Moving on

After five years on the Young Fabian Executive, I decided earlier this year not to re-stand. In recent days, the election results have been published and the question of which elected executive members take on which tasks has been resolved. Today, co-opted members of the Young Fabian Executive will be chosen.

All of which means it’s time for me to move on and hand over editorship of this blog.

Matt Zarb-Cousin, who has blogged for the likes of Political Scrapbook and the Huffington Post, will be taking over. Like me last year, he holds the position of Secretary of the Young Fabians.

When I first joined the Young Fabian Executive in 2006/7, our new media offer was relatively light. This blog didn’t exist.  Sam Strudwick, then Web Officer, set one up when he redesigned the Young Fabian website a year or so later. But it wasn’t until I took on Editorship of the blog that we started getting the quality and frequency of content that you need to make any blog viable.

The editorial direction of the blog has grown organically. Originally, just executive committee members and the odd guest author would post. Now it has broadened into a space for Young Fabian members to share their ideas and develop their writing, alongside contributions from guest authors.

Colleagues on previous Young Fabian executive committees will know how much I’ve nagged to get blog content built into their other work. Not only is it a timely way of sharing ideas and thoughts, but it also provides content for members and supporters wherever they’re located and at whatever time is convenient for them. It is also a great way for members to get involved in Young Fabian work.

All the effort put into the blog since it launched two years ago has yielded encouraging results. Our readership continues to grow and we’ve been recognised in the Total Politics blog awards in several different blog categories this year. Our content is also being read by key opinion formers – our Middle East Programme travellog generated significant amounts of interest in the blogosphere earlier this year, resulting in our highest ever daily readership since the blog began.

But we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. I remember a little over a year ago having a conversation with a Young Fabian member who was criticising the way the blog was managed. He felt it wasn’t open enough and wanted more opportunities for members to be able to write. It was heartening that even then the blog was considered a central part of our published output. But, while I took on board the criticism, I remember thinking how irritating progressives can be – always focusing on improvements yet to make, rather than recognising what has already been achieved (at the time of our conversation, the blog had only been in existence for a year).

It is difficult for any one individual to meet that desire for constant progress and improvement indefinitely. Continued progress relies on continued renewal of ideas and of people.

In terms of published output, I’ve had two key roles with the Young Fabians – Editor of Anticipations, and Editor of the its blog. With both, I felt two years was more than enough time to make changes and improve their standing and content before allowing others to develop them further. I’d like to think I’ve made a difference to the way the Young Fabians think about publications and to the way its executive serves the membership.

Matt is well placed to pick up the baton. And I wish him well. I look forward to seeing the blog evolve further and writing for it again in future.

I’d like to thank the many people who have contributed to this blog over the last two years and to my executive committee colleagues whose ears I’ve bent repeatedly. I’m also particularly grateful to Louie Woodall who has ably assisted me with the editing of this blog over the last six months or so.

And to you for reading the blog, thus making all the effort worthwhile.

Alex Baker was a member of the Young Fabian executive between 2006-7 and 2010-11. He is a former Editor of the Young Fabians Blog and Anticipations, the journal of the Young Fabians.

Lessons in spin – “lane-charging”

Wahoo! Today the Department of Transport have been parading their sparkly new* initiative to charge utilities companies which disrupt commuters during peak travel periods.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond says of the proposals:

“Everyone knows how frustrating it can be when you are sat in a traffic jam, unable to get to work or drop off the children at school because someone is digging up the road.

Yeah. EVERYONE knows that Phil. Even people who can’t drive and don’t use public transport and don’t have kids. They’re really frustrated.

“This disruption is expensive as well as inconvenient, with one estimate valuing the loss to the economy from road works congestion at £4 billion a year. We simply cannot afford this.

£4bn quid a year? Outrageous! I could buy shed-loads of scratchcards for that. Obviously if we can shift that cost from commuters by making those evil utility providers pay, that would be great!

“That is why I am putting forward proposals which would incentivise utility companies and local authorities to carry out their works at times when they will cause the minimum disruption to the travelling public.”

