially wrong because any market is in fact a sum of individual actors who each form their own judgment.

The net effect of your comment is to further confuse the distinction between what is expedient/existing and what is right, and to discourage people from developing an independent sense of the latter (in the same vein as "might makes right" and "technological determinism").

> "and Legos are selling because they're priced appropriately"

Nope never said that, show me where I said this.

It's a basic tenet of consensual transactions, which you allude to:

> people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are worth greater than the sum of their parts

Also,

> Legos are priced at what they sell at"

If you're taking issue that it's not a direct iron-clad "tautology", then please insert whatever less-stringent term you please that indicates circular reasoning by which a process supposedly justifies itself.

> people have voted with their wallets and have said that Legos are worth greater than the sum of their parts

That's half a quote. The point you misquoted was very specific, regarding Legos being priced higher than their material costs works, because people value Legos for more than the plastic they're made with. That's not a tautology, that's a simple observation. This is without a doubt the worst conversation I've ever had about Legos.

I said "allude to", which still applies to your whole quote.

This "conversation" has been terrible because you've been nitpicking for seemingly its own sake, while completely ignoring any substance of what I've said.

No it doesn't apply, and thus the substance of whatever you've said doesn't appeal to me. It fails a heuristic of mine I'll call "throws out false accusations after misrepresenting what I've said".

If you don't believe that a product's price effects its sales, then you could have simply stated this several comments back, rather than role-playing a computer by placing critical importance on the form of my saying why I assumed you agreed with that widely-held belief. Then we could have actually talked about the actual non-meta issue.

And you invalidated the concept with your witty one-liner. Well done, very thorough criticism of markets.

It's certainly not a criticism of markets per se - it's a criticism of those who think markets are an appropriate replacement for reason.

Well there is a certain logic to markets. If LEGO is overpriced, a competitor should be able to offer a cheaper alternative. So if you claim LEGO is overpriced, you have to explain why no cheaper competitor emerged. Maybe there are reasons (for example patents - but the competitor would not have to be the same kind of thing, just the same category).

I wonder how do you reason without the theory of markets? Serious question!

>Legos are priced at what people are willing to pay for them.

I wont argue with that. But you can raise prices by raising demand for your product. Perhaps by aggressively marketing (and meta-marketing) a movie based on your product...

If this were absolutely, positively, easily provably true...

So what?

So it's possible to cheat. So there's a hidden cost of going to see this movie - it'll make you pay more for lego in the future.

Cheat? Huh? How?

They raise the price. You think it's too high. Don't buy it.

How will it "make" you pay more in the future?

There was a post on reddit a while ago from a former lego employee addressing why they are so expensive. It comes down to the fact that they don't want the bricks to be off by more than half a thousandth of an inch, so every brick can fit with every other brick ever made.

http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/14ccan/lego_super_star...

Sorry, I meant to upvote but hit the wrong arrow.

As a side point, I found the piece very well written. The author's biases are not hidden, while the analysis stays focused on objective points, which makes it very well balanced IMO.

She continues with references to the new LEGO girls world which has no fire fighters and so on. Admitted, she doesn't mention pink, but it has been a recent accusation that LEGO created that pink world without manly jobs in it.

Well, the page on the "Lego friends"site: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/products/41027-mias-lemonade-s...

I don't see fire fighters or policemen or construction staff, so her statement (and other peoples argument) is valid. How to interpret this fact can be tricky, because there's still more variety than traditional 'girly' toys I think, but when contrasting this with the "City" line of toys (http://www.lego.com/en-us/city), the gender bias is blinding.

The Lego Friends theme doesn't have firefighters because it is focused on social relationships, not overcoming conflict. It doesn't have to be a girl vs boy thing (although it is undoubtedly targeted toward girls to compete with other non--confrontational toys that have proved popular with girls), it is just part of the theme. Ninjago doesn't have firefighters either.

I think it is great that Lego has developed a theme that isn't focused on physical confrontation. I have three girls who play with Lego and they request a mix of sets. For Christmas, they requested sets from Friends, Lord of the Rings, and Ninjago. My four year old got a Chima set. They don't see it as a girl vs boy thing.

I'm not convinced on the marketing part. How is a lifeguard post or a ranch more social and less conflicting than firefighters or construction workers ?

Now, if I was heavily into buying Lego bricks, I'd also mix from the different sets to have more situations, and my kid doesn't really care if his toys are action figures or dolls.

I don't think "social" is the selling point. If I just look at "all buildings", only very few of them seem to be about actual work. It's more about having fun in exclusive locations with loving animals.

How about buying the fire fighter set, if the girls want it, and just don't mention boy sets versus girl sets?

You know what "traditional" girl toys are? What previous generations, or "parents", say they are.

How is that a valid criticism? It doesn't have firefighters because it is about other things. It's valid in the same way as complaining that a set about fire fighters doesn't have any police men.

Please show me what makes the actual firefighters and policemen "male"? I see some figurines with beards, but many without beards - they could be any gender.

Also never mind the fact that including many female fire fighters would be a lie, because the real world isn't really like that.

If I wanted my daughters, or if they wanted, to play with LEGOs that had fire fighters then I would buy the sets that had fire fighters. I just don't bother to say that set is for boys while that set is for girls.

One of them loves Transformers and Ninjago, we get her those toys with no mention of boy versus girl toys.

I just don't understand what the problem is with needing specially made toys for girls to offset some perceived injustice when they can play with the boy toys just as well.

The problem with those sets is there are no female firefighter minifigs included.

How would you identify a female firefighter minifig as female?

Edit: here is a random LEGO firefighter I googled. What does make it male? http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61cMG%2BjM8hL._SL1500_...

No secondary sexual characteristics bolted to the torso.

You mean no boobs?

I personally think those complaints about female LEGo are ridiculous. I have half a mind to calculate how much it would cost to buy all LEGO kits that have no figurines at all - probably way more than any average family would ever spend on LEGO at all.

Also the question is how do you identify female LEGO figurines? If you add feminine traits like lipstick or long hair, aren't you cementing another stereotype? Or adding boobs - again you are exposing yourself to criticism. I'd say as long as it doesn't spot a beard, any LEGO figurine can be taken as male or female at wish.

I suspect the criticism assumes LEGO firefighters are male unless they wear lipstick, because I don't think all LEGO firefighters are bearded.

And, as you say, what is the problem of playing with a figurine of the opposite sex? We even bought our son a Playmobil horse with girl tender that came in a pink box. I have yet to notice any trauma it might have induced. Maybe the payback will be in 20 years when his psychotherapist will expose our deeds.

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