First, as a 6′7″ person with size 15 shoes, I have found it virtually impossible to find nice suits and shoes at a fair price.

What’s a “fair price?” Do you want to pay the same amount for a suit as a normal-sized customer, even though your suit requires twice as much cloth and twice as much labor to sew it? (Not to mention the carrying cost to stock clothes few people ever buy.)

Anyway, I would trade my right-on-the-median size for your extra-tall size in a heartbeat… women seeking mates prefer taller men so strongly that a median-sized man needs about $87,000/year more income to even be competitive with a 6′-7″ man!

I’ve be very, very disappointed to sign up for a $100,000+ law school and discover that the faculty shows up looking like they just rolled out of bed.

Frank, I’m not sure why you’re leaning on vague anecdotal support (”Innovators at many new economy powerhouses”) for your position. The history of Silicon Valley has more than a few business-casual-business-failures for each of its business-casual-business-successes. Do critics of your position prevail by citing Brobeck?

Here’s some more humor for you, from a recent Krugman column:

Conservatives Are Such Jokers, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick — well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.”

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip … providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.”

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh. …”

And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. …”

It’s not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment.”

What you’ve heard in this exchange is not “indignation”. It’s laughter. Truly, you are a gem. From the series of “I could not have made it up.”

The post above was offered in a spirit half serious, half fanciful (see, e.g., the Thom Browne link). But your indignation gives me a useful data point: just how threatening positional goods theory appears to those who are capable of reducing the question of the relative power of employers over employees to that of whether the former have a monopsony. A secondary indication of a theory’s validity may well be how well it provokes unconvincable ideologues.

If you’ve conceded the silliness of your “positional goods” argument and want to switch to something else, couldn’t you at least offer a reputable source? Like, you know, a real paper with numbers?

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=872324

If you really believe positional goods aren’t a problem in academia, I’ve got a rankings system to sell you.

First, the fact that a person treats one good as positional surely does not mean that he treats all goods as positional. Academics are highly competitive in their publications records, but most of them have no interest whatsoever in designer bags. Unless you can link journal titles to bags (and you can’t), just you stick to the issue that you raised in your original post. Second, school rankings are not fully positional goods either (and very few goods are truly positional, by the way – something you seem to repeatedly misrepresent). A school’s high rank has a very substantial material component – higher pay, better research support, lesser teaching load, etc. Third, plenty of people choose lower-ranked schools because of various other benefits (location, job for a spouse, salary, possibility of deanship), so academics are surely not overwhelmed with positional considerations even where positional considerations exist.

But I guess under your way of reasoning, if something hasn’t been a problem, it won’t ever be, right?

This is a non-sequitur. Here is the proper sequitur: If X has never been a problem, and nothing seems to have changed, the burden is on the person who claims that X will become a problem to show why. You haven’t produced a single piece of evidence showing that clothing, which has not been a positional good in the academy before, is likely to become one in the future. Seriously, you’ve shown nothing at all — just empty speculation.

there’s also the right of the employer to do whatever they want to do. Since regulation might be required to protect the former, I suppose you’d opt to advance the latter. So perhaps libertarianism amounts to the right of the more powerful to have their way (you’ve come a long way, Thrasymachus!).

That’s a ridiculous fantasy. In most markets, employers have no monopsony in hiring and therefore aren’t any more “powerful” than employees. Even where employers have some monopsony power, that power is not infinite, and thoughtful employers use that power to extract benefits valuable to employers (e.g., wages or work hours), and not nonsense stuff like shoe brands. I’ve seen no evidence (other than hysterical cries from crits, who rely on nothing but anecdotes and narratives about narratives) that regulation is needed to “protect” employees from dress code requirements.

But notice that your anti-libertarian outburst is in conflict with your nonsensical claim that clothes are “positional goods”. If clothes were positional goods, then, there would be no need to have dress codes in the first place – employees would have happily driven each other into great appearance without any intervention from employers. (Unless, that is, employees want to wear Prada, while employers prefer Dockers… I am dying to hear you arguing that).

As for hahaha: If you really believe positional goods aren’t a problem in academia, I’ve got a rankings system to sell you. But I guess under your way of reasoning, if something hasn’t been a problem, it won’t ever be, right?

As for the “libertarian bases,” I’d think a libertarian would want to be able to do what they want to do. But you’re right, there’s also the right of the employer to do whatever they want to do. Since regulation might be required to protect the former, I suppose you’d opt to advance the latter. So perhaps libertarianism amounts to the right of the more powerful to have their way (you’ve come a long way, Thrasymachus!). Though I guess it contains multitudes:

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010344

Either let people wear what ever they like, or impose a set of standards that allow people to differentiate between work and home gear. Business casual gradually turns everyone’s wardrobe into a conservative middle-aged country clubness. I enjoy a round of golf, but I have no desire to inflict golf attire on anyone other than fellow golfers. When I own a string of polo ponies, I’ll start wearing button down collars. I believe that yachting shoes should remain on yachts.

http://dfof.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/business-casual-is-evil/

P.S. Bainbridge is not a libertarian. He is a conservative.

P.P.S. Which “libertarian bases” are “covered” by Bainbridge’s unwillingness to wear a suit? Libertarians never said people shouldn’t wear suits, or that employers should not demand that employees wear suits. Incomprehensible gibberish.