Totes amazing Phil! You are a genius. So glad we have a modern day Transport hero like you sticking it to those evil corporations.

And it’s a good job I can’t be bothered to read the actual consultation document or supporting impact assessments. Otherwise I might realise that:

• Because of the way utilities companies are regulated, they can pass on unavoidable costs to consumers. So higher costs means higher utility bills. I guess that means that the costs to commuters would just be shifted to gas, electricity, telecoms and water consumers, right? But aren’t they broadly the same people as the commuters? So commuters will save some costs which will be paid for by… commuters! D’oh!
• If the lane-charging costs are avoidable, then regulators can prevent the utilities companies from passing the costs on to consumers. But how often are road-works actually ‘avoidable’? Probably only a proportion of the time right? In which case, we’re probably going to continue to incur some of the £4bn in costs, aren’t we?
• Oh, and I see that you’re limiting the scheme to critical highways. So costs to commuters on non-critical parts of the highway won’t be defrayed? That means more of the £4bn in costs remain, right?
• Yep, they are. The DfT impact assessment shows this. In the preferred policy option, the DfT estimates that charges will result in a reduction of costs to commuters of £46m per annum (that’s their “best estimate” of the benefits), with costs to utility firms of £11.2m.
• Hang on! I thought the costs to commuters were £4bn per annum? So if the proposals are going to generate only £46m in benefit to consumer each year, that’s only a 1% reduction in costs!???! WTF?!

I thought you said we couldn’t afford £4bn in costs Phil? Then you go and save me £46m in costs. That’s like loose change to you government types. You might just as well not bothered. In austerity Britain, I don’t get out of bed for more than 10-figures in cost-savings.

Oh, but journalists are lazy and didn’t read the documents either. So I have no way of knowing that your recycled* policy initiative is the equivalent of pissing in the wind! Huzzah!

And you get to sound all clever and stuff on the radio talking about ‘nudge economics‘.

You really are quite brilliant, aren’t you Phil!

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabians blog.

*As far as I can tell, this scheme was piloted in Camden and Middlesbrough eight years ago and found to be little more than useless.

Banning social media is a tool of despots, not democracies

Yesterday David Cameron edged closer to unlikely and somewhat troubling bedfellows: Hosni Muburak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muammar Gaddafi.

In his statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister floated the idea of giving the relevant authorities the power to suspend communication networks to prevent repeats of the violent disorder that erupted earlier this week across England. The role of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry’s instant messenger service will now be scrutinised by politicians to better understand their role in the riots, and to determine whether the authorities need powers to prevent such communication in future.

“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.

Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

I wrote a couple of days ago about the costs and benefits of rioting, noting that modern communication techniques have reduced the perceived costs to rioters of their actions. It is understandable that the government is looking at any and every method possible of preventing the riots from occurring again, if only to look vaguely like it is in control of events.

But placing constraints on freedom of expression, a right enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act, is the wrong tonic.

Yes, the events of the last few days have proved that communication networks can be used for ill.

But those events have also proven that the very same communication networks can be used for good – the Riot Clean Up movement is a good example. Social media has also been an important tool in the police’s ability to predict where trouble is likely to occur and to manage resources effectively.

But more importantly than that, the events of the last few days have not proven that politicians or the police will be able to discern appropriately between communication that supports acts of illegality and communication that supports legitimate acts of protest, or defiance. The powers the PM proposes could be used by the police and politicians to prevent a march against government policy, for example, should they decide that there is a reasonable prospect of “disorder” (howsoever defined).

That is troubling.

This week’s riots were extreme. But introducing powers to curb the ability of the people to communicate with one another would be extreme in response.

More than that, those powers would fail to address any of the root causes of the aggression and wanton criminality we witnessed in the last few days.

Blackberry’s instant messaging service facilitated the riots. It didn’t cause them.

Should David Cameron succeed in introducing such powers, he would quickly move from democrat to despot, arming himself with weaponry more commonly deployed in dictatorships.

That would be a devastating epilogue to a difficult week for Britain.

