I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was a beautiful shitshow. For me, this perspective was a good story to tell myself - it justified why I was only investing my time in “work”, and validated me for having “come so far”.
Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection centered around the question the author hasn’t asked himself yet: who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.
But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself.
I found that if I find myself projecting onto social norms, society, or some other loose definition of “they”, what I’m really doing is projecting a part of myself that I haven’t been honest about yet.
I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period.
Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.
The author of this article used Charles Murray’s Coming Apart as a source. He’s a pretty… controversial figure. The counterpart to him that is more progressive and less controversial is Robert Putnam. His books are a lot more digestible. I’d suggest looking up talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends)
One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then the economics follow later. That’s the one thing I would take away from the books/talks. Somewhat ironic to many here.
> I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's
This belief is oddly common, considering it has no basis in reality. The share of adults living in households with sub-middle-class incomes has only grown by 4% since 1971.[0] The share of adults living in upper-class households grew by more (5%)! And this even as the number of single-adult households has soared[1], reducing the average number of earners per household!
The portion of double income households more than doubled between 1960 and today[1]. The middle class is working more because they want to, or because they need to? Purchasing power for the average worker is flat[2]. In some sense, it's like the middle class has been working for fifty years without a raise, only now two people in the household need to work. That fewer people are getting married or having kids is likely not because human nature shifted in the past few decades, but probably because their lives are not going well or developing properly.
> Purchasing power for the average worker is flat[2]. In some sense, it's like the middle class has been working for fifty years without a raise, only now two people in the household need to work
That “flat” wage is accounting for inflation according to your own link. So not only would a single earner be doing just as good today as back then, adding a second income means they are raking in twice the spending power as back then.
The only thing that has changed are expectations. People want way bigger houses, nicer cars, computers, smart phones, more meat, dental care, better medical care, etc. Worst of all (from a financial perspective), they want both of their average kids to spend 4 years at an expensive university.
> Worst of all (from a financial perspective), they want both of their average kids to spend 4 years at an expensive university.
Expensive only because it's been allowed to become expensive. Decades ago it was normal for a good university to be nearly free or at least quite affordably by the student working part time to pay their way.
> dental care, better medical care
People "want" health care. I mean of course, but it's not a whim, it's a basic necessity. Which like the university, was very affordable to nearly everyone decades ago.
Not sure people want bigger houses either, every housing topic on HN is full of desire for smaller apartments to get built.
Indeed. Even as late as the early 90s, my summer internships (not at minimum wage, but still just intern pay) was almost enough to pay for a year of tuition at CMU, an expensive top university.
> The portion of double income households more than doubled between 1960 and today[1].
Your data only represents "married couples with children under 18"--a (shrinking) minority of households. By definition it does not account for the dramatic rise in single-adult households.
The single adult households are a separate and bad thing. I don't think there has been a substantial shift in human desires in the last couple generations - most people still want to get married and have kids and fewer of them are. That they are able to subsist in one family households is not a bragging point for our system.
How does a “flat lining” of wages of cause family stability to go down? And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?
> And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?
Less individual freedom, greater direct economic dependency on others in your group, and also the threat of ostracization, excommunication, and destitution if you go against its rules. Basically, there are extremely high cost/stakes associated with going it on your own.
But on the other side there are also good things that come from greater direct interdependency, like perhaps less individual alienation and a greater sense of shared purpose, and access to community resources when you follow the prescribed rules.
In some places people have centuries of social-structure adaptation to deal with the stress of being systematically oppressed (by local elites, colonial overlords, ...).
E.g. money gets shielded by community institutions (such as local religious organizations) that are harder for elites to steal from than individual peasants, and then those act as a kind of social safety net in hard times. Extended families/clans build social bonds through e.g. marriage and baptism, and help each-other.
Often there are severe social problems in rural peasant societies: alcoholism, domestic violence, seasonal migrant labor keeping people away from home much of the year, corruption, ..., but people have also learned to be tough vs. some kinds of outside threats. But large waves in the world economy (or a large natural disaster or the like) also can overwhelm those defenses.
I think we agree that many pro-social structures exist in poor and socially rigid societies.
However these come at the expense of many liberties (i.e. religious) that are held as important in the more developed world. It's not clear that loss of such personal liberties would be an improvement in developed societies, even if it reduced the nominal divorce rate.
I agree there is a trade off, but let’s explore this a bit further. Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? Decisions about these trade offs tend to be imposed from the top, by the elites. 2/3s of Americans still disagree with the Supreme Court ruling banning school prayer.
When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance?
In many places “low divorce rate” is a euphemism for widespread sexual assault, domestic violence, and total lack of women’s individual rights. You get young women handed off from father to husband as effectively chattel. Women have no choice but to put up with that when they don’t have any viable social/economic alternatives, but it’s overall pretty unpleasant and oppressive.
A significant proportion of people in the US seem to pine for the days when homosexuality was taboo and illegal, women could be beaten or raped by their husbands (and children by their fathers) and it was treated as no one else’s business, non-white people were kept out of the neighborhood and interracial marriage was frowned on if not illegal, pre-marital sex was encouraged for men but made women into “sluts”, middle/high school students received no education about basic human biology/anatomy, rape victims were forced to deliver their rapists’ babies, most professional jobs were reserved for white men, etc. But hey, low divorce rates!
Do you seriously think that this is a good description of how the upper-middle class in the West behaves? Because by and large, that's what we're talking about in this thread wrt. low divorce rates. The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless. You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal".
> You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal".
New normal can easily be pervasive dysfunction. When dysfunction becomes pervasive, it is also perceived as normal by people inside that society.
> The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless.
These were not so much anomies as taboo to talk about if it is happening to you. They were seen as private issues that should have stayed private and if you did talked about it, you was the bad one. Nevertheless, some statistics are available - for example domestic murders. Those went down. Some anonymous statistics. People who went through it in the past and did talked about it, their children remembering and talking about it later. The way domestic violence is portrayed in media - whether it is shown as something justifiable and ok or not.
When I was child, there was no domestic violence around me. Then I grew into adult and people started to talk more openly in front of me. Turned out, there was in fact domestic violence among adults I knew as child ... except I was protected from it.
The question remains. Do you think that the Western upper middle class are being willfully blind to some sort of domestic violence epidemic happening all around them, the way you describe previous generations as acting? You're relating isolated anecdata, that tell us nothing about whether some behaviors might have been common in the past.
Yes, Western upper middle class were willfully blind to domestic violence around them. Just like Eastern upper middle class. Or like lower class, really. It is not even that difficult ... you just don't talk about it. It was not crime. Most of it happens at home when no third party is around. If you did not wanted to be blind to it, you could talk to the aggressor and that was about how much realistically could be done. Shelters were not a thing at the time.
Whether it qualified as "epidemic" I don't know.
Seriously, people of all classes were also willfully blind to sexual abuse for years and that includes abuse by priests.
> Seriously, people of all classes were also willfully blind to sexual abuse for years and that includes abuse by priests.
Not really. This was a big part of why people were so vicious during the Protestant Reformation. You don't just have people buried up to their necks and then trampled by horses because you disagree about points of scripture.
(a) Where did you get “upper middle class in the West” from? The further-back context of this subthread is “family stability in countries that are much poorer”. Specifically, I assume, rural or recently urbanized/industrialized countries. The more recent context is some (uncited) polling of all Americans; those who were in favor of school prayer etc. are (statistically) less well educated, more religious, whiter, and older, compared to the rest of the population.
But (b) sure this also applies to upper middle class people across “the West” as of not very long ago. It’s not that every household was full of abusers, but it was treated by the public as a private matter, not talked about, and much more widespread than publicly recognized.
Public opinion tells us little about real-world behavior. The whole point of OP is that the upper-middle class liberal elites are not practicing what they preach to the rubes and proles.
What is your point? This thread is a tangent from the original article.
My claim is that “low divorce rates” historically often masked widespread abuse and unhappiness in stressed (even broken) marriages which were continued due to social pressure, not always for the best.
* * *
As for the article, this causal claim is wildly speculative bullshit:
"The educated class decides cohabiting partnerships are just as valid and important as marriage. And they also believe it’s okay to walk away at a moment’s notice from a cohabiting relationship. ¶ Poor and working-class people follow suit. To the detriment of themselves and their children."
The problem working-class people have is not bad “elite” role models, but a lack of money and good stable jobs, limited parental leave, a lack of cheap childcare options, a corrupt and exploitative criminal justice system, etc.
The supporting evidence presented in TFA is some papers about how people find newspaper op-eds persuasive, are impressed by qualifications when reading public policy recommendations, and choose their high heel shoe height based on local trends when moving to a rich neighborhood; extrapolating from this to young working-class parents separating from their partners because “elites” say it is okay is a ridiculous stretch. Especially when the young women directly quoted said clearly why they broke up. Occam’s razor says we should listen to what they say instead of inventing some secret reason without any direct evidence.
> Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates?
> When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance?
Of course the Supreme Court when concerning anything involving the government making an establishment of any religion.
The US isn't Saudi Arabia. As much as it's any American's right to practice the religion of their choosing, it's not in any religion's right to deny any individual - even in their religion - their individual liberties, or to impose their religion upon a person of another or no religion.
Liberties have always come paired with obligations to one's surrounding community, so there would be nothing new in this. We have a name for pure liberty or "liberation" shorn of any checks or obligations towards others: we call it licence, and every increase in licence is ultimately a step towards bondage and tyranny.
What do you mean? Historically most people in most places in the world (e.g. my ancestors in Europe a few generations ago, my godparents in southern Mexico recently, or most of your ancestors if you go back a couple centuries, wherever they happened to come from) have lived as rural peasants.
I think you're trying to think that stable families become less stable if their waged stagnate. They don't. What happens is that in aggregate, with stagnating wages, there are less stable (middle-class) families in society.
For so-called poorer countries, they are differently structured. It's tough to compare their family units with our rich nations.
> For so-called poorer countries, they are differently structured. It's tough to compare their family units with our rich nations.
But that’s exactly the point! Prior to the 1960s revolution in social norms, families in poor countries weren’t structured all that differently than ones in the US.
I’m no Reaganite, but the fact is that the stuff the old “family values” conservatives said is pretty much the same thing my Asian immigrant parents told me growing up.
Meanwhile, the data shows that Asian Americans who grow up in the bottom 20% have a 25% chance of ending up in the top 20% as adults. For white kids it’s just 11%. That’s a really big coincidence to hand wave away.
The crazy successful asian immigrants are mostly those who came recently, and who are bluntly the best and brightest of Asia coming to America for a better life due to US policy attracting the very best. Just like the above conversation, you only think of one slice of data to arrive at your conclusion.
The issue isn't with the absolute level of wages but with increasing income inequality (Gini coefficient) and the resulting loss of social status for young men on the lower end of that scale.
You can make a fair argument that the bottom 50% haven’t gotten their share of productivity growth, but that doesn’t explain why social indicators among the bottom quantile have gotten so much worse.
> Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970
It's grown for every group used in that breakout, but while it breaks out the upper income groups on relatively fine categories, it groups the bottom half as one category.
(It's useful for the graph's original purpose of discussing top-weighted inequality, it's not useful for the argument you are trying to make with it.)
>Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970
And education, housing, and health costs has sky-rocketed, number of "essential services" to pay for (mobile phone, internet, severan "rentier" subscriptions) has increased, while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...
But yes, the top 10%, the types to usually post at HN, never had it better.
But a lot of those requirements are manufactured. Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?
I agree the top 10% have poor insight into what life is like for everyone else, but that cuts both ways. I think there’s a real misperception of what income is necessary to maintain a similar quality of life to the past.
University is free in Germany, and a lot of jobs that require a college degree elsewhere are fulfulled by 3 year appreticeships in Germany. So hard to compare.
Whether it's manufactured or organic, it's still real. That's the economic reality we all have to live with in America, so it doesn't matter whether Germany can operate just fine without the crushing college debt we have: the fact is, middle-class households in America have lost real wealth and purchasing power over the past 50 years because of this and a number of other factors.
Just because it's real, that doesn't make it right. You're missing the entire point: maybe the issue isn't the gutting of the middle class, but the expectation or encouragement of higher "education" even if it is unnecessary for a huge chunk of people.
>Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?
Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".
Germany also has a quite solid social protection, not a cut throat environment where tons of people are a medical bill away from homeless.
> Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".
Neither does the United States? Not sure where you're getting this idea from. Most people I know revere trades as they're a known way to make great money without a degree. And, anecdotally speaking, I've managed to get great jobs as a software engineer without a degree. We treat non-college graduates who don't try to ascend above retail or fast-food as losers - and for good reason.
> while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...
What?! The labor market has been so strong over the past decade that economists started to wonder if previous paradigms no longer apply (i.e. Phillips curve).
>Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.
yes, this is why I couldn't quite be convinced of the thesis being proposed here. Or at the very least, they way they try to describe the "marketing" of being in a faithful marriage runs counter to the reality. While the situation of "deadbeat dad becomes alcoholic, won't get jobs, and cheats" is not an uncommon cause of divorce, the more common narrative pushes it as a liberation of women's right. Less about a man breaking away to be free and more about a woman not being trapped.
That above deadbeat stereotype has more become the "violent domestic abuser" type as of late. So divorce is a way to turn an absolute nightmare of a situation into emotional stability in exchange for what will likely be financial hardship. It turns a bad into slightly less bad, not a potentially patchful good into a bad.
Or at least, that's how society markets it. I don't have hard sources and admit these are just the notions I feel have risen over 3 decades of media consumption.
>> Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.”
> It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore.
As though it’s ever been considered high-status to have crap pay and deal with abusive bosses and coworkers. Ask the really high-status people whether it was.
You need recordings to be able to review interactions for who is more in the right, telling the employee they need to turn off FB and get on with work seems like it management would say it’s reasonable and worker might say it’s overbearing.
> Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die.
Without seeming to make any sort of connection that poverty is a causative factor in every single one of these. Poor people are more likely to commit crimes of desperation. Poor people are over-policed when compared to middle-or-upper class people. Poverty makes it more difficult to escape domestic abuse. (Idk about the infidelity one). Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor.
But y'know, that doesn't fit into his worldview that the dissolution of "family values" is the root cause of all this.
Did you grow poor or have friends from poor backgrounds? I saw lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence, and little if any of it had to do with their trying to survive in a material sense. There are different norms around which behaviors grant status, and this is the primary driver behind this kind of behavior in my experience.
I grew up poor, but was lucky enough to go to a fairly 'rich' school district amongst fairly rich people (upper middle class more than "rich" I guess).
You know what I saw in rich kids?
Lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence.
I just rarely saw them suffer any consequences for it.
This just goes to prove that anti-social behavior is not a "consequence" of poverty, and that solid social norms are far more relevant. Rich kids can still live in a socially frayed, marginalizing environment.
It's about survival in mental sense which lack of material means makes extremely hard.
People don't need money, but they desperately need sense of agency and entertainment and lack of money makes fulfilling those core needs in legal and moral manner super hard.
You're describing the cultural correlates of social marginalization and fraying social capital, not "poverty" per se. In many poor countries, casual anti-social behavior does not grant community status; in fact, the opposite is the case and punishments can be quite harsh indeed (though not nearly as harsh or socially damaging as the long-term imprisonment that's all-too-common in the US.) Widespread poverty in those failing communities is the consequence of such dynamics, not the cause.
Poverty isn’t the cause of crime. People were objectively poorer in the 1950s, even in the lower classes, and people in developing countries are much poorer than even poor Americans.
Absolute income (whether measured in dollars or purchasing power) means very little when compared across time periods or countries. Poverty has never been about your absolute buying power. It is relative to the society you exist in. You will find, by any objective measure, that the wealth disparity in the US is nearly as high as it has ever been (only exceeded by the Great Depression). These same objective measures will consistently score the US as worse than many developing countries.
You will find across many eras and cultures in the last two millennia that the poorest members of the society are the most vulnerable members of society and the most likely to be punished for committing crimes. If you still don't believe me, read this paper for an in-depth analysis that controls for many factors: https://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/IN...
Laws are made by those with power. In today's society, power comes in large part from wealth - that's the foundation of capitalism. The objective of capitalism is to accrue capital, and our laws and police system are set up to protect the wealthy and their wealth.
That's why graffiti is punishable by ten years in prison. Stealing a week's worth of groceries can mean years in prison. In contrast, the penalty for illegally evicting a renter, rendering them homeless, is about two or three months rent, and no prison time.
> Stealing a week's worth of groceries can mean years in prison.
Not even close to accurate, unless you're running off with a cartful of steaks, which might push you into criminal territory. Most shoplifting is not even a misdemeanor, just a civil infractions. Criminal charges require hundreds or thousands of dollars and usually multiple offenses to get more serious than probation.
"Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor."
I imagine this explains the correlation between poor minority neighborhoods during the crack epidemic or between the depressed rural areas and the opioid epidemic now.
who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.
I suggest reading the book "Manufacturing Consent" to get an understanding of how expectations are shaped by mass media.
Just like there was a concerted effort to create public support for war (WW1/WW2/Vietnam/etc.), there are concerted efforts to shape public opinion and create expectations within our broader culture about morals/values/etc. Sometimes it's explicit, and often times it's implicit and picked up via signaling cues (i.e. high status reporter says X, to go against X would mean no more invites to fancy dinner parties)
>But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself.
The last conclusion is a little off. Everybody who expresses any opinion is describing "his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc". That doesn't mean they can't also coincide with a general trend, for example "societal expectations" at large.
The glaring piece missing from this analysis is the psychology of the young men themselves.
Raising two young men myself, I’m blown away by how powerful cultivating intrinsic motivation is. My eldest just went from constant gaming/sleeping/hiding in his room to working a full-time job, launching a side hustle, and enrolling in classes.
Yes, my modeling & encouragement mattered. But the fulcrum was him accepting that living up to other people’s expectation in high school had left him tired, depressed, and lost.
The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts.
He’s just completely ignored intrinsic motivation and the power of cultivating it.
I don’t think that’s an accident. I think our entire approach to young men as a society ignores the fundamental power of their interests.
> The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts.
For me it felt like the title would reflect reality better if it was rephrased to "Society has nothing to offer to young men and they respond by not pursuing anything."
