If Everyone Had to Wear a Uniform?
A thought experiment
Unrealistic thought experiments can be mind-expanding precursors to practical brainstorming. In that spirit, I have concocted a number of thought experiments.
Today: What if everyone had to wear a uniform?
I probably need to stipulate up-front that I am the opposite of a clothes horse. I’m clothes-indifferent. Indeed, vestigial from my growing up in the hippie era, I continue to believe that if a person doesn’t like me because I’m not well turned out, screw ‘em.
Having acknowledged that bias, I’ll try to don my statesman hat and in today’s thought experiment, muse on the pros and cons of this: What if everyone had to wear a uniform — say, something middle-of-the road like a standard shirt in white or blue and standard pants in black or gray.
Arguments against uniforms
If uniforms were required, there’d be less net happiness. People like expressing their individuality through their clothes and that’s something that all people, smart and not, can do, even if they have to buy their clothes at Goodwill.
Most people like aesthetics. How boring it would be to see everyone wearing the same thing all the time.
Buying clothes and accessories is a relatively innocuous use of the money people earn.
Today, people who have been successful get fewer rewards for that. Other people used to admire, aspire to, even envy the rich. But today’s progressive anthem is “Eat the rich.” And the antipathy isn’t just in words. In today’s redistributive era, much is taken from the well-off, for example, the usurious “progressive” tax rates in which the top 10% pay 74% of the income tax. That home in a nice neighborhood that they worked hard for now is being legislated to have low-income housing interspersed. If wearing a uniform were mandated, we’d be talking away one of well-off people’s remaining rewards even though, by definition, the financially successful are of such worth that customers or employers have been willing to pay them well. Take away their freedom to fill their closets with their chosen array of raiment and you’ve taken away one of ever fewer remaining benefits of having working successfully.
If uniforms were mandated, the economy would suffer. The public spends a fortune on clothes, filling those closets and drawers. Require a uniform and companies would close down, eliminating jobs, and tax revenues would decline.
Arguments for uniforms
On the other hand, poor people often feel inferior in being unable to be fashionistas, let alone who have umpteen outfits to rotate. Uniforms solve that.
Because clothing is so visible to everyone, allowing people to wear whatever they like leads to shallow judging of people. Indeed adults often hire, date, and befriend people in part based on their clothing. And kids are often worse, shunning and ridiculing someone whose clothes aren’t “right.” Uniforms solve that.
Spending on clothes is pretty darn shallow. There usually are far better uses of money. Coming to mind are paying a tutor, giving to charity, and hiring someone to free you to do more important things.
All the effort the fashion industry expends, could be redirected to more important things than whether this season’s color should be puce or aubergine, and pant bottoms should be narrow or wide.
Uniforms spawn commonality, build bonds. That’s why employers from fast-food to the military to hospital personnel require uniforms.
My takeaway
Even though I am clothes-indifferent, indeed I choose to wear mainly t-shirts and polo shirts even when recording my YouTubes, this thought experiment makes clear, to me at least, that mandating uniforms would be a net negative. Vive la variety!
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in the evaluation of innovation from the University of California Berkeley. He’s the author of 28 books, including his new one, A Dose of Reality. You can reach Marty at mnemko@comcast.net