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” – Noam Chomsky.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabian Blog

Riots, equality and ‘mindlessness’

Yesterday we began to get a foretaste of the political fallout from this week’s rioting; the Gove v Harman clash on Newsnight is perhaps the best example of the sorts of arguments that will be trotted out in the coming days and weeks.

Labour will argue that amongst the underlying factors which drove gangs to violence is the social impact of the government’s deficit reduction programme. The Conservatives will blame Labour for not doing enough while they were in government, and criticise HM’s Opposition for not falling lockstep behind ‘the authorities’.

To my mind, the probable differences in the approach are likely to reflect a difference in emphasis on either the costs or benefits to the rioters/looters of their activity (in turn that probably reflects the biases of the different political parties).

The government is likely to focus more heavily on the costs – for example, prison, fines, tougher police control methods, the direct financial costs of restoring order and the impact on businesses (and therefore employment and growth).

Costs are relative; the herd mentality of the rioters, modern communication techniques and the relatively weak response of the police to the original disturbances are likely to have reduced the relative costs to the rioters of their action. (And the media will have played its part in demonstrating this through its coverage of the riots). This would help explain why rioting took place this week, and not last.

The government’s short- and long- term strategy will need to ensure rioters and looters face higher personal costs to such actions, so the costs to society of such violence are as low as possible. Over the last week, those costs have fallen more on society than the individual (or, rather, the perception of those costs – it remains to be seen how many rioters will be brought to justice).

Those on the left are likely to focus more heavily on the perceived benefits to the rioters of their activity, by which I mean – more specifically – the factors which are likely to have resulted in them thinking it was worth the effort.

Inequality is important here. Arguably, the benefit of a stolen pair of Boxfresh trainers is the same for everyone – it is the value of the trainers. And yet in fact the relative benefit varies greatly. On the margin, an extra pound earned by a millionaire is valued a lot less than an extra pound earned by someone on the minimum wage; equally, the value of a stolen pair of trainers to a millionaire is lower than to someone without a job.

So it is plausible to suggest that the last few years of economic turmoil, anger over bankers’ bonuses (and MPs expenses), the lack of job prospects for the young, and the government welfare reforms and deficit reduction programme may have tilted perceptions of the benefit to taking part in the riots – those on low income feel relatively worse off as a consequence of recent economic events than the more affluent.

Perhaps equally as important is longer term income inequality (which IS partly Labour’s problem, Harriet).

Some of those ‘opportunistic’ looters may have taken part because the potential gains were so high relative to their own circumstances, even if the absolute value of their loot makes it look a bit “mindless” to highly-paid columnists and politicians.

This raises some interesting questions for politicians, and those on the left in particular – should we care about absolute or relative income? Or both? Or is purchasing power a more important metric? Should we level-up or level-down? What is the role of the welfare state? What role policy on community, housing, industry and trade unions?

My fear – based partly on the Newsnight interview – is that the political discourse will now descend into predictably caricatured posturing; those on the left bemoaning the heartlessness of a cruel, austere Tory government casting legion of young people adrift; and those on the right insisting that the way to solve these ills is through ever tougher forms of punishment.

In the mind of the thug, the relative costs and benefits of rioting and looting shifted in the last week. To sustainably restore order, politicians really need to consider both in a balanced way.

(Incidentally, if politicians invoke notions of inequality or lack of punishment as potential contributory factors, then they cannot also maintain that the riots were the acts of “mindless” thugs. If the acts were really “mindless”, then the policy prescription may be more investment in mental health facilities. Arguably the rioters acted in an economically rational way when presented with the opportunity over the last few days, given their relative assessment of the costs and benefits*. Hence I agree with Dave Hill.)

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabian Blog.

*Obviously some people took part in the riots without looting. This is not necessarily ‘mindless’. For them, there may have been intangible benefits –  such as euphoria, an adrenaline rush or status – which still outweighed the costs.

Vote for the Young Fabian Blog in the Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards

Voting in the Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards is now open, and we’d be grateful if you can vote for the Young Fabian blog amongst your favourite political blog sites.

Last year we came 70th in the Top 100 Labour blogs, and we think we deserve to place a little higher than that this year.

It’s easy to vote. Visit the survey form on the Total Politics website here.