While you juxtapose gaming/hiding in your room and working/classes they're not mutually exclusive. I work a full-time job, take classes, have a sidle hustle, never leave my room, play way too many video games and sleep in almost every day.
I've got two kids in college. Perhaps one thing is to avoid being consumed by your own fear of them failing. For a lot of the tasks they're given, if they're halfway intelligent, then the only hurdles will be attention and motivation. So, of you are the one supplying them with those things, then you're the one doing the work. "I'm not going to do your homework, but I'm going to make you do it," is doing their homework.
With that said, the tasks are going to come on hot and heavy sooner than you expect. I didn't have homework in grade school. At all. My kids had mountains of homework. Giving them too much to manage on their own, while telling you not to manage it for them, would seem like a cruel joke, but I don't know any other answer.
Also, you could be more disciplined than I was about my own chores. I didn't need to clean the bathrooms every week at the same time, but maybe had I set up a schedule like that, it might have modeled better habits in my kids. Or maybe not. ;-)
I just use common sense, I try to explain why doing something is good and try to make the kid to have a desire to accomplish something. Also things have to feel more fun and less of a chore. If that fails, I have to resort to authority ("please do this because I ask you to"). If that also fails, I have to use carrot and stick strategy ("you will get that toy only if" or "you won't watch cartoons unless").
Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it.
I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded in the personal, the specific, and the (thoughtfully) statistical. Otherwise it's very easy just to project one's biases onto a complicated picture. E.g., consider whatever it is that people think is "ruining the kids" these days. In the 1700s, you know what was ruining the kids? Novels: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-mo...
With broad social argument, it's easy to introduce all sorts of fallacy. Humans aren't really equipped to reason intuitively about things at this scale. Especially if the point is to persuade and/or entertain, simplifying into broad "logical" arguments can paint false pictures. Andrew Gelman wrote about this today: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils...
The error in your line of thinking is that you assume humans are better interpreting statistical evidence than they are broad logical arguments. I don't see any evidence of that.
It's not a error until a) you show that's the case, and b) it's material to my point.
Honestly, I don't think people are "better" at that (if such a fuzzy construction can have a useful meaning). But I do think they are more careful with it because it's harder to get right and more easy to visibly get it wrong. It's fine with me if expecting more concreteness just drastically reduces the total amount of social commentary. Even if it dropped by 99%, we'd still have more than we needed.
The author provided data and graphs to highlight the problems in America he believes are being caused by a root problem of society having low expectations for men.
He doesn't provide any data to reflect what society's expectations are. Those are just his thoughts.
The author provides no direct data, but cited a large number of peer reviewed articles and books. For example:
In a fascinating 2012 paper titled Sexual Economics, Culture, Men, and Modern Sexual Trends, the psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs wrote:
“Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that.”
I agree with what you're getting at. The prevailing belief in social science is that it's impossible to eliminate bias from your analysis of the world. In fact, I think many social scientists think that quantitative folks are kidding themselves when they think their clever statistical methods are free from their own personal biases.
In Tokyo, nobody jay walks. In New York City, everyone jay walks. Do you think there’s (1) not the product of cultural norms; and (2) no way for someone embedded in that culture to be able to observe those cultural norms and comment on them?
One thing that really stuck out to me was the implicit assumption that "stable home environment" requires or is equal to "married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult".
Especially the quote where an agreement that stability is important was interpreted as agreement that marriage is important.
Declining how? Besides natural population growth, I can't think of any other relevant decline European countries are experiencing. And even if they were experiencing a general decline, that doesn't mean there's correlation with the percent of married couples vs non-married ones. Marriage or civil union doesn't change the stability of the couple ( besides the fact that the former usually implies a party with a lot of people which could be expensive).
It’s especially jarring in contrast to Rayiner’s other comments in this conversation are about how Asian Americans are such economically successful go-getters compared to lazy white people due to their culturally superior family structure or something.
Or if we want to talk about places where “traditional family values” (i.e. opposition to women’s rights) poll very high, how about the demographics of Russia?
The demographic decline in “a handful of European countries” is substantially a matter of time since industrialization, access to birth control, urbanization, female literacy, amount of immigration, housing prices, etc. more than ethnic/cultural/religious origin, and it is going to land on everywhere else in the world (USA, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, ..) soon enough.
Sure. I'll also show you how, so you could do this yourself in future.
I googled "stability of cohabiting couples". This led me to Wikipedia [1]. From there I hit the 2002 CDC report "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States" [2]. That provides the following statistic:
"The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within 5 years is 49 percent. After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent, compared with 62 percent for cohabitations."
I wondered if that had changed since 2002, so I hit Google Scholar and searched for articles after 2010. A 2020 article discussed cohabitation broadly. I scrolled down and found a 2018 article [3]. (There's an ungated PDF elsewhere if you need it.) They look at 8 countries including the US. Their findings: "cohabiting couples who do not subsequently transition to marriage... consistently have the highest
predicted probabilities of separation within 5 years." Some of the gaps between cohabiting and married couples disappear if you control for (e.g.) education and other demographics.
It's puzzling to me that you are getting downvoted instead of responses when it seems like your comment follows the whole progressive comment Hacker News thing... Or whatever it is they are going for this week.
I had an unstable family and a lot of patchwork in my youth. Won't recommend it. It doesn't have to be negative, but it often comes with compromises. And children aren't stupid, they can leverage the conflict of their parents, but it isn't necessarily for their best in the long run.
I heavily dislike the illusionary idealism from some for something that can be quite a lot of work. The state of marriage is pretty much not relevant though. At least in my opinion.
It seems you might be missing the larger point and getting hung up in pedantry. Try taking a deep breath and a step back to consider the bigger picture.
No one knows how other models work. However, note that "stable" comes from the data. Maybe other models are stable, maybe they're not. Without data, it's simply unknown.
I believe Harvard did a study that showed that two parent households were more strongly correlated with child academic achievement than other factors. Granted that's not married couples or biological parents, but two parent households. And academic achievement is only one measure of success.
It's funny you'd say "that’s his perspective of what the world thinks" when he's an academic doing a PhD on the subject chatting with other academics about the same topic.
I mean clearly psychology is a lot of "our area of study observes X and attributes Y as a part of theory Z". It's not a hard science where objective, absolute, undeniable measurements can be made.
But it's not some random dude just pontificating about social structures on the internet.
By your measure we should just throw all the great philosophers works in the toilet because "that's their perspective".
Perhaps 10 years of existing within the system led you away from the more revolutionary perspective and towards the status quo. I would be curious to see the blog post you wrote, I can't find it in your submissions.
Hm. What about other things though, which are not the job, but still require effort/work? Like working on free software, working for a social project, being politically active, doing things of charity reasons ... Those don't require one to define oneself in terms of how far one has gotten in their career, but they actually add value to society. In many cases adding more value to society than the actual job. I think it's quite OK to define ones worth using such measures. We all live in a society. People should ask themselves more often how much they contributed to the well-being of society.
Volunteering tends to be an elite activity anyway. When people have to work multiple full-time jobs just to survive, it's just not very helpful or meaningful to ask whether they might find their inner fulfillment by helping out at the local animal shelter.
Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing?
I’d find this statement equally compelling (which is to say, not at all):
> Since we stopped using horses as a primary means of transportation, men’s sense of self worth has diminished. Riding a horse carried a lot of high status connotations: drive, masculinity, towering above the land, and man’s domination over nature. Now, we drive metal cars, low to the ground, and driving one is seen as commonplace. All of men’s low sense of self worth stems from this.
It's very compelling when it lines up with my worldview in a way that makes me feel validated. Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions.
Unfortunately, I'm not a WASP so your 'horse theory' doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
As stated elsewhere in the thread, northern Europe bucks this "trend" that the author sees. The nuclear family is as weak as it has ever been, christianity and its ideals are an afterthought, and people have never been happier.
I always have trouble with this assertion. How do we actually know this? Do we feel that the surveys that are being given can even accurately measure happiness, and that the responses are comparable over time? It feels these questions are difficult to definitively answer, but I see all the time the tendency to reach for references to the World Happiness Report as if it should be taken automatically as an accurate measurement.
As far as I know, we don't even have measurements going back that far -- the earliest I've generally been able to find is from the mid/late 1900s. I think it's a bold statement to say people are the happiest ever right now.
Triggered my HN alert on horses. I ride seriously more days than not. It's a huge and rich topic, but short version is - there were no kings without horsemen. It's been the training for officer class for milennia because it uniquely inculcates a fearlessness and physicality and magnanimity that really does elevate and improve men by developing qualities that are transferrable to other beings in nature.
There are men, and there are horsemen. Even in ancient mythology, wisdom originated from the "centaurs," from the "east." It's not woo. I may even write a book on it. Mostly women ride in north america (outside western/rodeo), and the reasons for that are at least as controversial as this thread. Women who ride seriously are usually superior leaders as well, and it's just not something one can easily explain without experience in it.
I don't think it's rank speculation, the article itself mentions 1 in 6 men are unemployed, and there have been plenty of other articles that have been posted on here with statistics on the number of men that aren't just unemployed but have no interest being employed. College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere. This stuff has been posted on here and discussed many times.
There was another article posted on here before similar to this one and I posted my thoughts on the trend from the perspective of coaching high school girls and boys sports:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274979&p=4#30276972
>College enrollment of men is somewhere around 44% of the student body nation wide in the US, the number of men in higher education has been dropping for a couple of decades now. Girls are significantly outperforming boys from Kindergarten to 12 grade nearly everywhere.
Interesting. Are the changes in education biased against boys?
I have definitely observed the "we need to put little johnny in safety padding for all things" amongst my friends and their kids. My kids were free to roam (within reason) and try things most people shudder at. They learned to cook relatively young, use power tools (after many safety instructions), stay over at friends houses, be around adults talking about adult stuff, etc. They both survived and became healthy, happy young adults (21 and 19 currently) who weren't afraid to take a chance or risk a little pain; they learned that the journey is as important as the end of the trail (learning is a reward, and you'll hit painful road blocks along the way). I had some parents breathless when I told them I let my two 15/13 year olds camp in the woods by a lake over a weekend for fishing and enjoying nature by themselves, because I trusted them to stay out of trouble and use their common sense. I also know they snuck along their handheld gaming devices along with them too and got a chuckle out of their limited rebelliousness. Learn to give kids some slack and they'll set their own goals and not be afraid to go for them.
It’s like Jared Diamond stuff. Primarily it’s hypothesis generation. You’re not supposed to accept it as true. You’re supposed to consider it and consequences so you can consider “If this is true, what else would one conclude? Do those conclusions affect something I care about meaningfully? If so, how can I establish the truth?”
They’re risky though because you have to actively discard the priors you temporarily held afterwards or you’ll go around thinking that “I read an article that said”.
Sure, I mean, it's something to think about. Something I can read and consider which parts I agree with or disagree with and why that is. It's not a topic I know anything about really, beyond my general experience of life, so I don't need to be annoyed at things that an expert might recognise as being factually incorrect (unlike if I read, eg, a journalist talking about software where I'm likely to be frustrated at how many things they've got wrong)
It's a personal statement from someone with relevant lived experience. Exploring others' viewpoints is interesting, if only to find out that they exist. The article touches on questions that do not currently have an objective answer: Why do people do the things they do? Should they be doing something different? Science may someday provide an objective ("substantive") answer to the first, but it can't choose our goals (make value judgments) for us, so articles like this are valuable. And social media works a lot better for opinion-based than objective discourse because everyone can participate on equal footing.
It's a shit article where the author lightly blames what one would generally call "elites" for the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites and who make it a point of hating everything the "elites" like anyways.
"the stupidity and moral ineptitude of lower-class people who avowedly hate elites"
I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the "elite". And I for one will not complain if someone hates a person who holds your classist views.
And what do you mean by "elite" anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that. To quote from the article,
"Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s."
> I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the "elite".
Go on reddit, the refrains of "eat the rich" are quite common. People there hate the rich and the elite.
That being said, poor people are not "stupid" or have "moral ineptitude." They're just poor, something that those who have never been poor will not understand. It's a victim blaming mentality.
"Go on reddit, the refrains of "eat the rich" are quite common. People there hate the rich and the elite."
Well, an argument is lost if it starts by referring to the people who post on reddit.
But do people really hate an expert contractor who is rich but does an excellent job of repairing their house? Do they hate a prominent surgeon or medical professional? Are they against being represented by an elite law firm? People hate John Carmack because he is a rich and prominent graphics programmer?
My point is that what some perceive as a hatred of the rich and/or elite in general is not that at all. Instead, it is anger towards a subset of the elite and as I said there are other underlying reasons for that.
There are rich people on reddit too, such as those on /r/fatFIRE.
> But do people really hate an expert contractor who is rich but does an excellent job of repairing their house? Do they hate a prominent surgeon or medical professional? Are they against being represented by an elite law firm? People hate John Carmack because he is a rich and prominent graphics programmer?
Those people are not what one would consider rich and elite. It is more meant for people who are in the billions of dollars of net worth territory, at least as I understand it.
I haven't encountered these individuals either, but they certainly exist. Class barriers are often considered in the abstract, but when it comes to physical manifestations of these differences, it can be raw and visceral. One photograph that stuck with me was the "eat the rich" [0] spray painted in Beverly Hills park during the early Covid protests.
I'm not arguing about their existence. After all, there are very strange people in the world.
The "eat the rich" mantra is a manifestation (although not really physical) of the incredible and widening gap between the middle class and the rich. Generally the life of the lower and the middle class has become more precarious while the top 0.x% have become obscenely more wealthy.
"I have never encountered an individual who claims to hate the 'elite'"
I don't know what to tell you there. Go talk to more individuals? Go read some right-wing propaganda (e.g. almost anything that comes out Josh Hawley's mouth, or certain off-bench remarks from Justices Alito and Thomas--and yes, all of these individuals are also "elite", but because their views are in the minority among elites, they can't like they aren't "elite" and rail against the other elites).
Go see who likes them, how it plays with that base, and see also how it plays with the far-left camp (e.g. Bernie, who I generally like but who has a lot wrong, and AOC) too, though they may use different language. It's a pretty popular meme (I wouldn't call it worthy of being labeled an "idea") among certain segments of the population, sometimes for different reasons.
"And what do you mean by 'elite' anyways? If people dislike those in the position of authority, especially politicians, they generally have very good reasons for that."
I was not thinking of politicians, but, fwiw, I would say blind/reflexive hatred of politicians is a prime example of a kind of idiotic and adolescent trend in American culture to just hate traditional authority figures.
There are probably plenty of good reasons to hate them, sure, but ask people who say things like "oh yeah they're all corrupt" how they know that, what evidence they have, whether they can list the past several major corruption scandals, how corruption here compares to other countries, etc, and they can't do it at all.
As you said, Hawley (Stanford and Yale alumni), JD Vance (Yale alumni), even Trump (from a wealthy family and Penn alumni) are all political elites but also quite popular with the right-wingers. So it's not really about hating the elite, unless by the elite you means a specific subset of Democrat politicians and activists.
How many people would object to being operated on by a prominent Harvard surgeon because that person is part of the elite? How many would oppose their children attending an Ivy League or a selective and private university on the ground of being an elite institution? Do people hate engineering professors at MIT because they're elite or do they actually respect them because of their expertise?
"oh yeah they're all corrupt"
To be clear, I believe that the Harvard and Yale alumni and the other political elites who planned & supported the many coups of the 20th century, started the Iraq war (Bush admin), bombed Libya (Obama) into poverty, etc. are all corrupt and deserve our contempt. It does not have anything to do with corruption scandals either because it's a structural problem where politicians have to cozy up to the defense and oil industries among others to advance their careers and get paid.
"As you said, Hawley (Stanford and Yale alumni), JD Vance (Yale alumni), even Trump (from a wealthy family and Penn alumni) are all political elites but also quite popular with the right-wingers. So it's not really about hating the elite, unless by the elite you means a specific subset of Democrat politicians and activists."
They appeal to their base in part by disavowing that status. Hawley and Vance in particular are pretty much throwing out much of what they learned in law school by cozying up to Trump with the stolen election bs. Going off of their credentials is silly, and I think you know that--listen to what they say. They are feeding upon and taking advantage of the rabid anti-intellectualism and anti-elite hatred of their base.
There’s a growing trend of blaming the lower upper-class for societal issues. Whether it’s due to their excess quantity or their moral licentiousness. Yup it’s definitely them and not the people who control the levers of power
There is a certain class of very smart, articulate and well-thinking people. They are very good at arguing and dismissing and coming up with all sorts of valid reasons for all sorts of ideas. I find they detract the conversation a lot, instead of adding substance. I refer to the nebulous group of them as the "Intelligentsia", borrowed from others though.
They're never here to give a voice to people who don't have one, or to make us look at the material in any different way besides complete dismissal.
You call them Intelligensia but I call them people who suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Oh I didn't mean the term to be a compliment in any way. They're the kind of people that bludgeon normal people's debates and arguments with their breadth of knowledge, memory, intelligence and sheer typing capacity.
Honestly, that kind of makes sense. Riding horses is a bit of a masculine thing. I wonder if there's a 'tiny bit' to that. That said, I wonder if most men ever even really rode horses very often.
>Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing?
For me, it’s just playing with models, exploring ideas and representations in human-language space, which is fun, complex, hard… in that space, which you may call unsubstantial, every word references an individual graph. The more my attention system interfaces with the representations of such external graphs, the deeper my understanding of the world as a whole (or our shared models of it) becomes. So yeah, I enjoyed the read, Someone spent their energy on that. Don’t be so dismissive :-)
I think there are quite a few alternative explanations for the data cited in the article than the ones the author proposes:
> "Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s."
We have this place in the USA called "The Rust Belt" which was once a dynamic and active manufacturing center providing millions of well-paid jobs for these now unemployed American men. California once had a world-class electronics manufacturing industry (and a garment manufacturing industry) that provided hundreds of thousands of such jobs. Under the rubric of neoliberal globalization, those jobs were shipped out to Mexico, China, Indonesia, India and other low-wage centers, and the huge cut in labor costs went right into the pockets of a small fraction of now-extremely wealthy Americans. Why neglect that phenomenon?
> "Over the past half-century, the number of men per capita behind bars has more than quadrupled."
Again, we have a robust alternative explanation: the explosion in incarceration under the War on Drugs program launched by Nixon in the early 1970s and continued and amplified by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. This resulted in the explosive growth of the quite profitable private prison complex (which did not exist before the 1970s), and of course enforcement was highly skewed towards poor and minority groups. These groups were far more likely to smoke crack on the street corner than to snort cocaine in private clubs, and a 100-wt of cocaine powder was considered equivalent to a 1-wt of crack crystal in sentencing.
So if the author wants solutions to these problems, why not promote rewriting domestic and international law to exert significant penalties on corporations who outsource manufacturing overseas, and also end the War on Drugs by eliminating incarceration for possession of drugs, and instead focus on a public education approach emphasizing the benefits of getting off drugs and alcohol?
Those are certainly causal explanations for the data, but once those phenomena are here they impact people's expectations. Change in expectations is clearly what the author is focusing on.
For example, the emergence of the rust belt leaves a lot of unemployed men - the impacted parts of society won't continue to expect the same work ethic and commitment from their men 40-50 years later.
As in, "In the past young men could look to the example of their fathers, who had well-paid automotive manufacturing / steel mill / electronics assembly jobs that allowed them to care for their families and even put a downpayment on a small home, but now they have no such examples and no such expectations of moving into that kind of position at adulthood."
Okay, that's an expectation issue. Why is the author ignoring the change in conditions that led to that change in expectations?
> "Why is the author ignoring the change in conditions that led to that change in expectations?"
Because recreating the economic conditions of the '50s-'90s would require repeating the global devastation of industry and commerce of World War 2 but with the US (again) untouched along with reduction of emerging economies back to the backward state they were in then. Anytime one sees people asking why America can't just bring back to that golden (for the US) era, this should be pointed out in no uncertain terms. There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
From what I've seen, there's an entire industry of conservative economists Like Arthur Laffer and Larry Kudlow (to name a mere two, there are entire billionaire funded thinktanks like AEI dedicated to this) to deny the reality of the issues you mention, not unlike scientists paid to deny Climate Change or Tobacco's cancer links. And because of this, conservatives don't even believe that such issues exist.
There’s also a couple of billion people in Asia who think the exact same way as the author about families and culture. I’ve never read Laffer or Kudlow. I’m interpreting society through the values of my Bangladeshi parents. And they lead me to the same conclusion.
And given the remarkably higher income mobility of Asian kids raised in the bottom income compared to white kids, I think social liberals are sticking their heads in the sand by trying to hand wave away these social trends and blaming conservative think tanks.
I don't see how this relates to the question the parent comment was asking. But yes, the US does have a history with resentment of Asian immigrants, one of the first laws regarding immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and you may be able to surmise from the title what that law did. I think you'll find that conservatives make very capricious allies once they believe you are "stealing their jobs".
The point is that “conservative economists” didn’t invent these ideas to annoy democrats. Asian people tell their kids the same thing. My dad is a blue dog democrat. But he’s not going to ignore his own cultural values just to avoid agreeing with conservatives on something. That would be absurd.
> But yes, the US does have a history with resentment of Asian immigrants, one of the first laws regarding immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and you may be able to surmise from the title what that law did. I think you'll find that conservatives make very capricious allies once they believe you are "stealing their jobs".
Who cares about any of that? At the end of the day, Reagan’s America and Newt Gingrich’s America has been extremely good to Asians.
So Asians teach their children that this is not a real effect? And are Chinese Asians? Because I've heard about this whole "lay flat" movement in response to 996 culture that seems awfully familiar. And Japan seems to have a similar movement with the Hikikomori that in fact predates the American version.
We’re talking about the fact that people in Asia who are a lot poorer than lower middle class Americans manage to have much better social indicators of family stability and crime. And when those people come to America, even the poor kids have much better income mobility than their white American counterparts. So blaming social dysfunction on wages not keeping up with productivity growth is a bunch of baloney.
The social indicators started going sideways in the 1960s. Lots of cultural change since then. Much less focus on religion, tradition, and obligation, and much greater focus on individualism, self expression, self determination and “finding yourself,” and sexual fulfillment.
Globalisation, the rest of the world slowly catching up to the United Stattes, which slowly stops being the singular land of milk and honey it was in the 1940-1970 era?
Up until 1970, Europe was still catching up after the destruction of the war and the rest of the world was either completely mired in communism's stupidity or undeveloped rural societies. Fast forward 50 years and the communism is almost gone and a lot of those rural societies (i.e. South Korea, China etc.) are now leaders in high tech that successfully compete with the US.
Be careful when trying to draw conclusions about cultural values of different ethnicities within western countries with high percentages of recent immigrants. Immigrants in general outperform natives in income mobility, and this tapers off in later generations. Additionally it's difficult to ignore the massive selective bias within immigrant populations. Immigrating is very difficult and that's positively reflected in basically every way you could measure the character of those populations.
In America immigration isn’t difficult at all—we don’t have skill based immigration. The Asian kids being raised in the bottom 20% of the income distribution are mostly here based on chain migration.
> "Private prisons in the United States incarcerated 115,428 people in 2019, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 32% compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 3%."
Honestly, what if full time jobs (40 hour work weeks) are just a form of day care for men? Someone who worked "hard" all day and is the bread winner has way more leeway to get away with more anti social behavior than someone who is at home all day and doing the same thing.
The politics of endless growth are actually just a way to keep people busy. No wonder depressions and their massive loss of jobs lead to so much instability.
"You put a guy in chaotic and impoverished circumstances. And then you decide not to expect anything out of him. How can anyone possibly believe this will lead to anything other than disaster?"
I think the author has neglected a hugely important factor in this. Sure, what others expect of you can influence you greatly. But what one expects for themselves is a huge factor too. This self expectation can be largely driven by what opportunities one perceives to be available to them. Some of those perceptions are influenced by others, like teachers or parents exposing the child to a possible career path. Others are what the see their peers and slightly older group doing. Among this vein...
How hard is it to get a decent job today if you have a criminal record, even a minor one, vs in the 1970s?
How have real wages trended since the 70s?
Where have the high paying (relative to working fast food, etc) manufacturing jobs gone? How many jobs require expensive college degrees now?
Enlisting used to be a widely available option. How about now? I believe it's much more selective about who they take.
It might not be that young men are expected to do nothing. It might be that society has created a system in which it is hard for young men to do anything. If you have a lack of hope because the deck is stacked against you and none of your peers are making anything of themselves, then why wouldn't most people give up? Lack of hope and reduction in meaningful opportunity is a huge problem. There are many factors behind these. But the author doesn't seem to touch on any of them.
What are real wages like in lower middle class America compared to Asian or African countries that have a fraction of the rate of kids being raised without both parents?
They had this to say about marriage in traditional African cultures:
“ Marriage in the traditional African society was described by Evans Pritchard (1965) as a “given”, there was no such thing as unmarried adult woman or one who was childless by choice; ... and women could not choose a career instead of marriage” (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). Most African societies had sanctions for childbearing outside marriage, in some East African communities, it was punishable by death, in other places in Africa it was abortion or infanticide (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). There was no place for permanent singlehood except for religious celibates.”
On the increasing rates of single motherhood:
“ The rising levels of single motherhood in the region is occasioned in part by adaptation to changes brought about by education, mobility associated with employment, gendered migration, poverty, shortage of marriageable men, increased death rate due to HIV/AIDS pandemic, decline in early and arranged marriage and polygyny (Gage and Bledsoe 1994; Isiugo-Abanihe 2000; Gustafsson and Worku 2006; Smith 2007; Moyo and Kawewe 2009).”
My guess is the reason we see lower rates of single motherhood in very poor countries is less to do with the fact they are poor and more likely to be because they are closer to their traditional cultural norms that strongly push for marriage and child rearing. It seems as countries get greater access to education and industrialization, as they modernize, they start to see these societal issues like single parent households and the negative consequences that result from that.
Kinda like how as societies get greater access to more food they move from starving to getting obese and those associated medical issues.
That would be interesting to see. Maybe you can show us the numbers, adjust for COL, adjust for definition of success, adjust for academic differences, and adjust for cultural biases.
But the argument is that Bangladeshi villages are more peaceful than American inner cities, despite being vastly poorer, because of cultural reasons. It’s almost as if America has a more traditional culture in the past—when it was poorer than today—and then there were massive cultural changes around the same time crime started skyrocketing.
I do want to throw in an alternative. Is it cultural, or are we all disconnected from the communities we live in because we now all view our communities as existing online? People used to be able name everyone who lived on their street and knew where they worked and a little bit about them. I have a feeling this is becoming a lot more rare. And it isn't so much of culture, but of becoming disconnected with the communities we live in. The Bangladeshi village is having BBQs with neighbors, not sitting on the couch doom scrolling twitter or consuming hours of tiktok videos.
Because people know their neighbors personally, they are less likely to steal and more likely to intervene when they see someone they don't know snooping around someone else's property. Or hell, even know who lives in the house.
I think that's partially true, at least for the people who have motive to steal. But generally, you go to a different neighborhood to steal, not your own. It's not hard to go a couple blocks to where you don't know people, and more importantly where they don't know you.
But then you ignored the other part. When you know the people on your block, you know who should and shouldn't be there and will probably be more likely to intervene is you see someone you've never seen before walking around Billy Bob's house while Billy Bob's car isn't there.
A counter is that other countries (Japan, Korea, Italy, ...) that enforce traditional values have had a collapse in the birth rate.
Having children out of wedlock is a safety valve for broken institutions that keeps the birth rate higher in the US than comparable countries; that plus relatively open integration helps us maintain our economy, welfare state, pensions, etc.
If we turned the screws on women and men to discourage out-of-wedlock births we might find that people decide not to have children at all.
> A counter is that other countries (Japan, Korea, Italy, ...) that enforce traditional values have had a collapse in the birth rate.
Yes, but the value systems (at least in Asia) are quite different than even conservative ones in the US so I don't think that's a fair comparison. In Asia there is an expectation that relationships will lead to marriage, that you will marry well before thirty, that women will exit the workforce following marriage, that married couples will have children quickly, and that enormous amounts of resources will be spent on raising those children (especially in terms of education).
The birth rate has gone down there because it is overly burdensome to be married and have children under these expectations. This is far different than even conservative expectations in the US which basically amount to the father should be able to hold down a job and show up.
I mean, sure, among the parents. Plenty of people in Asia love relationships for the same reasons young people do in the West: sex, money, status, comfort, etc. -- without needing an end goal of launching families.
The main difference is a lot of people here feel pressured by their families into a path to starting a family they don't want. Some balance those opposite forces, some just give in and have unwanted families while cheating to get what they really want.
Anecdotally, I've noticed a clear contrast since moving from the USA to Asia. Cheating is far more common here. I've dated a number of "taken" women here, and the common thread always seemed to be that they kept their unwanted partner around for appearances to placate family pressure.
> In Asia there is an expectation that relationships will lead to marriage, that you will marry well before thirty, that women will exit the workforce following marriage
I don't know about the rest of Asia, but the parts that were explicitly named (Japan, Korea) absolutely do not have this expectation.
I lived in Korea with my wife and while we were looking for work, she was told in several interviews that they didn’t want to hire her because she was married and they assumed she would have a child and stop working.
I don’t know where you are getting the idea that that isn’t the norm in those countries.
I don't buy that traditional values with regard to marriage are responsible with lower birth rates. People were married with high birthrates for hundreds of years, back when traditional values were just called values. Birth rates go down when people don't need a lot of children to work their farms or support them in old age, and when women get access to birth control and enter the workforce. This last part is tangentially related to marriage, but marriage (or the lack thereof) is not the cause. There are certainly other factors too, but those are the big ones.
In traditional culture there was a higher birth rate, traditional culture would like to have a high birth rate today. It fails to do it because when it fights with modern conditions, women go on strike.
What about married couples that decide not to have children ? The truth is it’s hard, and if the community does not support families then you have less children. Think about both parents working full time + and barely having enough to provide from a material standpoint, let along emotional and education.
Point is parenting is hard and life today makes it harder. I don’t believe wedlock is a deciding reason for people having children.
We rearranged our life from DINK to SIWK for this reason.
If I'm paying for childcare the expenses often increase linearly with the number of children, with my wife caring for our children we were able to double the number of children while substantially reducing costs.
We are no longer jetting to Alps for skiing, and we've not had a night out without the kids in 9 years but we've different priorities now.
I think this is a reasonable course of action, of course, but also respect the DINKs who look at having kids and go “no thanks” and continue jetting off to the Alps, Turks and Caicos, or whatever. Having kids is an opportunity cost, and there’s a lot of life enjoyment to be had if you don’t have them.
Kids were previously an asset a century ago, now they’re a luxury good.
Sure r/childfree has lots of this sort. They often seem a bit too into being childfree to me, I probably wouldn't like their shitty kids anyway.
There's an opportunity cost for most life decisions. Sometimes they're obscured. It's often not presented this way but for a cohort of women university and work, displaces marriage and children.
Imo r/childfree to normal people who just don't want to have kids is like r/atheism to normal people who just happen to not be religious. Both subs are absolutely insufferable, even to many of those who align with them on the core premise.
It feels like a lot of users there, instead of replacing all that time/effort/money spending (that comes with having kids) with a bunch of fun/useful/exciting things to do in life, they end up replacing it with "not having kids is my personality and the ultimate activity".
I agree with the core premise of both (not religious, don't want to ever have kids), but i ended up completely filtering out both subreddits. Even opening a random post from those subs on r/all is like stepping into some children- and parent-hating alternate reality cesspool, where their choice is the only "obvious" choice, and everyone else is "brainwashed" or an idiot.
> Imo r/childfree to normal people who just don't want to have kids is like r/atheism to normal people who just happen to not be religious. Both subs are absolutely insufferable, even to many of those who align with them on the core premise.
That's an important point. I'm in the "people that just happen to be not religious" group, some people around me are religious and we have no issues getting along. These subreddits are based on a total rejection of "live and let live".
> To me, looking at the demographic data, it doesn’t seem that there is a widespread aversion to forming serious relationships [across educational lines] – there are more and more relationships in which women have more education than their male partners.”
> She doesn’t see large numbers of educated women holding out for an educated partner, and remaining unhappily single, in other words.
In the Pew piece linked from there,
> The primary reason for the decline in the share of married couples with similar education levels is that marriages between spouses with high school or less than high school education are much less common these days — the share is down from 74% of all marriages in 1960 to 24% in 2012. In addition, adults with high school or less education are much less likely to marry. The marriage rate among this group plummeted —from 72% in 1960 to 46% in 2012.
> Just the opposite has occurred among college graduates. The share of couples in which both spouses have a college degree has risen steadily in recent decades. In 1960, only 3% of couples were in this group, the share rose to 22% in 2012.
Framing a decrease in marriage as "for a cohort of women university and work, displaces marriage and children", what I was responding to, is simply not supported by the data. The decrease in overall marriage is disproportionately due to the non-college-educated. Getting a university degree increases a woman's likelihood of marriage.
I am on 100% with you on that, sadly the modern connected world has broken peoples brains.
The pressure of living up to the "mom/dad" in the bio on your social media coupled with the cripplng fear of buying the wrong pram or not enough toys and fucking your child up for life has spawned an industry that is happy to facilitate the drive toward that financial catastrophe.
> Kids were previously an asset a century ago, now they’re a luxury good.
This might apply to individuals but not to nations or society as a whole.
Pensions, healthcare, capitalism, etc are so dependent on new people being born. I would assume that's why the ticking demographic bomb is so worrying for governments with declining birthrates.
That is great. I am glad that you were able to make this change! It was not until we had our own children that I truly understood (or maybe appreciated) when my mom would say "After all I have done for you" OR "Thats why we can never have anything nice"... HAHAH. I love it. totally relate now.
On a serious side note. I think many (including us) highly underestimate how much time children require.
Having come from a large family, I never realized that people didn't understand just how much work kids are. It's relentless. My wife is regularly astonished. I'm lucky to have been able to stop at one. I would have preferred married but childless but I'll take married to her over any other option, so I compromised. At with just one, we aren't spread so thin.
Older kids can help raising the others, I think having just one is where you do the maximum amount of work, also because with the later ones you are more experienced.
I was an only child. My wife has a brother. We felt it was important for our children to have siblings to have the opportunity for sibling relationships in adulthood.
That all depends on the relationship between the siblings. I have 6 siblings and because of life choices we rarely keep in touch. My spouse is in the exact situation.
Why? Is it possible our busy schedules, ability to relocate, and less dependency on each other are reasons why this may not be as important as it was at one time?
>Point is parenting is hard and life today makes it harder.
Only if you care about what the influencer of the day is saying. Things are much easier now as we have childcare, kindergartens, disposable diapers, milk formulas, better healthcare.
Japan and Korea are still high trust societies. I strongly encourage spending a month in either place if social structure interests you.
Low birth rates are overstated as a problem when you accept that prosperity has natural ebs and flows. It it becomes a truly critical problem, fewer women will go into higher education and their society will course correct. While they're doing that, we'll be demonstrating to them how failed our theory of liberal society is.
Also maybe as larger society we need to adapt of stopping the infinite population growth. This might not be pretty in all ways, but entirely realistic option with current levels of productivity. There might be sad and cynical cultural changes on treating old and long term infirm.
All of those countries have changed their expectations of men and women regardless of traditional values, just check the female labor force participation rates, and have had a similar swell of directionless men.
It is news to me that Italy "enforces" traditional values.
Possibly there is still is in some (few) very religious circles/groups some stigmatizing of the breaking of marriage, but that's all.
Otherwise we have divorce (since 1970) and also (only more recently, 2016) a number of legal provisions for unmarried couples (that give to the partners some rights under the Law), called "unione civile" (civil union) that is open to both hetero and same sex partners.
The US is likely fine because our southern border is porous and anyone can walk right in. I don’t see any indication that this will change. The benefit is even if the US birth rate is declining, we have an influx of younger individuals who can help keep the economy going.
Is this a bad thing? The US was founded by immigrants. Immigration, diversity, and the US’ history with these topics (good and bad) is huge part of the national cultural identity.
As a US citizen, I think as long as we can maintain the cornerstones of our national heritage (democratic traditions, constitutional freedoms, etc) it should be fine if things change to reflect the demographics of our population.