The voting rules are reproduced from the Total Politics website below.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabian Blog.

Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards Rules

1. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. The higher you rank a blog or author, the higher up they will appear in the aggregated results. You must enter a minimum of five names for your vote to count. If you don’t want to enter more than five, just write ‘blank’ in the remaining boxes. Every box must have some text in for the vote to be submitted successfully.
2. Only submit your vote once. If you vote more than once, it won’t be counted.
3. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents and based on UK politics are eligible.
4. Anonymous votes left in the comments on the Total Politics website or emailed to members of staff will not count. You must submit your vote via the survey and you must enter a valid email address when you do so.
5. Do not publish a list of ten blogs on your site and try to persuade readers to vote for them. Any duplicate voting of this nature will be disallowed.

Introducing our blog’s new Assistant Editor

This is just a quick post to let you know we’ve appointed an Assistant Editor to help me with the blog: Louie Woodall.

As recently as two years ago, the Young Fabians didn’t have a blog. Since then it has evolved from a place where Exec members and notable guest contributors occasionally published their thoughts (I can’t begin to explain some of the difficulties in sourcing regular content for the blog in the early days), to a space where members, the Executive and others regularly post their views on a broad range of topics. It is in keeping with this evolution that Louie will support me as a Young Fabian member, and with no formal position on the Executive committee.

Louie has previously written for the blog and stood for the special co-opted position of web officer we recently advertised, losing out to Hetty Wood. As an Executive Committee this year, we’ve tried to harness the enthusiasm and ideas of members who have unsuccessfully stood for co-option – my colleague Anna-Joy Rickard has led the way by developing a network of membership ambassadors, for example.

Here’s Louie in his own words:

Louie is an undergraduate student taking Modern History and Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since joining the Young Fabians, Louie has enjoyed contributing to the 2010 Policy Commissions and the YF Blog, and been encouraged to increase his level of involvement in political communications.

This year, he volunteered for the Yes! AV campaign in his native town of Cheltenham and was elected Communications Officer for RHUL’s RAG society. Louie is an enthusiastic writer and blogger, and besides contributing to the Young Fabians writes for E-IR, a global forum for students of International Relations and all those interested in world politics.

Some questions for “Next Generation Labour”

Next Generation Labour launched today, founded by several former Compass Youth Committee members. I can’t speak for the rest of the Young Fabian Executive, but to my mind there is plenty of space on the left for a plurality of ideas, perspectives, and youth organisations.* To that extent, the launch should be welcomed.

But reading their founding statement, I was left with some questions which I think Next Generation Labour’s founders should take seriously.

The founding statement says:

“…for so many of our generation, Labour became a party of the establishment. It failed to ensure growth was shared fairly enough – whilst the very wealthiest got ever richer; it raised tuition fees, pursued war, attacked civil liberties and let immigration be demonised.

To win, Labour must be willing to articulate a modern left politics and reconnect with the coalition of supporters it lost and the vast majority opposed to the Tories’ reactionary agenda.”

I’m not sure I fully agree.

If the electorate were really concerned about the ‘problems’ of Labour in government – rich getting richer, rises in tuition fees, a government pursuing war, letting immigration be demonised – then why did the Tories win a majority of the votes, and the chance to form a Coalition government who have gone on to do exactly those things?

Will Labour win the next general election solely by appealing to those opposed to the Tories? This seems unlikely to me – any general election victory will have to be built on winning over some people who supported the Conservatives at the last election. Surely these form part of the “coalition of supporters [Labour] lost”, too?

Moreover, are there enough people opposed to the Conservatives who will vote for a change in government at the next election? How might Coalition politics affect that?

Isn’t being seen as the establishment inevitable if you become a party of government? Aren’t constraints the inevitable trade-off in return for the ability to effect change as a governing party?

Is this founding statement therefore just an opposition’s charter?

My main concern is that the genuine desire on the left to “articulate a modern left politics” – shared by more than just “Next Generation Labour”, incidentally – could be the exact opposite of “reconnecting with the coalition of supporters [Labour] lost”.