Immigration has a large history in the US, yes, but historically immigrants were encouraged (through social pressures) to assimilate part of their identity. Is that pressure for partial assimilation still there? Or do we encourage diversity so much now that anything goes?
> Or do we encourage diversity so much now that anything goes?
If anything it's the opposite. The US exports so much of its mainstream culture through movies, music, social networks and videogames that it's extremely difficult to find societies that are not heavily influenced by it.
In terms of culture, "globalization" meant "americanization" especially in the last 30 years.
I think this really depends on what we, as a society, want to ensure we all have in common. If you identify as a US citizen, what do you have in common with your countrymen?
Shared experiences and values can be hugely important. What those values should be is where I see a lot of contention.
I see this as a matter of degree. I think democratic values are fairly uncontroversial for a democratic country (rule of law, political representation, and all the other underpinnings of a function democracy). I think most US citizens also support many egalitarian ideals like the concepts of basic human rights, freedom of opportunity, and freedom of expression (speech, religion, etc).
That pressure still exists. I'm not sure why you might think otherwise. Various parts of current culture came from immigrant communities maintaining parts of their cultural identity while still broadly assimilating, eg St Patrick's Day.
Keep in mind a lot of immigrants from Central/South America 6 generations ago just pass for "white people" now so you don't notice them.
Early US immigrants were pioneers wanting to carve a civilization on new continent.
Would you consider the rule of law as a cornerstone of our national heritage? So many of today's immigrants seem to have little regard, evidenced by their illegal entry.
Like the Irish? Or the Chinese? Or the Italians? They came here as pioneers? Or did they come looking for something better than what they were offered? Remember, we treated them like shit too. Maybe hating immigrants is a corner-stone of America...
There are opportunists everywhere. I'm sure not everyone coming from our southern border is going to be someone I want in my neighborhood but that doesn't mean so many people aren't just looking for an escape from danger. Would you break a law to save your own life? To protect your family? Is penalizing people in these circumstances truly just? Does it make you a good person?
The Irish and Italians often had the full weight of law enforcement countering their illegal activities. There was also lots of social pressure to assimilate.
It's hard to say, we'd need to do a deep dive on each. Pretty sure thats not happening. Absent that, yes I'm happy to exclude them.
Ehh, I doubt you could distinguish the difference between a majority of 2nd generation Hispanic-Americans and "white" European ancestry people, by worldviews or looks (because the Hispanics have European ancestry too). Just look at the leading politicians in Texas, Ted Cruz and Beto Orourke and tell me which one is Hispanic and how it makes any difference. And this indistinguishability will only increase over time, where there will still be a "white" majority including most Hispanics, as the census currently does.
I know many 2nd-gen Hispanic-Americans and culture/value wise we're very similar. As a block they're just more traditionally Catholic, but religiosity is diminishing everywhere. Language-wise, many grow up not speaking Spanish, being a generation to feel 1 foot in both cultures but that will be gone with their children. Food-wise is the least of any issue, US loves cultural food and Mexican food is crazy popular, it already blends into Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex foods that US chefs already assimilate into new variations.
The fertility rate for minority ethnicities in the US has been declining rapidly to catch up to the decline curve for non Hispanic whites, so I’m not so sure this is true anymore. This is likely a combination of Westernization of younger minority generations (Hispanics specifically) and economic conditions broadly imho.
Just walking in doesn’t make you part of the economy as you imply. I can’t reject or support your claim of the border because I haven’t seen it myself and if I google it I’m sure I’ll find hits for either side, but I can tell you that being an illegal immigrant does not help either side. They can’t get a normal job with a W2, so if they pay taxes (which many do because they are more afraid of the IRS than homeland security), it’s probably not an accurate amount. So the only part of your economy that keeps moving is the uninsured motorist insurance and cash transactions in small groups. Obviously the declining rate is not a problem for the US otherwise they would simplify the immigration process and embrace that people want to move to this country to work and do good and increase the GDP
It has one of the highest of the developed countries and has only recently declined. South Korea and Japan have had terminal birth rates since the 80s.
This is probably closer to the truth. Some 'traditional' countries have the lowest birth rates in the EU and highest marraige rates, in contrast france has the most children outside marriage. It doesn't mean france is a ruined society, people live together, have kids, buy a house together, in fact france is healthier demographically than most EU.
>If we turned the screws on women and men to discourage out-of-wedlock births we might find that people decide not to have children at all.
I don't think that's such a bad thing. We can maintain a health population with immigration. There are plenty of places with more people than meaningful work opportunities.
I think this is also in part (in addition to the immigration) because the US overall is a pretty happy country, compared to places like Korea or Japan. It is still possible to afford to have children, though increasingly difficult.
A "happy country"? I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. In terms of the cost of having children, though, it is far more affordable in Japan than the US. Almost all childbirth costs are covered by the government, and free nursery school is also provided to all.
And? Isn't overpopulation a major concern? Why would you want higher birthrates? Already there exist more people than required for jobs in the economy.
I'm confused by their introduction. The author cites changes in family structure in two specific neighborhoods (Fishtown in Philadelphia and Belmont in Massachusetts) but uses this data point to imply an unsubstantiated national trend. And all the while overlooking any other reasons why the presence of fathers declined in one white community after the 1960s.
Henderson suffers from the same research bias as Charles Murray, the author of the cited study. I don't disagree with Henderson's conclusion in general, but the journey from A to B is inconsistent as Fishtown and Philadelphia (the poorest city in America) as a whole are substantial case studies on deindustrialization and the impact those lost jobs have on a once thriving community.
This deindustrialization is also partially responsible for the increase in drug use and drug activity in Fishtown during this time of unprecedented job loss. Fishtown used to be the opioid capital of the country in the 1970s. This activity has since been pushed into the adjacent neighborhood of Kensington [1].
The impact of deindustrialization and the loss of good paying factory/union jobs has more to do with the breakdown of the family unit in the last 70 years than any of the other idea Henderson cites.
These expectations go both ways: it used to be that most jobs were stable, long-lasting and well paid. I live in a 100 year old house in Seattle whose first occupants were an immigrant janitor and his homemaker wife. Today most of our neighbors are lawyers, architects and other professionals because those are the only jobs that pay well enough to afford a house in Seattle.
It’s really no surprise that if your only options for work don’t pay much and demand a ton, you’re not gonna be too invested in that work. If you don’t see how you can build a stable life for yourself through work…why work?
Expectations go both ways. We used to expect people to work hard at one job that a household could survive on. Such jobs basically no longer exist outside of tech or law, so it’s natural that other behaviors change too.
And to the author’s fevered insistence that nobody can talk about this…I suggest talking to people. This is a very common discussion on the left, outside of his weird caricatures.
It’s interesting to read these (plausible, far from absurd) analyses from the Anglosphere when we have an alternative to compare, to whit the northern European democracies where marriage is in steep decline across all social classes yet the societies are more successful (at least if your metrics are things like poverty rates, lifetimes, nutrition, stress, etc).
I think missing from this comparison is that while the US is quite different from Finland, New Hampshire when taken on its own is quite similar.
But we never ask, “how could we make the whole US like New Hampshire?” and probably for good reason! I don’t think we’d want the whole US to be that way. The US is big and diverse and that’s a good thing.
US diversity is not uniformly a good thing. It may be a good thing when it comes to positive examples of successful communities, but breakdowns in education, low income support, and wilderness management systems are apparent in all of our states and territories. The US should absolutely be adopting competent successful approaches from its union members at the federal level, even if it makes us all a little less distinctive and a little more New Hampshire.
First off the article says nothing about marriage it speaks of “two parent households”, so an unmarried couple raising kids would fit the author’s thesis entirely.
Second, pretty sure I’d argue the recent riots in Sweden would back up exactly the author’s theory around poorly behaved young males.
From the article, a quote: even those who cohabit, believe that as long as they are not married, it is acceptable for either partner to walk away at any time, and for virtually any reason.
Suicides are an informal measure of how unhappiness. The thinking is that if people reach a certain level of unhappiness they opt out of life. The implication is that there is a lot less unhappiness in Greece.
Being expert in male/female statistics, the EU is generally only 4% far from USA gender statistics, and closing in on a 10-year delay. The only difference between USA and EU is that it is exaggerated in the media, while the trends which happen in EU have already been experienced in USA so people have already had time to get used to it, therefore news are less sensationalist.
In other words, your impression that EU culture, statistics or law are different from USA is not verifiable in measurements. I agree however, that we think we are immune to USA problems when we live in EU.
It's disingenuous to compare a country with another country with 1/30th the size. Otherwise, you'd come to the conclusion that Sweden would be better off as a tax haven like Luxembourg. Massachusetts matches the Nordic nations by most metrics, and blows them out of the water in terms of median income.
I cannot disagree with what you stated, but your last sentence misses the point.
Incomes are nominally higher in Massachusetts and costs for certain staples (energy, food, automobile) are nominally lower, compared to Western Europe. Yet I can’t say the outcome is better (note I have lived in France, Germany and Massachusetts).
The fact is life is more precarious in MA: it appears that you have more disposable income but crucial things like health care (perhaps best in USA), school (crucial for keeping your head above water) and such means you spend more of your time and money looking after your life and less actually living it.
You can see this in the numbers, too: not just life expectancy but in things like money available (and spent) on vacations and other leisure, reported levels of stress and debt.
I’m not trying to claim that any country is some sort of utopia. My root comment was simply that the analysis of the post we are discussing was simplistic and ignored confounding examples of countries with the claimed “bad” things doing better by their citizens.
We’re not talking about tax havens, or “exploits” such as those which require exploitation of a global financial system.
We’re talking about countries and the claim that the USA is too big for decent social systems is just about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
Either you have enough GDP for each state that it could be it’s own country, or you don’t. But it feels picky and choosy to say “we are extremely wealthy” and then later say “ah. But we’re too big for social programmes. It would cost too much”.
It’s a weird kind of double-speak that might have an iota of truth in either direction, but those positions cannot be simultaneously held.
It isn't disingenuous at all if you compare per capita metrics.
Yes, you may have to exclude some very anomalous countries that have models that couldn't scale - Luxembourg for instance - but a country like Sweden is a mix of cities, suburbs, and rural areas with a mix of primary resource production, manufacturing, and services. It's big "enough" that you would expect normal country scaling laws to apply.
True, but I'm not sure that per capita matters so much. The USA has only about 5% of the world's people, but nearly 30% of the world's billionaires. That's a very large share (and nearly 1.5x as large as the next largest, China, with around 3x the population).
I don’t understand: are you talking about PPP GDP per capita? I agree that the US optimizes for that, but it doesn’t translate into higher quality of life by metrics like life expectancy, literacy, leisure time, malnutrition, proportion of “precariat” etc.
If you define socioeconomic status narrowly (gender, race, age, net wealth), then I was wrong to say that the success of European countries is rooted in their socioeconomic status. I'm happy to take that point back, and focus on why I don't think controlling for socioeconomic status is the right analysis.
However, even if the US shows better outcomes when controlling for socioeconomic status, the distribution of people within socioeconomic status is relevant.
If the US has 1000 impoverished people and 10 middle class people, and Germany has 10 impoverished people and 1000 middle class people, the relevant comparison is the German middle class to the US impoverished class.
In other words, you'd want to compare outcomes based on percentiles regardless of socioeconomic status.
Maybe it would be better to say "controlling for immigration policies"? But even then the US is going to come out behind because those countries don't have the legacies of slavery still weighing them down.
It still seems like a moment of temporary stability though, especially as their social structure starts to stress from the old:worker ratio going from >5 to <2.
I.e. unless they accept 30% immigration over the next 50 years, the system will be extremely stressed and may fracture.
> unless they accept 30% immigration over the next 50 years, the system will be extremely stressed and may fracture.
There’s no reason to expect that not to happen. Countries like Germany already been have a higher immigration rate than the US, and once had a much higher rate when they needed workers post war.
European political decision making is primarily bullshit muddle and and absurd “compromise” yet in the end is surprisingly pragmatic. Unfortunately for the US it’s become high conflict rather than vapid muddle, which makes it harder for people to move their positions.
About 19% of the US is immigrant compared to like 17% in Germany, so they are fairly similar. Can they bring the rest of Europe along though? It’s a huge challenge…
According to the UN, in 2019 Germany had 15.7% foreign born and USA 15.4%.
And the AfD notwithstanding, Germany has the pragmatic Gastarbeiter precedent.
The larger precedent, for all cultures, is that idealistic views (immigrants good! Immigrants bad!) fade dramatically and rapidly when pragmatic issues emerge.
"US thinkers" is a ridiculously broad term. There are plenty of Americans who think and know what a social safety net is. Some of them know about it because they read, some because they think, some because they've travelled, some because they've lived in countries with a stronger social safety net than the USA. What is true in the USA is that there are people who know what a social safety net is and are adamant that we should not have one, and who are willing to get much closer to actually say that than most of their equivalents in Europe (though this has been changing a bit in recent years).
It's a pretty good generalization, however. I see it over and over again in US political discussions a total, and possibly (probably?) deliberate, blindness to the idea that health card could be socialized, UI and welfare could be better, access to education could be universal and things like job training or maternity leave could exist, etc.
Then you're not connecting with the US "left" (probably not a coincidence). The Nation is both the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the US (founded in 1865) and consistently represents different parts of the US left. Jacobin is another good example.
It is true that if you watch network or cable TV from the US, you will not find the actual left represented, other than perhaps Bernie Sanders. What they will call "the left" is mostly centrist Democrats whose position can be summarized as "things as basically OK but we need to be nicer in a few specific ways".
> Then you're not connecting with the US "left" (probably not a coincidence).
Interesting assumption. I'm far to the left of most Canadians, let alone Americans.
> It is true that if you watch network or cable TV from the US, you will not find the actual left represented, other than perhaps Bernie Sanders.
That was my point, albeit poorly expressed; very few actual leftist thinkers get any kind of mainstream exposure so all "US thinkers" are right of centre unless you specifically go looking for the left leaning ones.
If you had said "US people", I'd have agreed with you (at least to a greater extent". But I took "US thinkers" to be a subset of "US people", differentiated by ... well, thinking :) This is not meant to be patronizing - a lot of people just don't think much about politics, policy, philosophy, ethics, for whatever reason.
However if someone is in that subset that does, the chances are much better that they are aware of left-ish ideas.
To think that the US has no social safety is also a common trope. Food stamps, medicaid, public & section 8 housing, SSDI, EI, etc. in combination with the unique opportunities allowed by American society to get back on your feet (low unemployment and barrier to entry). Americans in general have no idea how "humble" life can be for the European lower classes. Fun fact: Canada and the US have about the same homelessness rates on a per capita basis.
My understanding is that the poorest people are covered by medicare or get their fees waved (hospitals won't refuse to treat someone needing critical care). That is not "zero social net". Nobody is in fact jealous of the American healthcare system though. Meanwhile, in most countries in Europe, people live in fear of having to be put on wait lists that extend from months to years, or just plain being unable to access any care at all due to said systems being overloaded at times due to having much less overall slack (for example during covid).
Waitlists can be visibly bad in the UK but if you read German or French papers you’ll see complaints about “wait lists” that seem laughable by US standards.
I live in SV so can afford a level of health care well above the usual middle class. Yet I have a literal A/B test: my kid broke his arm in Germany and also in the US and the ordinary treatment he got In Germany was significantly superior to that at Stanford Hospital — ant at a fraction of the cost.
I've always found it interesting that Americans who could literally see Canadian flags across the St. Lawrence River or live in border states such as Minnesota or Michigan, have such bizarre views on the quality of Canadian health care and other social services.
I don’t find it fun. It’s about as fun as seeing “European thinkers” do the same about the US, as someone who has lived in both regions, although one direction is perhaps more vocal than the other. Whether it’s a positive or negative misconception, I find it more frustrating than amusing when one’s confidence is mismatched with the quality or reliability of information (i.e. ignorance).
> A common answer from the chattering class is money. The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births.
> But broken homes are a fairly recent phenomenon.
I don't get why the author dismisses income, and especially income inequality, so quickly. Since the 1960s the income gap between the affluent and the working class has grown a lot. The quality of "working class" jobs has also declined. Where in 1960, "working class" meant you could afford a house, a car, healthcare, and often had a pension provided by your employer. A 2022 working class job looks more like Amazon warehouse work where you can be fired at any time for failing to meet some algorithmic quota.
It's no wonder then that respect plays a role:
> Money usually becomes an issue because he seems unwilling to keep at a job for any length of time, usually because of issues related to respect. Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.
Perhaps the real failing of the upper class is creating jobs that treat the working class like disposable cogs, liable to be discarded at will. And yet the author subtly shifts the blame for onto the working class for not putting up with it.
The 1960s USA is the exception rather than the norm, and thus is not a good point of comparison. It's a peak of the very peculiar post-WW2 global economy where most other industrial countries had their economies destroyed and this gave the USA middle class a unique privileged opportunity enabling conditions that weren't possible almost anywhere else, weren't possible for USA before, and most likely won't be possible for USA or anyone else ever again.
Working conditions becoming unlike USA 1960s are an inevitable regression back to the norm as the rest of the world recovered after WW2. Look at the conditions of USA 1920s-1930s (or perhaps UK 1960s, or all of the non-Western countries today) for comparison instead; the society has to function well in these working conditions (which are quite ordinary in both historical and current global context) instead of hoping that a return to the 1960s-USA model (which simply won't happen) would fix the problems.
I teach many folks that have just left high school, and entered the military. Their being content with doing pretty much nothing shocks me. Seeing the military enabling the behavior, even more so. All because recruiting is so hard right now. Many of the recruits do join the military because they have exhausted other options. It's sad to see how productive society once was, versus where we are now. It legitimately makes me nervous about what the future might hold.
I'm not that young, but not old enough to have witnessed generational patterns of young men shifting as a cultural phenom.
That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level? For some reason my gut reaction is to think that it's the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and wages stagnating while prices go up. And then couple that with social media, of the life we're all told we're supposed to live, and now young men have less opportunities, less income with higher prices, and having a false idealization of "the good life" shoved down their throats.
I don't need to insist what I'm thinking is correct, but that's just what I'm kinda seeing in broad strokes. Could be way off. I also don't know if there's a version of this in every generation, or if in fact the current generation is a new/ fringe case that requires very different approaches for how to address it on a macro & interrelated scale.
> That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level?
It's a natural reaction to the fact that opportunities are shrinking in terms of quality and payoff. There are lots of "jobs" but they don't offer long term stability or growth.
On the flipside, most employees don't feel tied to an employer, even if the employer treats them well. Often many folks are chasing higher pay. I know in the cybersecurity realm quite a few folks are job hoppers, and right now employers are all to anxious to try to pick off talent from competitors. One of my former co-workers is now at their fifth job in five years, and each time they were chasing a higher paycheck. In my field they don't seek a pay raise at their current employer, they get it in writing on an offer from a recruiter at their next employer.
This didn't happen overnight. When I was in my early teens in the 90s I already had a sense, from listening to the news, that employers were out for their own self-interest first and foremost. Massive layoffs, shrinking benefits, and the concept of public companies being primarily responsible to their shareholders all send the same message: "At the end of the day, you are disposable. Loyalty will not be reciprocated."
As an employee, it would be irrational to ignore this and hope that loyalty would be rewarded.
But isn't it doomed to be a self fulfilling prophecy if you approach every new company with these beliefs?
Google is a great example of one that started out very differently, but unfortunately became much like the companies they strived to set themselves apart from. Many startups still foster that culture Google originally had.
I think the gps point is that, in the median, it's the case regardless of how you approach it.
Of course individual situations and be quite different, but you are really bucking the trend in expecting the average company to show loyalty instead of respond to financial incentives.
Blaming employers doesn't make sense, both sides are just responding to incentives. The labor regulations and macroeconomic choices our gov't have made are responsible imo, they've optimized for the wrong or incomplete metrics (Three biggest are GDP / unemployment % /
stock market returns).
These young men aren’t getting weekly messages of hope like >80% were 60 years ago. Those that are are more likely flourishing according to all the pew research.
If by weekly messages of hope you mean going to church regularly on Sundays*, that's an interesting point I hadn't considered in this context before.
Can you provide a citation for the pew research on the weekly messages of hope, whether my above inference was correct or not? If it's not Sunday services at church, I'd love to know what else I can do inject some hope into my weeks.
* or whatever is the holy day in a given church congregation.
“A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives.”
I think you assumed they meant faith, when it really could just be influences. You are a product of your surroundings, and if your existence is tied to the Internet then those surroundings can include many negative things. The Internet has great power in the right hands, but it can also be dangerous in the wrong hands.
I can't definitively say, but I think the Internet and gaming culture has changed much, and it seems to be the only thing some of the people I am educating seem to really care for, or get excited about.
It used to be that you had a limited set of people controlling the messaging that went into your mind, often limiting negative messages for the majority of people. The Internet has made it far too easy to stumble upon, or seek out, negative messaging. I could definitely see where if you have been conditioned to feel that you don't need to try, or shouldn't even try, then you will believe a life without accomplishment is acceptable and sustainable.
They used to say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but now that tree is a forest. If you are a parent, a mentor, or similar, you are competing for airtime with billions of other voices on the Internet. You really have to make sure your voice stands out amongst the rest. I try to offer that in my classroom, but I only get them for a short period, then they're onward to their next training in the pipeline.
I got out of the Navy in 2018 and I have experience a rather different tale. I found many enterprising people in the military, but all somewhat naive. The amount of pyramid schemes and get rich quick schemes I've seen people do or try to push on me was amazing. One that stands out is the Vemma/Verve one. About half the ship was hell bent on they were all gonna get rich on Verve.
This article puts the blame of macro-level societal trends on individuals and takes zero material factors into account.
"Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option."
No source is provided. Just an opinion. It's pretty clear that anyone with this kind of opinion about "societal norms" and pressures has a pretty myopic view of history that doesn't go back before the 1950s, or an extremely sanitized view of history. It couldn't possibly be because of increasingly bleak outlook for the children of the working-class or a failed war on drugs or any number of actual tangible things other than "people are being degenerates"
The article cites an anecdote about a young father who sat around the house arguing, fighting and drinking. He ends up getting kicked out of the house.
The 1960s version of this story instead ends with the husband beating his wife behind closed doors without repercussions.
> the husband beating his wife behind closed doors without repercussions
Families were much bigger back then. The extended family was always around. Communities were much tighter and actually existed.
I think you don't have a good understanding of those times if you think women could be beaten around without repercussions, and honestly, thinking women are so helpless smells of sexism.
> I think you don't have a good understanding of those times if you think women could be beaten around without repercussions
Or, you don’t.
It is definitely true that domestic violence was in the realm of “basically normal”, I’d guesstimate 20% of households had an abusive person in them: and if you were married and your partner was not physically violent it was considered that they were a “good person”.
This swings both ways more than you think, my grandfather (mothers father) was very physically abusive, a point which he was mocked for (derisively) openly in the pub (but that’s about the only repercussion). My great grand mother (mothers-mothers mother) was abusive towards my great grandfather. Which he was mocked for (jovially) openly by the whole family.
I was unable to find extended statistics, but DMV rates over the past 3 decades seem to have fallen dramatically. During the 1950s there were no laws to protect battered women and assaults on women were not considered as a crime. Even in 1960 New York domestic violence cases are transferred from criminal court to civil court, where only civil procedures apply. The husband never faces as harsh penalties as he would suffer if he was found guilty in criminal court for assaulting a stranger.
“The rate of domestic violence declined 63%, from
13.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 1994 to 5.0 per 1,000 in 2012 (appendix table 3).”
Also, getting accurate statistic pre 1960s for DMV is likely going to be difficult. Here’s a short TIME piece illustrating how views on DMV can alter studies and how DMV is qualified/quantified given the times.
The normalisation of domestic violence 30-50 years ago is going to be hard to find statistically, as things like that are not going to be in crime statistics, obviously.
Everything I said was anecdotal, from the midlands in England- but it matches other experiences from southern Scotland and East Coast US.
I guesstimate 20% because it “felt” like 1 in 5 families had someone abusive in them, at least of my social class.
It was normal to hear that so-and-so hits his wife or that so-and-so has an unruly wife at home and that’s why he doesn’t come out or whatever.
Admittedly, the social class I was in (extensive use of social clubs and pubs for drinking) likely had a larger proportion of this kind of people.
The only cited number is 1.3%… and entire order of magnitude lower, and it’s since dropped to 0.5%. That is, the only documented instances are an entire order of magnitude lower.
I think you “guesstimated” a fake number to pretend your personal views are more objective than they actually are.
I stated clearly it was a guesstimate, I explained that it could be coloured by my socio-economic class.
But it is my experience that 1 in 5 families at a minimum has an abusive guardian class person at home. (In the 80s-90s)
That official statistics are off by an order of magnitude really means nothing, when the point being made is that it was so normal as to not be reported.
Additionally you’re citing individual victimisations per 1000 people as a metric, when a family can consist of 2-10 people (averaging on about 4.4, “2.4 children” being the average in the 80’s). I’m stating households, you’re citing individuals. Individuals consist of single people, children, old people and so on. It’s not what I’m claiming.
If nothing else, female on male violence is extremely underreported to this day.
I’m not saying I’m right, But your argument is entirely unconvincing.
I would argue that you are overestimating the help women used to get from extended families in terms of protection from abuse. That kind of life came along with rigid societal expectations, extremely limited economic opportunities for women, and harsh views on divorce.
Many cultures around the world still have such communities and they are worse on average for women.
Hilariously off base. There were multiple mechanisms used to keep women from talking about abuse - not just physical. Divorce was shamed, “airing dirty laundry” was shamed, the economics of leaving, etc.
I was born in the Sixties, and my parents married in the Fifties. The idea that everyone lived in the same area they were born in was already not the norm. I think between the Great Depression and WW2, the difficulty of moving to new places became much lower. So there were many families that didn't have multiple generations under one roof. And even so, that didn't prevent abuse from happening.
I agree this is something I've wondered about as society has changed, and it seems a dichotomy between individual freedoms and broken relationships, vs social stricture and maintained family units.
There should be some better ways, or perhaps the best we can hope for is a middle ground, because the current social state around relationships is in my opinion as much responsible for the decline in first world childbirth rate as education is.
The current system encourages easy relationship dissolution, which is fine as long as children and alimony would recognize that.
However the child support laws are stacked to extract a mans livelihood to support the woman and children, while largely denying the man of the respect as a provider and satisfaction of his emotional and sexual needs in the family. This is a major problem that seems the other side of the coin to the old ways which kept relationships stuck together after love has gone or with abusive partners.
It's still a major problem, and it's in my opinion a root cause for the decline in the rate of families forming and having children.
So let's just blame men for everything? True, historically men have been expected to bring home the bacon, protect their families from violence and disrespect and discipline sons who may otherwise get in trouble, and that is missing nowadays. But women ALSO had responsibilities - making home pleasant even on modest means, well behaved children that are a pleasure to come home to after a long day of work, encouraging good behavior and investment in family from a man through enthusiastic appreciation. The ideal of Western feminism is independence, but families work on healthy mutual interdependence in the face of statistically different - though individually variable - gender traits.
And let's not forget that men used to be respected, for being men and doing those things. These days it seems the zeitgeist is they get nagged and complained at, and little wonder they aren't vested.
Something here that doesn't seem to make sense to me: The idea that the middle class determines relationship norms that are then followed by the working class/poorer people. I didn't see the argument for why this would be the case and I'm not sure I buy it just on its face. But ok, since he's quoting from something else perhaps he just didn't quote the argument. Assuming the claim is basically correct, that relationship norms are determined by the middle class (for example, perhaps due to middle class influence on how relationships are depicted in TV & film), then what's the explanation for poorer people following the cultural shift toward less commitment or later commitment (the stuff about "as long as they are not married, it is acceptable for either partner to walk away at any time"), but not copying the shift toward having children later?
As I see it, what's happened in the middle class is that relationships don't reach the stage of full commitment until much later (walking away is considered to be normal and healthy prior to marriage, people expect to have several relationships before "settling down", etc), but having children before you've reached a committed relationship is still very much thought of as reckless and bad.
So overall I just don't really buy this part; it does not seem well supported by the rest of the piece.
Quoting the paras just as a reference for which part I'm referring to:
"The educated class decides cohabiting partnerships are just as valid and important as marriage. And they also believe it’s okay to walk away at a moment’s notice from a cohabiting relationship.
"Poor and working-class people follow suit. To the detriment of themselves and their children."
Amy, a white thirty-year-old mother of three, ages six, five, and three, had a boyfriend who worked steadily but insisted on spending on selfish pursuits. This is what eventually broke the young couple up. ‘He wouldn’t spend money for the kids’ food. I had to send my kids across the street to my mom’s to feed them and stuff. That’s what I got fed up with. I shouldn’t have to live like that…I said it’s time for him to support these kids instead of [me] being on [assistance], and he didn’t like it.’”
To put it another way: He didn't want to support another man's children (or various men's children). I think that's entirely reasonable but a better approach would have been to not get involved with Amy at all.
Even if you are ready to support other children, building a connection with them can be extremely hard work and they might still reject it. Also understandable that the boyfriend didn't want to neglect himself fully. But in such a situation you have to build a relationship with multiple people.
> basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’)
This makes it sound like it is just men who need sex and have to do things to get it. One would think that everybody needs sex and thus women need it too. And it would stand to reason that the less fortunate women would need sex and be not able to get it easily and thus have to resort to sleeping with jerks and raising kids as a single mother.
So just saying women should stop sleeping with jerks is not really a practical thing. If anything good men should be expected to sleep with not so fortunate women to cut the jerks out of the equation ;)
Kidding aside this is a very complex problem and the article trivializes it - education, assistance to kids in need(mental/physical health, financial, foster care), providing compatible opportunities and then setting expectations will make a dent in this problem. And then there are just incompatible people doing stupid things that should be left to their devices and outcomes - there is no fixing willful idiocy. But what social policies need to do is provide a way out for anyone who wants it.
What does "less fortunate women" mean specifically? Looks? Desirability? That assumption would mean that the group of "more fortunate" women don't really have problem with jerks, which I don't really see as being true.
Yes, many things play into who is desirable but essentially physical characteristics, skin color whatever else society influences upon you as being desirable. More fortunate women do obviously have problem with jerks and some of them may have a preference even but the difference is that they have options that the less fortunate ones don't or at least not to the same extent.
The single black mother problem is illustrative of what I am trying to say here. (Not making any generalizations or making the case that they are unattractive but merely pointing out that number of complicated reasons including being perceived as less desirable contribute towards the overall problem.)
I think the typical lens is that women are trying to avoid the costs associated with casual sex. Traditionally women paid the lion's share of costs: shame, isolation, the financial and physical burdens of an unwanted child, etc.
I'm enjoying this article, but this conclusion to the first section seems like a non sequitur to me:
> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant.
Up to this point, the problem statement has all been about choices made by those lacking wealth, but now we seem to have suddenly veered into that being the fault of those "at or near the apex of the social ladder" and in a way I can't relate to. On the contrary, hard work and "hustle" seems more high status than ever!
Maybe this is a minor point, but I have been finding this two-step of 1. Identify a problem among the low status / poor / blue collar, 2. Blame it on the elite, disorienting. I first came across it in JD Vance's book where I thought he did a really good job of identifying problems with the culture he was raised in but then ended the book with (in my view) misplaced blame and no real ideas for how to fix any of the problems. And it just seems like I've seen people (JD Vance quintessentially) doubling and tripling down on that pattern ever since.
Edit to add (now that I've finished reading the article): I think there is an entire premise here that I really don't buy, that this culture is driven by the affluent and "middle class meaning college degree holders". In my experience this isn't right at all; nobody in the working class cares in the slightest what academics at Harvard or wherever think about family formation and stability. They aren't aware of what academics think, and wouldn't care what they think if they were to become aware of it. It is very roundabout to identify a cultural problem and then blame that problem on the milieu within a different culture that does not exhibit the same problem...
There must be psychological studies of giving up somewhere, as it seems to be an increasingly common behavior and not limited just to men and marriage. From the "economic anxiety" of the (especially rural) US right to the "millennial malaise" that's slightly left if anything, it seems like people are giving up on college, good jobs, buying a house, relationships, and most especially all forms of government. Across the political and economic spectrum, you can hear people calling to tear it all down. You don't hear the people just quietly "dropping out" but they definitely exist too.
Note that I'm not criticizing or looking down on people for giving up. It's a rational response when you believe that the standards are being set unrealistically high or you're going to be blamed/condemned no matter what you do. Why expend your energy on a lost cause? Save it for something you can win. I've done it myself, and called it strategic thinking. Everyone who has quit a job or broken off a relationship has given up. What I'm saying is only that it seems more common than it used to be. People turn to it more quickly. So called "deaths of despair" have been trending upward for quite some time. "Lottery or nothing" thinking (ahem crypto) is everywhere. For people at the margins, teetering on the very edge between giving up vs. hoping against hope and soldiering on even though they expect to fail, the balance seems to have shifted more toward giving up.
What I'd like to understand is why. Have circumstances really changed in a way that generates more despair than before? Are there messages we as a society are sending that encourage giving up instead of persevering? I don't have the answer, but it seems like a far more general phenomenon than just absent fathers and it's not limited to one political or economic group.
I doubt the upper class consciously tries to keep the lower classes stuck in poverty.
There are so many factors here the article doesn't touch on. Such as men's biological desire to maximize sexual partners, women's biological desire to maximize quality of and support for offspring, and cultural variation of expectations among all classes.
In my circle most of us were raised by parents in unhappy marriages. (Often for religious reasons.) The few happy marriages appeared surreal like some fake Hollywood production. So the same norms that keep families 'intact' can have a lot of unhealthily effects.
There's also less of a ramp or ladder for men who do want to support the family to commit to such an obligation confidently.
> I doubt the upper class consciously tries to keep the lower classes stuck in poverty.
When I look at single family zoning I don't believe what you said one bit. A lot of people think it is their right to keep people out of locations where "all the jobs" are.
The fact that jobs concentrate in the bay area is just as much part of urban planning as preventing people from moving there. If people truly wanted to stop people from moving to their location all they would have to do is say no to commercial real estate but that is not what they do.
From the perspective of people living there its probably more about keeping trouble away from them and their families, than keeping other people in poverty.
> This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability.
I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.” Meanwhile my wife’s family is from a working class part of the Oregon coast. Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it.
The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men. My family’s rigid expectations have been such a blessing. It made a difference that the way to earn their respect was to get an education and a good job and support my family, and knowing that I would lose that respect if I did anything selfish to destabilize my kids’ lives. The contrast made me realize that professing liberal social values that one doesn’t live by harms society. It matters what we say about what’s good and what’s bad, what works and what doesn’t. Creating a culture where men can attain dignity and social respect by providing for their family and staying with the mother of their kids matters. And creating a culture where men are told it’s okay not to do those things creates harm.
This isn’t really a political point though it sounds like one. Social change has swept through America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. The social and cultural guard rails have been removed from the whole country. But the impact is obviously felt most damagingly in parts of the country where men need to find dignity in working at the animal feed plant are harder hit by that cultural change than parts of the country where men can find dignity earning half a million dollars a year doing interesting knowledge work.
I think it actually means redefining success. Today, success means having disposable income, but that's not the success that children need. They need stable households, and that can be obtained even with low paying jobs, though obviously it's easier with high paying jobs.
But it's impossible if the will to work isn't there, and the only way to get that will is to instill a good work ethic and proper, family-oriented goals.
There are no minimum wage jobs where I live anymore, and I live in a lower cost of living area (not Manhattan or silicon valley, LOL). I'm not surprised no one can afford rent at $7/hr when no one can find a job paying $7/hr. Costco has a sign up paying $19/hr to empty trash cans and they can't hire people at that low of pay and the article claims its a tragedy that a middle tier single bedroom would take $21 as a nationwide average; although I live in a lower cost of living area.
The government "Fair Market Rent" is sort of median quality housing. If the goal is to demand that even people at the literal bottom of the barrel of income in the 0-th percentile live in 50th percentile housing, then who will live in the 0th to 50th percentile of housing. A goal of having the lowest percentile in any group meet median achievements is inherently impossible.