Yes, Labour needs principles on which to hang any policies it puts forward at the next election (and in the intervening period). But those principles need to recognise the cold electoral facts the party faces.

Hoping that principle alone carries Ed Miliband through the door at Number 10 in four years time is wishful thinking. Establishing a new vision for the left on ground unappealing the broader electorate will likely only result in failure, however noble that vision is to the left.

It’s probably a dangerous game to quote Tony Blair, but seeing as he is the only Labour leader to have won a general election in the last 30 years, I’ll take my chances. Blair once said: “Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile.”

That, in essence, sums up the challenge Next Generation Labour – and the rest of us – face in the coming months and years: balancing our core beliefs and principles against the shifting sands of public opinion.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

*Our own Caroline Alabi is part of the founding group of Next Generation Labour.

Politicians and sex

What can behavioural economics tell us about political sex scandals? More than you might think.

I’m currently reading Dan Ariely’s excellent book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. In one chapter, Ariely describes a study he undertook in 2006 which tested whether periods of sexual arousal altered responses to some questions about sex.

In short, they did.

For the study, Ariely got a number of young college men to answer a series of questions relating to sex. He then repeated the task but asked the students to ‘stimulate’ themselves while answering the questions. There were statistically significant differences in the way most questions were answered between the two states. For example: “Is a woman sexy when she is sweating?”  saw an increase in positive responses; so did “Can you imagine getting sexually excited by contact with an animal?”, “Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance she would have sex with you?” and “Would it be fun to get tied up by your sexual partner?” ; “Would you use a condom even if you were afraid that a woman might change her mind while you went to get it?” saw a decrease.

Ariely concludes:

Our results on attractiveness of activities suggest that sexual arousal acts as an amplifier of sorts. Activities that are not perceived as arousing when young males are not sexually aroused become sexually charged and attractive when they are, and those activities that are attractive even when not aroused, become more attractive under the influence of arousal. By showing that, when aroused, the same individual will find a much wider range of activities sexually appealing than when not aroused, these findings weigh in against the view of sexual preferences as being purely an individual difference variable—i.e., as dispositionally rather than situationally determined. Certainly, there are robust individual differences in sexual preferences and in the likelihood of engaging in various behaviors…

So what’s the link to political sex scandals?

The research seems to provide a rebuttal to the oft-used argument that exposing political sex scandals is most justified where hypocrisy has been committed (for example, the ‘family’ politician engaging in extra-marital affairs).

The research implies politicians are actually incapable of providing honest answers about sexual predilections when not aroused, compared to a state of arousal. So maybe we should be more forgiving of differences between publicly stated beliefs (when not aroused) and actual behaviour (when aroused)?

Equally, the research provides a strong argument for politicians to try and avoid making statements which might lead to hypocrisy. If they cannot accurately describe their beliefs when not aroused, they should simply avoid doing so.

Is Clegg’s NHS ‘muscular liberalism’ all a front?

I’ve been pondering the content of the policy statement Nick Clegg signed and circulated to the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Panel yesterday, which is the focus of so much media attention this morning.

On the one hand it looks as if Clegg is a badly briefed imbecile, given much of his assertions have no basis in fact and his view of what Monitor should be sounds suspiciously like those of an economic regulator (the thing he seems so vehemently opposed to).

On the other hand, he could be supremely intelligent and pulling a fast one on his Lib Dem colleagues – and the public – to make it look like he is taking a principled stand whilst in fact arguing for little real change at all.

He is a politician, so I can’t really tell if he is stupid or liar.

According to the Guardian, the document says:

“We cannot treat the NHS as if it were a utility, and the decision to establish Monitor as an ‘economic regulator’ was clearly a misjudgement, failing to recognise all the unique characteristics of a public health service, and opening us up to accusations that we are trying to subject the NHS to the full rigours of UK and EU competition law.”

“I have come to the conclusion that we must not make this change. We must remove from the bill changes to establish Monitor as a competition authority. Monitor should be empowered to encourage informed patient choice and act against anti-competitive practices but only when this is in the interest of patients, individually and collectively, and in the interest of equality of access.”

This is nonsense for a number of reasons.