There does not seem to be any actionable plan proposed; to me its obvious that raising the legal minimum wage from $7 to perhaps $8 will not improve anything if the absolute bottom of the barrel of jobs in low paying areas is already $19/hr AND there is no supply so there are unfilled jobs. Another obvious proposal is building more housing to crash the price, and the ownership class is not going to tolerate that behavior LOL.
As a thought experiment, if the living conditions are indeed unlivable as the guilt inducing article proposes, fine, lets run with that theory that its true nobody can live that way, then how are so many people living that way?
> Costco has a sign up paying $19/hr to empty trash cans
I am getting really tired of people casually talking about jobs like this as if they are easy. Do they require a ton of professional knowledge or skills? Nope. Are they way harder than your job? In all likelihood.
I mean, all the proof you need is literally in the fact that Costco can't find workers willing to do the job for that wage. The conditions suck for how hard the job is.
I seriously doubt they "can't find workers." I have a friend who works at a rural Tim Hortons and he described to me the massive stack of applications he spotted as "thicker than the phone book. Like two new packs of printer paper." Despite multiple interviews per week nobody gets hired.
They've been on a skeleton crew since last summer.
I think it's a total crock that they can't find anyone. More like they can't find anyone good enough, and good enough means willing/able to do 4x more work than anybody with the same job had to do previously.
I want to start my own million dollar paranormal challenge, but it's for anyone who can prove a non striking non startup company has suffered due to not being able to find workers. I don't think it's happened a single time since 9/11.
Employers were saying they're desperate to hire, and there are plenty of people applying and not getting hired. It makes no sense. I hear more and more of these mismatched supply-demand anecdata. I can only conclude that there are not honest conversations around hiring; that is, the real requirement for the job is not being conveyed, or at least written down or said out loud. Like you said, if an employer such as Tim Horton has a desperate need for labor but is turning down large number of applicants, the labor being asked for is not being proffered at the wage being paid, and the alternative (not filling the position and then complaining that you can't help) is better than hiring. That is the only reasonable conclusion I can draw.
The epitome of privilege is assuming everyone has house servants to empty their trash cans. My trash cans at home do not empty themselves, nor do I have my hired man do it for me.
Yes, I admit elderly living in nursing homes do have hired help empty their trash cans.
Is it a sign of society collapse that one-armed individuals and those lacking any upper body strength cannot live in the lap of luxury? Nah, they go be cashiers at the same store. Well, whatabout those too dumb to make change but too smart to get SSDI disability? Whataboutism has become tiresome and as such is no longer effective propaganda.
I have worked a job where emptying trash cans was one of my responsibilities, and it is nothing like emptying the trash at home. They're enormous, heavy, usually leaking putrid liquid, and you have to lift them above your head to dump them in a dumpster. Some of the putrid liquid will get in your hair every day, and you won't be able to get rid of the smell until you get to go home and shower in the evening. It's hard to appreciate how bad of a job it is if you haven't done it.
2% of hourly workers make federal minimum wage or lower according to BLS numbers. Many lower paying jobs (Walmart, McDonalds, etc) pay about $10 an hour. They generally don't provide benefits. So even if you get two jobs to fill a 40hr week, you're stuck with the medical costs. Good luck paying for housing and medical coverage (transportation, taxes, retirement, etc) at $20k per year in most areas. Hopefully you can get on assistance to help out.
There are a variety of issues and possible improvements to help the situation, not just the two you mentioned.
That 2% consists of people like my teenagers, both of which cannot afford housing and medical coverage by themselves and as Dad, I'm personally quite well acquainted with how they get financial assistance (LOL).
And no, McD does not pay $10/hr, I live in a low cost of living area away from the coasts and the sign on the door opposite my grocery store lists $15/hr right next to the sign that they're cutting hours due to lack of employees. On the coasts I'm sure its higher although cost of living is probably higher.
Your teenagers work fulltime? The BLS numbers for that 2% was looking at fulltime hourly workers. I'm sure there are plenty of part time people that would increase that 2%.
Speaking of innumeracy, how would a person afford to save for a homeloan deposit, while also paying for health insurance, rent, food, and vehicle maintenance. With kids? Might as well hang yourself, before the kids hang themselves.
I'm in Australia, so the numbers are approximately similar, our minimum wage is $20.33 an hour, our public health care system had been eroded by successive governments, and never included non-emergency dental so you probably want to spend around $40 to $60 or more a week on health insurance.
No one on $19 an hour is buying houses.
If your minimum wage is $7 an hour, but the lowest paying job currently advertised is $19 an hour, let's just call the effective minimum wage $19 an hour, and base or assumptions off that.
Many people are living that way, sure, but, man, both the USA and Australia have turned to shit. Fuck being a young person today without the good fortune of being born with good genes in to a good family. People can't find places to rent even in the small city I live in, families are living out of their cars, or in tents under bridges.
In Australian! It's not like we're short on land, or wealth.
Half the issue is that people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership and long for some golden age seen on TV that never existed.
Home ownership was never universal in the US. It has been within a few percent of 65% since the 1960s[1]. It was always out of reach for the lowest earners, like those that make minimum wage.
What you're saying surely has elements of truth, in average the struggle is real and it's hard.
But it's also a matter of perspective. Here's a few additional perspectives, none of them the whole answer. But possibly provide insights and even hope for those who are most motivated.
Creating a house is a huge achievement, if you had to build it, and it's components, yourself, you would spend decades building a modern style house. It's unrealistic to expect that everyone can get this easily and early in life. Our mortgage system allows people to own earlier while paying it off to make that possible, but otherwise this is something that only a skilled person after decades of work would achieve.
Minimum wage isn't expected to be the maximum income achievement for someone who works hard, the idea is to find a niche where you can make more than minimum wage. This takes time of hard work, but it's patently still very possible in Australia, and much harder in many other countries overseas.
People who bought houses in the past had it easier in some ways, but lived a much much more basic standard of life. If you talk to average (ie not wealthy) people who bought houses from 50 to 20 years ago, it was incredibly hard for them, and involved sacrifice of pretty much everything to the mortgage for a decade of their life, while working hard and supporting a family. No overseas holidays, computers phones and entertainment, paying for kids sports programs, home delivery of meals etc etc. The standard of entitlement has raised incredibly decade on decade - in the past it was Expected to sacrifice to afford a home.
Some people still, despite the challenges were buying homes on minimum wage jobs in the last decade, before the current waves of price rises, and some probably are still buying now. But those people who did structured their life in a way to reduce every expense and save then buy modest places, away from conveniences and lifestyle areas. Similar sorts of sacrifices that people of the past would have done, just they are living in an era of inflated lifestyle expectations so they socially making more sacrifices even if the actual physical sacrifices are less in that they e.g. still have a phone and more entertainment than the past.
>Creating a house is a huge achievement, if you had to build it, and it's components, yourself, you would spend decades building a modern style house.
In my country the houses in the villages used to be built with local materials by the owners themselves, with some help from family and neighbors. The vast majority were very small even if the families were large but it didn't take decades or even many years to build them. Now houses are larger and built by dedicated teams or companies, families smaller and many moved into towns where they live in an apartment building. Most people I know, younger or older, either live in apartment buildings or they live in house in a village near the town, because owning a house in the town is terribly expensive. Either way, they are paying for the place with credit or they are renting.
For many people, owning a home means paying rates 20 to 30 years.
So if you are 20 and feel entitled to a 5 bedroom house in one of the best areas the people who educated you did a poor job. B
So basically what you're saying is that there should in theory be no floor to QOL, but then tacitly agreeing with the hand-wringing about how society (a construct based almost entirely around QOL) is faltering?
First, it's not federal minimum wage, it's minimum wage for each jurisdiction. So Washington state being $11 or whatever it is, not the federal min.
Second, for some reason I believe the propaganda that city living is inherently less costly despite it being pricier everywhere in the USA, so I believe rich city liberals need to change zoning to allow cheap housing to be built.
Finally, they're living that way by getting ostensibly making minimum wage, but with so high of commuting time and cost as to be making less per hour but working more than 40. Or by living in miserable conditions: in an RV, 8 people to a 3-bedroom house, etc
"First, it's not federal minimum wage, it's minimum wage for each jurisdiction. So Washington state being $11 or whatever it is, not the federal min."
The BLS data was only tracking federal minimum. I would like to the state minimum wage earners, but that wasn't in that report.
"so I believe rich city liberals need to change zoning to allow cheap housing to be built."
I believe it's all due to preferences. The preference for sfh, preference for better schools, preference for low crime, etc. It's pretty cheap to live in many north Philly neighborhoods. Many people don't want to.
I agree with the final part. I turned down jobs in college due to the commute cost.
They'd like their kids to go to school without bad influences. You can't watch your kids 24/7 so choosing the kind of people they'll be around is one of the few levers you have as a parent.
Now, if we had a national ethos/culture which the government was empowered to enforce (like Denmark, Japan, etc) then it doesn't matter as much which neighborhood you live in. But living in North Philly is basically dooming your children, what we might call "intergenerational poverty".
Yes, and those empowered schools would be a much better fix than the one parroted around about just fix zoning so we can build more housing in the desirable areas.
If both parents are spending all their time at work just to make ends meet (or workaholic executives), how can that be stable? When will they have time to guide and develop the child?
In a dystopic society, women would use sperm banks to get pregnant and then give the children to be raised by the state, "in the spirit of a liberal society". Rules will tell how many girls are needed and how many boys are needed.
Rules will also avoid overpopulation in order to reduce pollution and protect the nature.
Meanwhile men will work full time in order to maintain such a noble society. Being a man and not working would be a crime.
Leaders would be appointed only amongst females because men are oppressive and violent.
True. But people also just give up if they're constantly told that all the opportunities are gone, whether or not it's true. If you combine "there are no opportunities for me" with "there are no expectations for me", you get "I'll do nothing".
Even if you have expectations, many opportunities may be gone. Just look at the lack of non-college work in the US that pays a living wage. Now try to get one of those jobs if you're competing against others who have no criminal history if you have a minor one.
I have a job as a dev and even I'm tired of this treadmill. Taxes, COL, healthcare, etc. No time/money to do the things I want. No real career, just a job. Lies and discrimination at work. I don't blame others for giving up when their circumstances might mean that's the best option for them.
Many trades here in Australia spent two decades employing apprentices in insufficient numbers, for whatever reasons, to meet projected requirements.
Now we have insufficient tradespeople to meet demand, blowing out wait times to things like "not gonna happen this year mate" to repair a roof, and 7 months to fabricate new windows. The builders, roofers, and glaziers that do exist would prefer to work on green fields developments where they can do the same thing 50 times without moving their tools and equipment further than next door, so prices on minor repairs to existing houses have increased by a factor of "don't want the work, multiple the cost by five and quote at that" and that capacity is being eaten up by people borrowing $700,000 to fully renovate.
It doesn't help that the building and fabrication trades have been run almost entirely by obnoxiously unbearable pricks, and when you spend twenty years telling everyone bullying isn't ok, is it any wonder young people don't want to do physically demanding work in terrible conditions working with obnoxiously unbearable pricks? When it's -10 degrees C outside, it's minus -10 in your work environment, when it's 40 plus degrees C it's 40 plus degrees in your work environment, and people rarely make big changes to themselves, so here we are.
This is really only true for certain locations. Also, to be your own boss means you have to understand how to obtain the licenses, start the business, etc. Many of the people who could do the actual job may not be able to the overhead to be their own boss. The companies do background checks and most don't really train. The overall percentage of these blue collar jobs are a much lower percentage than they used to be. So there's more competition. Good luck getting hired with even a minor criminal record or it you don't have a driver's license.
The question at hand is whether there are opportunities for people to make a living and support a family, not whether everyone can have a dream job. For the majority of humans throughout time, work has never been something that people do because they couldn't think of anything they'd rather be doing. It's always been a means to an end.
Your comment suggests that it's not opportunities that have been lost in recent decades, it's that the younger generations' expectations for what life owes them have changed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, to a point. But it's not accurate to claim that the lack of dream jobs out there means that there are fewer opportunities for gainful employment than in generations prior.
I think I'd rather be a plumber or electrician than a dev. I'm so tired of all the BS at work. At least in those jobs you aren't sedentary and you actually get to see the positive impact you make on someone's life. Sure you might get some difficult customers occasionally, or be dealing with literal shit.
I think this speaks to the heart of the matter, the expectations that people want.
Yes it's beyond possible, it's clear that's the case, otherwise there wouldn't be a shortage of plumbers given they can make money to live or even raise a family on.
But the sense of expectation has grown way beyond that, everyone wants to be an actor so they spend their time on tiktok, which is a winners market, and then the leftover masses that didn't build skills or work ethic complain about having to start at the bottom of the more 'realworld' pathways available.
For most of human history people just did what made them money to live, and were glad if they have the chance to do just that. Go and spend six months in a third world country and you will see this is true.
So people should do only what they like and society is to fulfill anyone's wish and expectation?
How would this be doable?
Here's an alternative: everyone is responsible for himself, society is responsible only for the ill end disabled. Everyone is provided with a framework that enables him to learn, work and find himself a way to live and fulfill his wishes.
> Just look at the lack of non-college work in the US that pays a living wage.
A problem that doesn't exist. Plenty of that work out there.
Try to get a custom 3-phase power line run in the datacenter. Average age of electricians is about 55 around here. Nobody goes into the trades because the trades will "destroy your body before you're 35" yet all the thin healthy tradesmen around here are mid-50s boomers. Hmm. The union local total compensation package for mere journeymen is a hair over $65/hr because of mandatory health care and retirement extras that most people can only dream of, but even the takehome pay alone is still over $45/hr. On one hand that's only about twice what you'd get for emptying trash cans at Costco. On the other hand, you don't have to empty trash cans at costco AND you get a cooler more interesting job. Either way that power line isn't going to install itself.
The real mystery is all it takes to be an electrician is ambition, low time preference, agency, self discipline, motivation, concentration and study, and especially staying away from drugs, so how do you find people like that in a culture that glorifies the opposite and vilifies those values? Well, you don't ... thus they end up very unsuccessful in life and my power line ends up not installed.
If doing what you are told leaves you unsuccessful, maybe time to start distrusting those people when they give life advice. That's going to be the real turmoil and rebellion point in the next decade. "We were promised all our lives that self destructive behavior and self destructive beliefs would lead to a pleasant mirage."
Or maybe that the majority that possess those traits go into other higher paying jobs that also require those traits. Starting around here for electricians is closer to $25-35. If you are concentrating and studying the NEC, you could alternatively study to be a dev and make more.
And this is perhaps the issue, people compare expectations against 'best' much more than they did in the past, because of all the (soc)media pushing it at them.
We know very different electricians ;). But seriously, I wonder how much of the 'conservatives are uneducated!' trope that gets thrown around in conversations like this is due to conservatives in high school placing a higher value on providing for a family, doing the math, and consequently getting into the trades rather than university.
> Nobody goes into the trades because the trades will "destroy your body before you're 35" yet all the thin healthy tradesmen around here are mid-50s boomers.
I just wanted to point out that this is quite literally textbook survivorship bias. Instead of looking around and talking to the people that made it that far, you should try talking to those that didn't.
I live in a poor country than US and skilled car mechanics, skilled construction workers and skilled nurses are able to make a decent living. Some even better than people with an University degree.
Maybe you mean both non-college work and non-skilled work?
It depends if they're realistic or not. Without that, the hope portion disappears.
Then one has to weigh if the job is worth it. With the high cost of modern living (shelter, taxes, healthcare) one might decide it's better not to work and just rely on assistance programs (I know someone like that).
The funny part about expectations is they don't have to match reality to have an impact. If you raise a child telling them they have no opportunity, their chance of success is quite low.
That may work for a single generation. And the child soon grows up and meets reality. We are in a situation that has been developing for multiple generations
Edit: I agree with the replies and I’m not one for shirking personal responsibility to change your lot in life, nor not instilling an eye for opportunity in children. We are at a point where more may be necessary
I've thought about this a lot. It's so much more than "every generation thinks the next is awful" - that's too glib. By my count we've had 3 consecutive generations disaffected, disillusioned, and alienated. It's as if, figuratively speaking, everyone born after 1970 is a 'latchkey kid' because the parent archetype still hasn’t come home or sobered up yet.
Even still, it's best to teach kids that they have more say than any other individual about their own future, and that anything is possible. If you must teach them that the world is hostile, you must also teach them how to beat it. You wouldn't refrain from teaching them tiger evasion just because the tiger is probably going to get them.
Of course we can do more to have a robust economic ladder, but I dont think it is nearly as bleak and binary as people make it out to be. If you look at the actual data, there is still a lot up upward mobility. 60% of people who grow up in the bottom economic quintile improve their situation. [1] When thinking about the 40% that dont, there are a few notable facts:
20% of children in the bottom quintile dont graduate highschool.[2]
8% of men born into the bottom quintile are currently incarcerated.[3]
The traditional advice to children for how to be in the 60% that escape poverty is still true. Stay in highschool, stay away from drugs and crime, and go to college if possible. If poor children can do this, their chances of improving are actually quite good and not at all hopeless.
The old Brookings Institute factoid is that the vast majority of the poor who graduate from high school; get a full-time job; don’t have a child before age 21 and get married before childbearing; move into the middle class.
You’ve provided some good research. Still I wonder how quickly it becomes outdated in today’s world.
There's a difference between being ready to seize a realilistic opportunity if it comes along and being told that there will be opportunities if only they work hard. I'm guessing that opportunity that came along just happened to better than the opportunity to sell weed on the corner, right? I'm guessing there are others who see an opportunity to work a low paying job as being less of an opportunity than selling weed.
I don't think it is nearly as bleak and binary as people make it out to be. If you look at the actual data, there is still a lot of opportunity for upward mobility. 60% of people who grow up in the bottom economic quintile improve their situation. [1] When thinking about the 40% that dont, there are a few notable facts:
20% of children in the bottom quintile dont graduate highschool.[2]
8% of men born into the bottom quintile are currently incarcerated.[3]
The traditional advice to children for how to be in the 60% that escape poverty is still true. Stay in highschool, stay away from drugs and crime, and go to college if possible. If poor children can do this, their chances of improving are actually quite good and not at all hopeless.