First, the NHS is not explicitly excluded from the “full rigours of UK and EU competition law”. Increasingly, healthcare services* are provided by organisations other than the state, with third parties competing for NHS funding to provide services for the NHS. This sort of activity is not outside the remit of competition law. While the proposals in the Health and Social care bill would extend this type of activity, the status of Monitor would not affect the fact that the NHS’ activities are currently subject to UK and EU competition law.

Secondly, no competent competition authority would, as seems to be implied, act in such a way that consumers would be worse off as a consequence of its activities. The whole purpose of competition law is to protect the interests of consumers, not business. Competition can be a mechanism of delivering higher quality products and services at lower cost, if it works correctly. That benefits consumers. There is also the academic point that if you were concerned about private firms making supra-normal profits, then you would probably want a regulator to ensure this didn’t happen, rather than arguing that there shouldn’t be one at all.**

Thirdly, I’m not certain that a organisation which is “empowered to encourage informed patient choice and act against anti-competitive practices but only when this is in the interest of patients…and in the interest of equality of access” could not also be an economic regulator. Other economic regulators – Ofgem, Ofcom – also have wider public policy objectives which sit alongside their responsibilities as competition authorities. Here Clegg appears to be saying that he doesn’t want Monitor to be an economic regulator, because that would be bad and Monitor should instead be…an economic regulator.

Given that the statement is so evidently nonsensical, I’m confused.

Clegg could be badly briefed on the intricacies of the NHS, of competition law, and of the roles and responsibilities of economic regulators.

Or alternatively, he could be using those complexities to fool his party – and the public – that he opposes the contents of the Health and Social Care bill whilst actually just reinforcing its contents.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

*There are a number of other activities which are quite evidently subject to UK and EU competition law. Like the NHS’ other procurement activity – office supplies, catering, cleaning etc.

**This raises a related point which is maybe Clegg is concerned about contestable funding in the NHS, and would prefer complete state provision of healthcare. If that is right, then his opposition to the Health and Social Care bill would be a lot more strong than just on the narrow point about the role, or status of Monitor.

Why Labour should take Gok Wan more seriously

Hear me out. At the weekend I bought some new shirts, but suffer from the problem that my neck is too large for my body. Or at least, the way the shirts are cut means that by getting a shirt with the right collar size, I end up with shirts that make me look like I’m about to set sail. Even opting for ‘slim’ or ‘tailored’ fit doesn’t completely address the issue, and it costs me more.

In this sense, I am victim of poor fortune – being born with a large neck means I have to pay more than others to look as good in shirts. If only shirt manufacturers didn’t seem to assume that men with big necks are also fat!

This got me thinking. Perhaps Labour needs to take the philosophy of Gok Wan a bit more seriously?

In Gok’s Fashion Fix, Gok demonstrates that it is possible to look like you’re wearing designer fashion but on a high street budget. In essence Gok is a fashion egalitarian who thinks your budget shouldn’t affect your ability to look good.

There are at least two reasons why Labour should take that sentiment more seriously.

Firstly, academic research suggests a link between career prospects and appearance* (for example, here or here). So wealth is partly a function of how you look. If people with bad luck have to invest more to look at least the same as people with good luck, then this might compound income inequality**. If Labour is serious about tackling the causes of income inequality, then it might develop policies to ensure looking good is more affordable. Fashion advisers to those on unemployment benefits, for example? Or propose legislating to prohibit discrimination on sartorial grounds?

Secondly, if there is a link between career prospects and appearance, then maybe there is an argument to focus more on how Labour politicians, prospective politicians and party workers dress? Investment in the personal appearance of ‘Party people’ (for want of a better phrase) may yield electoral benefits. I’ll leave it as an open question as to how much investment might be needed…

So there could be two tangible benefits if Labour took Gok Wan more seriously: it may help reverse income inequality resulting from bad luck (odd body shapes etc) and deliver better electoral outcomes.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

*Although note that sometimes changing your appearance can have negative impacts too.

**In the narrow sense of my shirt example this might not strictly hold – fat people, even if shirts fit them better, may experience slower career progression than those who are slimmer (other things equal).