Of course, better opportunities may come without working hard. But in my case the opportunity was only realistic as I spent years preparing for it. If I'd spent those years doing and selling drugs the opportunity would've came but it would have not been realistic for me to seize it.
You can work hard and still lose hope. Just look at the suicide rates in the farming community. You'd be hard pressed to find a group that works harder than that. Hope is a huge factor. Hard work can only do so much if the system is failing and there's no hope.
It depends on the circumstance. I'm also from a poor background in a third world country (so super poor by Western standards), and although I did work both very hard and very smart, if I had not moved to a first world country there's no way I would have achieved much. Sometimes your environment can make it that hopeless, and I've seen it in many of the younger people back in my home country now. They've essentially just "checked out" of society, which leads to higher crime and unemployment overall.
I bet you had hope that your fighting would be worth it. What the GP is saying that if you don’t have hope then you have no incentive to work hard, because the lack of hope literally means that you don’t believe there’s a realistic chance it will lead to success. You need that belief to get going and to keep going.
I’m from a middle class, conservative family in a poor country. Compared to my richer, status seeking classmates, I can handle myself a lot better socially and emotionally. I’m also disabled, that means the social divide is a lot tougher to crack. In fact, I get shot dirty looks by the same classmates. It’s not because They don’t like the fact I participate in my classes, it’s just that they don’t like the fact that someone who doesn’t have the same status can equal them in a lot of ways.
OP isn't talking about creating expectations of money, wealth, status for their own sake. The biggest thing he says his family expected of him was to provide a stable foundation for his own children. This is something which some amount of money is necessary for, but if you focus entirely on the money you've destroyed that foundation just as thoroughly as if you failed to provide for them at all.
It seems like a bit of a nothing-burger considering how low OECD birth rates are. More men than ever are simply not having kids. So if the objective is to create a stable foundation for the next generation -- and there is none -- mission accomplished. I have no purpose. It's the same conclusion, though a different path towards it.
> The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men. My family’s rigid expectations have been such a blessing.
Émile Durkheim basically introduced the discipline of sociology with his study of suicide. He found that the ratio of suicide was higher among protestants than among catholics, and concluded that it was because they were less embedded in strict norms, and freer to do whatever they pleased, compared to the stronger social control among catholics. So, freedom turned out to be not necessarily a good thing.
(He also found that suicide is higher in times of peace than in war.)
Not sure how the theory held up, and what modern sociologists say about it. But that result stuck in my head, and it aligns with your experience and the article.
"Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels.
This interpretation has been contested. Durkheim may have over-generalized. He took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli, but they had been more careful in generalizing from their data. Indeed, later researchers found that the Protestant–Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-speaking Europe, thus suggesting a need to account for other contributing factors."
> He found that the ratio of suicide was higher among protestants than among catholics, and concluded that it was because they were less embedded in strict norms, and freer to do whatever they pleased, compared to the stronger social control among catholics. So, freedom turned out to be not necessarily a good thing.
Interesting, I'm from a catholic country and my characterisation of those two religions is basically opposite. Chill and rules-skirting catholics (Poles, Italians) vs uptight and law-abiding protestants (Englishmen, Scandinavians etc.).
>they were less embedded in strict norms, and freer to do whatever they pleased,
I would argue that strict norms - if they don't come into contradiction with what is natural and proven in time as beneficial - might imply more freedom than some kinds of "freedoms" or "rights" imposed by force if those "freedoms" or "rights" come into contradiction with the natural way societies and civilizations evolved.
Maybe for those men lucky enough to have families. A growing issue is the large percentage of men who do not and will likely never have families to ever take care of. If we think deadbeat dads unstable, the incel community is a madhouse.
It’s not a matter of luck—men in my dad’s village in Bangladesh start families, have kids, and live relatively happy lives in poverty even most poor Americans could not comprehend.
I don’t think it’s fair to call all these guys incels. As the article observes, most just have no expectations placed on them, and also have no way of attaining dignity and social worth through the avenues in life reasonably available to them.
It is sunday morning. I'm at work (military). Part of that job is checking in with people at a half-dozen other locations who are also at work on a sunday morning. they just happen to all be hetero guys, which is not unusual in the military no matter the day. So I asked in our chat whether they had wives/girlfriends at home today. "No." "Nope." "My car is my GF" and "Rocking a peppi shirt under my uniform". These are single guys in their mid-twenties and thirties. They have jobs. Most are university-educated officers. They look good in their uniforms, especially with the medals. But they work sunday mornings because they don't have families and don't go out saturday nights. I worry about this trend.
Military marriages are double hard due to the nature of the job. Couple that with broken marriages being more like the norm, one can't blame if they don't want to risk their mental and financial stability.
It is Sunday morning. That means a lot of people are at church (and who is might be related to the demographic observation you've made). Is the message they're hearing one of hope or despair? Or are they not even listening? I'm not going to blame everything on religion, as tempting as that is, but for a non-trivial minority that might be part of who feels included or excluded and why they react as they do.
>> Is the message they're hearing one of hope or despair?
Despair. The average age at most churches now seems to be 80+, and those who are younger are there to support their older relatives. There is no chatting or mingling. Once the service is over it is time to begin the process of loading grandma back into the car. What I see of single people at church is the exhaustion common to all caregivers.
What do you attribute this to? Is it mostly just lifestyle choice? Or would most of them prefer to have a wife/gf but don't have one for whatever reason?
A stable job just doesn't compete anymore. Single heterosexual girls want guys with prospects and/or family money. Some of these guys are afraid of dating, afraid that something might go wrong that could impact their careers. Deployments have also changed. Soldiers don't date or even talk to local girls anymore. Interestingly, many of these guys are also stone-sober. Not recovering alcoholics. They just don't drink. They don't ever hook up at bars. That bar scene you see in every military movie never happens. They always seem to be on guard for situations that might hurt their career. COVID-related lockdowns haven't helped either.
> Interestingly, many of these guys are also stone-sober. Not recovering alcoholics. They just don't drink. They don't ever hook up at bars. That bar scene you see in every military movie never happens.
Is that true in the enlisted ranks, as well, I wonder? I believe that I saw you mentioned in another comment that you were talking about officers.
Anyway, I can tell you from experience that 20 years ago, around the bases I was stationed at, it was definitely still happening. We went out on the weekends, we partied hard, we hooked up, dated, some of them even got married, etc., with local girls from bars and clubs.
Moreso the officers, but its really all of the career people who are very careful about socializing. Those who intend to get out after a few years and try for better things in the civilian world, they tend to party hard.
Do they have other social life, or just their job? I would suspect we've changed into being less social, not seeing friends either (replacing it with other entertainment or stuff to do).
I would argue we are just as social as before, but our social needs are able to be satisfied in the short-term by entertainment more than ever before, which dulls us from pursuing slow-burning-but-high-long-term-reward rewards like a stable relationship/marriage in favor of high-dopamine, low-risk, convenient, low-effort rewards like immersive video games and ever-more-enamoring leisure options.
In the 40s, what did a young man have as far as entertainment options? Books, theaters, cigars, racing his motor vehicle with friends, going to horse races, hanging out in bars, finding a public telephone box to call someone, etc.
In the 80s, 40 years later, you had all of the above, as well as basic 8-bit arcade machines (more social because of the high score aspect, going to the arcade with friends etc), then the advent of the IBM PC and cohorts (yes HN I'm skipping the PCs that beat IBM's product to market, hand wave with me please) which enabled computer games with interactive stories and explorations, as well as home media and basic, basic internet connectivity (BBS, Usenet etc.)
40 years later in 2020, we have all of the above plus social media, greater fidelity movies, television shows streamed on demand, the interactivity of the web has made itself available in our pockets in the form of smartphones, smart watches, and tablets, we have virtual reality headsets for even more immersive UX, and all of this is before said social media platforms and app makers started their algorithm iterations in earnest to increase engagement and maximize distraction/user attention time.
In the span of 80 years time we haven't gotten less social by nature, but the sheer amount of engaging dopamine hits we can get from entertainment has gone way up versus ye olde library book or baseball game, so the boredom factor that pushed us to hang out with friends and eventually pair up with someone special is much lessened.
I think even media has evolved to become less useful for meeting people. Of course because of the technology shift from simultaneous viewing/broadcast to on-demand.
Watching movies at the cinema -> you can/want to go with friends. Watching netflix -> you can't watch with anyone except a close partner, because everyone has their own progress point to continue from in whatever series they are watching.
Could it be social life is harder now? I'm atheist so this is not for me but if the majority of people used to go to church they had at least one chance a week to meet people and not only just meet random people to but to get to know people over time.
I believe many relationship form after you get to know someone casually over time (classmates, church members) but many people, myself include, stopped going to classes after college and don't go to church.
That leaves at best dating sites but dating sites are super awkward because instead of getting to know someone first, like the examples above, you're instead in a situation where you're supposed to decide yes or no immediately ("do you want to date me?").
Oh, they are interested. Military guys get caught up in romance/blackmail scams all the time. It is a big deal when it comes to security clearances/background checks. They occasionally go out to bars, usually at the behest of their married friends. A single guy with a well-paid government job just isn't a winner these days. Our unit padre told me about a "singles" event organized amongst some local units/churches a few (10?) years ago. Total disaster. 4:1 male/female ratio and many of the women who showed up were not technically single but rather "going through a divorce".
You got that backwards. Teenagers are horny and want a "romantic" life in the bedroom. Once they get older they slowly lose that drive and finding a partner requires a huge amount of "activation energy".
The peppi (sorry, "pepe") le frog meme has become associated with the alt-right generally but the incel community specifically. I doubt he meant that he was literally wearing one as that would be a huge problem in our military. I take his statement to mean that he understands the question and its implication.
Yes. They also use telephones, eat fast food, watch sports, drive cars and do all they other thing that 90+% of heterosexual males do. Blaming video games is just the latest intergenerational boogieman. 30 years ago it was too much television. 50 years ago it was too many comic books. In every generation there is a new media technology that the old blame for corrupting the young.
While an answer in the affirmative would tickle your confirmation bias activations, I'll counter with my anecdote that I play "video games" and have been happily married for 13 years and have two kids.
From the wives I've talked to, a husband who is at home playing video games is still at home, which is a significant step up from 'at the bar' or any number of escapist male activities that involve dads spending free time far away from their children.
According to statistics websites, around 65% of adults in the US play video games, and around the same percentage of residences own gaming devices. At this rate, playing video games could be a "symptom" for virtually anything imaginable.
No, it's not really a symptom of too much time, considering this is an activity done by 65% of americans. If anything, people could be using video games to replace more more time-consuming hobbies like spending the night at the bar or building a motorcycle, which are better signals of spending a lot of free time away from the family.
right i m not disagreeing with you, just saying that if they are gaming more than average, it would probably be a symptom of having more free time, not a cause of something
My sense of the distinction: luck is rare. Not everyone can be lucky, by definition. Fortune doesn't have the property. For example, one could say that everyone who grows up in a liberal democracy is fortunate.
Something which requires luck to achieve is by definition unachievable by most. Something which requires good fortune could, in a better world, be had by all.
That's true only for people who play the same game, the same time. But life is a series of countless games, so both the law of probabilities and observation of people around make me think that nobody can be unlucky forever.
Having luck and taking advantage of that luck are different things.
Much like radical identity politicking Twitter users, the cultural impact and attention-getting of "incels" far exceeds their actual frequency in the population, and is frequently magnified for the purposes of scaremongering. It's not rare for radfems to cry "incel" whenever someone has a complaint about the new libertinism, just as it isn't rare for #metoo opponents to complain about "cancel culture" when someone gets in trouble for committing an actual crime.
The vast majority of people have more quotidian difficulties. The fact that liberal tabloids and influencers are eager to refer to rich and famous men as "incels" when they obviously can't be reveals that the word is just an insult in many cases, not a product of a serious analysis of society.
IMO outrage about incels is just a socially acceptable way to bully. It's a way to find an excuse to express their superiority over others while masquerading it with concern over women's safety. You're never going to see someone mock a successful man who beats his wife.
Not that confusing, really. I've spent decades unable to find a sexual partner. I'd also make a concerted effort not to fall into the conclusions and habits of thought found in those getting bullied as 'incels', and in fact hooked up on Reddit of all places and am in the home of my lady friend now, working with her on various stuff and steadily building lovemaking skills (we're on the older side and there's a lot going on so opportunity isn't always there).
I would lovingly and determinedly bully those who are so weak that they can't face the reality of bad conditions and their own inadequacies, those who show an emotional need to behave like they (just as they are) merit a sexual partner, and this not happening means women are evil scheming monsters who conspire to ruin the world and must be stopped and/or reduced to Gorean slavery for their own good as they're not really people. I'd bully those incels all day long. They are harming themselves by their own stubbornly held rationalizations and need to cut it out.
Properly having a sexual relationship means having a relationship, very likely with an opposite-sex partner if we're talking hetero incels, and it's not easy. I'm with a woman who is observably smarter than me and I'm a techie nerd. There are things we have in common, but there are also ways that we just don't operate the same. There's strengths I have that she doesn't (not physical, either), there's strengths she has (and sometimes expects out of me) that I don't, and won't. The male/female thing is compelling and interesting, but it's impossible to reduce to 'we are actually the same' 'cos we ain't :)
When you get anybody concluding 'therefore the enemy sex, being incomprehensible, is simply evil and must be destroyed rather than reasoned with', you gotta bully those people or they will ruin it for us all. They are being intellectually lazy and wrong, and causing damage and making it harder for everyone, and we can't afford that kind of wrong.
It's the modern "virgin" insult but worse because they are supposedly virgins who have been rejected by a lot of girls. They aren't virgins for a lack of trying.
It's not, and you're conflating the term incel with people whom lack a sexual partner. Incel is a label that people apply to themselves that carries a whole lot of baggage, anger and a mixture of racism/sexism.
People that lack a partner are not incels, but incels lack a partner. Please spend a few minutes looking up what an incel actually is and what it means.
At least initially, when people used to make fun of incels, it was specifically in reference to "the government MUST find me a girlfriend" types, but it seems it's frequently 'genericized' to people who don't have a sexual partner, regardless of if they're even interested in it in the first place.
It's not about "dont give a fuck". This is about intergenerational poverty, and the costs that we all will have to pay because the elites decided to destroy social mobility for the poverty-stricken classes.
When you are born and live in poverty, hold jobs that amount to minimum wage or tiny bits above it, have no way to *see* a future of any sort of success; happiness, alcohol, drugs, and sex are the primary forms of feeling good or not feeling pain....
Yeah, you're going to have massive problems at a societal scale.
The elites of this country, along with governments bribed, gerrymandered, and installed by said elites made the volitional changes to social programs that keep people down in poverty. And we're living with those changes since Reagan went off about that "black welfare fraud woman". That was the start of poverty-austerity movement: the idea that cutting off most/all funding would get them to not be lazy.
The credit system instituted in the late 80's only has further cemented the idea that "if you were poor now, you'll still be poor and we wont help you". And housing has gone stratospheric, as have all other bills. And insert homeless numbers talk here - homeless are used as a tool of the elites to show what happens if you don't play along monetarily.
That's an entirely separate, perhaps even more dire, problem. And it undoubtedly compounds for those men intersecting both categories. But the passive men phenomenon is not directly caused by intergenerational poverty. That is evident by how men in all socioeconomic classes are "affected."
Do the elites really get to choose the degree of social mobility in their societies? Do you have any comparative figures to back this up or further data? All I have is anecdote having grown up in poverty in what would likely be considered a relatively left wing first world economic environment, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the kids I grew up with except me ever escaped poverty.
Maybe it's wrong and I'd love to know if that's the case but from personal experience the only way I've seen out of poverty is interest in an in demand field leading to the building and maintenance of marketable skills that allow you to earn a living sufficient to attain economic escape velocity. That seems to me to be a whole lot do with luck at the ground floor. And fiscal and social policy can be as much of a burden as it is a boon all the way along the pipeline.
That said, that escape velocity was directly mediated by both the tax burden of the jurisdiction coupled with the economic opportunities of the jurisdiction and at the end of the day it meant the correct choice was to leave for greener pastures, both lowering the necessary target for escape velocity as well as reducing economic drag getting there.
In the meantime all those kids I knew back in the old neighbourhood are still there, mostly on subsistence handouts, firmly in poverty, and show no signs of that changing.
The elites in the US lowered the top tax brackets considerably, and intentionally moved education funding from grants to loans in previous decades. Both of these moves feel like they have lowered social mobility, but I haven’t seen studies.
Same thing happened to Australia where I'm from originally, and it doesn't seemed to have changed a thing anecdotally except of course the aforementioned escape velocity equation, and still not nearly enough to be competitive with the leaving option.
Would be interested to see any studies that indicate conclusively that any of this stuff does any good, rather than just making those who are politically aligned with it feel good, for anybody reading this that knows, not necessarily just the respondent.
>It's not about "dont give a fuck". This is about intergenerational poverty, and the costs that we all will have to pay because the elites decided to destroy social mobility for the poverty-stricken classes.
I'm sorry but that is just an asinine thing to say and a textbook case of solving "my pet issue will fix the world" thinking.
Inter-generational poverty was the norm until the industrial revolution. While it certainly sucked for the people living it and we should definitively be taking steps to reduce it it is demonstrably tangential to societal stability.
I don't know if I would call it exactly tangential to societal stability, since we have multiple historical examples of what happens when inter-generational poverty goes too far. And usually the end result is not pretty for those in charge.
It seems easy to say that societal stability isn't dependent on social mobility until the lower class decides that it's time to bring out the guillotines.
Men who DGAF aren't the same as "incels". You and GP aren't at odds with one another.
And yes, it is somewhat ironic society is making the exact same mistakes it has before: forgetting how destructive a large population of uninterested young men is towards society, without ever having to be violent.
Look up the societal collapse of Rome in particular. It's one of the most named and covered anecdotes. A few other societies follow similar patterns, internally collapsing and being taken apart piece by piece rather than aggressively overtaken. Wikipedia[0] names several societies (I don't keep sources at hand to my own discredit).
It all has to do with incentives and the role of men in societies which to some degree still apply today. Stop giving men incentives to have families or any other reason to care about younger generations, and they stop having a reason to care for the future. Don't give them an incentive to care about the now (wives, partners, comrades), and they stop having a reason to care about the now.
Not having people care for the future is a great way to make them live their lives as short-sighted and hedonistic* as possible, which further affects their reason to care about the now beyond themselves. Not having people care for the now is a great way to incentivize inner conflict and have a party rise to fill the gap.
*: Hedonism on its own has a whole slew of other problems I'd rather not get into detail with, but for the sake of comparison, online dating apps' meat market approach hasn't exactly helped younger people obtain more satisfying relationships.
Societal collapse is probably something most people desire to avoid, and if the large numbers of disaffected men are the 'canary in the coal mine' and symptomatic of a weakened society, then we as a society also want to come up with solutions to ameliorate that particular suffering as a part of strengthening society as a whole
The best thing about the fall of Rome is how you can read literally anything into it
too many soldiers
too many men, not enough solders
too many immigrants
not enough immigrants
immigrants didn't integrate
immigrants integrated too much
not enough defense spending
recession from too much defense spending
lack of scientific knowledge
proto-technocracy instead of realpolitik
i.e. take your pick of
too much like today
not enough like today
as well as
the worst thing to happen to civilization
not actually that bad
Honestly, my favorite explanation is that gold currency is a ponzi scheme that forced the roman empire to conquer more and more gold bearing land until its territory was so large that it was difficult to defend while simultaneously invading new territory. The moment they failed to conquer an ever growing mass of land, they had to pay the army while all the wealthy people have hoarded gold and kept it out of circulation which destroyed the medium of exchange function of money and therefore forced Romans to issue additional coins with less gold to pay its soldiers as hoarded gold coins do not pay any taxes.
Most people interpret inflation as obvious government mismanagement, I interpret it as an inevitability because of the inherent conflict between medium of exchange and store of value caused by using gold as currency.
Saved money that is used as a store of value interrupts the circulation of money which then stops the payment of taxes which then forces the government to find a substitute for the loss of tax revenue. The answer is to separate the medium of exchange and store of value function into two separate "institutions". Cash is not a store of value, banks delegate the store of value by giving loans to producers of value i.e. companies and entrepreneurs. If you just save cash/gold, there is no guarantee anyone is going to produce value in the future. You are basically speculating that there are going to be people in the future that will gladly take your gold and then people act betrayed when that speculation didn't pan out.
I'm not GP and can only guess, and not even a particularly educated guess, but I will try, because I too am curious, and everyone knows the best way to get an answer on the web is to post a confident-sounding answer so someone can 'correct me' therefore giving me the actual information I'm hopeful to receive.
I remember (and therefore don't have a source for) users on the web claiming the rise of fascism was enabled partly by strongman leaders engaging all of the disaffected men en masse to serve said strongman's agenda by offering them the things they wanted (respect, status, stability).
If my tripping of Godwin's Law is on the right track, then the GP may be referring to Weimar Germany where Hitler was able to take control over a very quick timeframe, starting with disaffected men and eventually spreading the message to the general populace, taking over the country's government sans violence (though there was certainly violence and intimidation near the end of the Weimar government and probably before then that I am unaware of).
Or, much more likely, the GP meant something else entirely, and I am Wrong On The Internet!
Good question. I wonder if this type of societal situation has lead to wars of conquest in the past. Is there research or studies on events like this? It seems like something that may be difficult to study historically, but who knows.
I think in lesbian relationships it is higher than in heterosexual relationships. Don't have any good links off the top of my head. But here is a BBC article which claims it is higher in same sex relationships: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29994648
Male violence is quite high stakes so I could see if you have two people who carry out lower stakes violence then you could end up with higher rates of violence.
Incels are a part, not all of that group. But they are a percentage. A greater number of perpetually single men, those who do in fact want a family as opposed to thise who chose not to have one, does mean a greater number of radical incels.
Even without going full radical incel, a great many single males lose hope and lose thier drive to achieve. I work with some. They just dont care about work/money/stability/future in the same was as people with dependant families.
It's actually how the term was originally coined - the first person to identify as an incel was a woman. Perhaps without the "radical" adjective, though.
As a brother of two sisters I would say that (unsurprisingly) the proportion of incels is the same in both sexes, they just express it differently. Women incels are not nearly as visible, but they're there.
One thing they do have in common though is a tendency to get fixated on someone/something, so they're over represented in IT.
Who cares what they call themselves? That's theres to decide. Do you want them in or out? If you want them out, call them incels, if you want them in, give them the dignity of any other human and call them men.
Is that really an issue?
If you are a stable personality finding a mate isn't that much of an issue. Especially today with high mobility and dating apps if you put your back to it you can find a partner.
>> If you are a stable personality finding a mate isn't that much of an issue.
So those without mates are possibly not stable? Good luck finding a date if you work in an predominantly male area such as a northern mining town or military base. Good luck funding a mate if you are stuck in a bad job/career. Good luck funding a mate if you are stuck taking care of disabled/elderly family members. A stable personality guarantees nothing.
Of course not. You can be stable and not be interested for a mate. Or as you pointed out, there can be huge friction between a person and their mate because of a job or circumstances.
But aren't those cases a minority, a exception to the rule?
Even people in the military or working in extreme areas don't do that most of their lives. And this isn't something new really, frontiersmen and sailors faced same issues in the 20th and 19th centuries (and since forever really).
I was thinking about a people who are stable and also have a chance and will to find a mate.
> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character.
I think that’s an interesting point. The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. The fact is he’s not the head of the conservative moment, he’s the head of the Republican Party. There are differing factions and he promised something most in the party could support. For example, he supported states rights during the pandemic and didn’t use force. Similarly, the focus was domestic production and an improved foreign policy. Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class.
I’m not personally for the man, but I can see why there was support. It’s the most conservative president in decades by most measurements, though not personal life.
> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years.
As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed.
I feel you are using a very "true Scotsman" definition of Conservative in your world view in order to paint Republicans as "left".
> "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed.
The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds”
After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening...
Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actually a great point about how far the political window has moved. A large segment of the population believes we shouldn’t be discussing anything related to sex, religion or politics in the classroom at any age.
> The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-8 year olds”
One of the authors of the bill was asked if a math textbook that had a word problem saying "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..." would be in violation of this law. He responded that this was precisely the sort of thing the law was intending to prevent.
The law is very much not just about direct sex education prior to 3rd grade.
Regardless of your opinion of the "subversive" nature of such a word problem, it becomes exceedingly clear that the bill is about more than "presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds", as the parent claims.
"Don't say gay" used to be the rule not just in elementary schools but in most organizations in the US. Up until 2011, you would be immediately dismissed from the military if you said gay under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Democratic president at the time claimed to have a Bible-based belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, although a lot of commentators suspect he was lying for political advantage. I wouldn't claim that there's no issues the US as shifted right on, and you're right that abortion is a big one, but I don't think anyone who remembers what the country was like a decade or two ago could deny a general leftwards shift.
The culture has shifted fairly significantly left while a backlash to that, in conjunction with a bunch of weird details about our system of government and just the random timing of elderly people passing away, has shifted political power significantly to the right.
Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to understand what's going on over the border. (This goes both ways, it took me years to understand how on earth your current PM could get elected.)
One other issue is that both sides will focus on what's happening in individual states and act like the whole country is behaving that way. What's really happening is that people are taking mutually exclusive extreme positions and it's influencing the state laws. This is by design and allows people who disagree to live in harmony.
> it reverts to the centrist opinion of the 1990s/2000s
I don’t know, sort of feels like we’ve largely moved on from the centrist opinions of the turn of the millennium. You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average or liking things marginally off the mainline of masculinity, wasn’t exactly a particularly supportive attitude back then.
> Brigaded in less than a minute. Well done, LGBTQIA+ KGB.
Not exactly doing yourself any favours here.
Behaving like this makes your point get lost in the emotional hysteria of your reaction.
>You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average
"Better than average" is highly subjective. There have always been expectations in every society about how you're supposed to dress and comport yourself in public. The styles and forms these expectations take are largely arbitrary and in constant flux, but the uniformity they provide is anything but. The reason why that kind of uniformity is naturally desirable is because being the odd one out is more often dangerous than it is advantageous. The world is an incredibly dangerous place, so if you exhibit aberrant and/or disruptive behaviors from the majority population, their default response is going to be to shame you, or shut you up, or make you go away. It doesn't matter what the behavior is, only that it deviates from the norm.
There have always been hippies, flamboyant gays, and other eccentric types who have found themselves the odd one out (hello there). But I would argue that their status in society is really determined by the relationships they have with others. If you build up a decent rapport with someone, they'll usually tolerate more of your aberrant behaviors, and might not mind them at all since said behaviors are coming from you specifically.
To tie this back into some of the previous posts, being gay is a quality but it's not a redeeming one, and it doesn't make up for a person's negative traits. There seems to be this expectation from very sheltered people that being the odd one out should afford them certain privileges, often related to some kind of victim status. In reality, people will just see you as weak and bully you for those perceived weaknesses.
Just my two cents as someone who eschews the LGBTBLAHBLAH+++ label for myself, since I don't want to be associated with a cult of corporate and pseudo-academic pandering that deprives me of my agency makes certain assumptions about my morals and politics.
Can you please distinguish between the ex-presidents’s words and actions?
He supported domestic production, but failed to do anything meaningful. He claimed to support the working class but then passed the TCJA which benefited the owners of capital more than labor.
He did get a few things right like Operation Warp Speed, but it’s overshadowed by the sheer incompetence of the implementation of other actions (ref. CARES act).
I’m not trying to start a flame war nor am I insinuating that you are presenting arguments in bad faith; I’m merely stating that the actions need to be contrasted with the words.
The real puzzle to me is the level of support he enjoys after a term in the office. IMO there are much better people to implement the policies that he claims to champion (eg Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton) who also happen to be vastly more competent.
>Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class.
Please provide actual policy examples. I don't mean like when he put on a hard hat and pretended to dig coal with an imaginary shovel while on stage, I mean actual tangible policy proposals that would have improved the lives of working folks. Tariffs were very likely a net negative. Tax giveaways to build domestic factories almost never resulted in actual factories being built or jobs being created. I can't think of anything else.
The parent was asking about “policy proposals”. I imagine lack of success of President Trump in implementing his proposals has made many of his voters unhappy.
That said, if you don’t focus on deportations, but instead look at the entire picture, note that the total net illegal immigrant flow was significantly lower during President Trump than it was during President Obama, and has jumped through the roof as soon as President Biden took over.
For a couple years after trump was elected I worked with many illegals. Many of them were scared of trump and had family that was scared to come over because of him. It was more rumor than reality that kept numbers down, but none the less it was working.
Reducing taxes is a pretty big one. Even the most editorialized and anti-Trump articles[1] admit that "the bill helped average families". These articles usually go on at length complaining that the tax cuts also help the rich.
But this is the kind of thing that directly and immediately helps the middle / working class. Reducing their tax burden puts money back in their pocket.
We should follow the singapore/hong kong model of higher property/land taxes and lower income taxes (keep them progressive). The government is supposed to manage the commons and it should be rewarded for doing a good job.
Income taxes are frankly terrible. They increase the risk of corruption because they are "free for all". Increasing land value through public investments is often straight forward. Proper urban planning increases tax revenues, bad urban planning decreases tax revenues. Meanwhile with income taxes, the connection is way more elastic. If you fund a $8 trillion infrastructure bill with income taxes, nobody is going to care if the investment is actually worth it but a lot of politicians will be interested in adding "pork" to benefit from the money.
Support for states rights was wildly inconsistent and dependent on the issue. The focus on domestic production was largely via anti free-trade protectionist policies. The foreign policy was largely unipolar and anti-nato.
Trump is absolutely not a small-c conservative. He's more like a European right wing populist than Reagan or Bush sr.
when you have kids for no reason, they know they’re here for no reason, and it’s a formula for a disaffected person.
i don’t know if expectations being set because of being a man makes any sense, but i firmly believe you must have goals and morals. i think we spend a lot of time struggling with the roles we’re assigned. no for any deep reason, it’s just work and people tend to hate it.
i think it comes down to the intent of the parent in having a child. to a point of course, if you’re in your thirties and refuse to grow up. it’s hard to grow up when you were raised poorly by a sibling because your parents weren’t interested.
Previously people who bore kids but didn’t plan on it were peer pressured by society to carry their water and take responsibility and support them to some degree. Divorced parents faced significant pushback.
These days, at least it seems, without this social pressure people feel free to leave more readily before giving raising their family a greater priority. The priority is their convenience and not the new generation. Also people just don’t apply this social pressure on their peers so much, so there is less consideration when seeking divorce or plain abandonment.
One interesting thing about the ease of marriage divorce in my mind is the incongruence of the entry/exit.
Want to get married? Pay a small fee at the courthouse and get a license in a day or so. Very easy, very low cost.
Want to get divorced? The process can take over a year, cost tens of thousands or more, involve court appearances, and dividing property.
Granted both of these actions are easier or less restrictive than they were in the past. Although the lawyer fees seem to be higher, at least when considering real wages have decreased since the 70s.
With the prevalence of divorce, you would think that prenups could be made a part of the marriage license so that lawyer costs, court costs, etc could be minimized. It might even cause some people to reconsider a bad marriage. You could go farther with premarital counseling if this is really a concern.
I don't know of those are really good ideas or not. Personally, I think the government should get out of the marriage business altogether. With the wide variety of living arrangements and expectations for what a marriage is, I think it might work better for people to enter into private marriage contracts.
On the social pressures and unwanted kids part, I wonder how mate selection plays into this. Sure, there was free love in the 70s, but I still imagine that premarital sex was not as common as it has become today. I wonder how women's expectations of men have changed during this time, especially for when to allow for sex. I also wonder how the expectations men (and society) have of women have changed, especially in terms of work/home/financial responsibilities and contraception/abortion options.
> when you have kids for no reason, they know they’re here for no reason, and it’s a formula for a disaffected person.
That does not make any sense. Most older generations did not choose to have children (certainly not as much as we do) and it did not result in generations being "disaffected". If anything that's exactly the opposite - we are the generation when we have full control of who gets born and there's never been more unhappy families in History than now.
well they're newer than Television if you're talking about effective birth control and family planning. And I mean effectiveness has risen since the first invention of the pill to where you really can control and plan things pretty well.
Yes and No. There is "family planning" as a euphemism for contraception and abortion, but there is also a long history of using the term in a literal sense that includes financial planning, counseling, ect.
We have been riding four positive tidal waves in the west: (momentary) end of war, positive population pyramid, rapidly improving technology, extremely cheap resources.
Now that all of those trends are reversing or at least stagnating, we are in for a really rough landing, as our values and systems have eroded as a consequence of those easy times.
Never seen this saying, but it accurately describes the 4 ugas, or periods, in 4:3:2:1 proportion, in Indian occultism. Golden age where strong and good souls rule, they create prosperity. Silver age where good and weak ride the wave and maintain the traditions. Bronze age where bad and weak start abusing the system for personal profit. Iron age, the era of dark cults, where strong and evil rule freely. We are in a small bronze age right now.
Sometimes it’s not a contradiction, but our old friend nuance. eg
Ideally, everyone should learn to take a literal or figurative punch to the face, shrug it off and refocus.
However, that doesn’t mean that someone can’t be severely traumatized or injured by a single punch to the face. The context matters.
So the ideal of ‘just learn to take it and toughen up’ is flawed because of the very real effects of trauma. And the ideal of ‘no one should ever get punched in the face’ is flawed if we never train ourselves for hardship.
It can be really unintuitive to figure out the middle path between the two.
Sometimes it should be obvious. Stuff like, kids should be made active enough to occasionally scrape their knee, but sanding a scrape into your kids knee is horrible abuse.
> Creating a culture where men can attain dignity and social respect by providing for their family and staying with the mother of their kids matters. And creating a culture where men are told it’s okay not to do those things creates harm
Teaching people how to pull together and get through tough times as a family together is a great thing to promote, but re-stigmatizing divorce to the extent it once was is not a way to achieve that.
It's important to keep in mind that there have been significant policy decisions that diminish the positive impact of social programs by taking into account the marital status of those receiving them.
The documentary 'The Pruitt-Igoe Myth' provides a nice case study on the societal impact of otherwise banal policy and funding decisions.
It's not merely expectations but intergenerational poverty. I get that you think that you came from a less privileged background than your in-laws and in some respects that's true, but even being able to immigrate to the US indicates a degree of social mobility that simply isn't available to the intergenerationally poor in rural America. These are people who grew up in places without anything to do, no training for higher-paid professions available, and who pay first-world expenses simply to exist.
How does one get ahead with 4 children and maybe $2000 of household income per month when rents eat half of that.
This isn't simply a problem of moral failing on the individual level but of failings at the societal level to provide a means for these people to escape poverty.
Why should one be expected to 'get ahead' if they didn't have skills and prepare for having an income to allow this, but had 4 kids? The rational answer there is to to have less kids, and spend more time working on a career!
Depends on the immigrant family. The ones from Mexico and Central American certainly don't have much, but those coming from East and South Asia who immediately start businesses on arrival have access to more wealth (either personally or via social connections) than many native-born Americans will have access to in their entire lives.
We need to seriously stop treating having kids as some kind of accident that just happens. It's extremely simple to not have children. American society is free, which means you are free to fail and fuck things up. If someone has 4 children the only person to blame is the parents. If you can't control yourself, get yourself sterilized. We don't need more of your insane lineage that can't prevent themselves from having 4 children on this planet.
Okay, but again, so we have 4 kids and people with 4 kids. We can wave all the blame we want but all that ends up logically concluding is “fuck children in bad economic situations who did nothing to deserve their situation”. We cannot unbirth children, so now they’re here, how can we incentivize society so that when they grow up they don’t end up putting future children in their current position?
I dunno, my own childhood improved massively when my parents bad marriage ended, and my relationship with both of my parents improved. You can be a responsible parent while not staying in an unhappy marriage.
I think the post fails to make the case that male behavior (or the culture that induces male behavior) is the root cause of divorce rates.
- The rise in imprisonment is basically entirely a result of the War on Drugs, aka carceral slavery.
- The problems with employment are that unions have disappeared, jobs are hyperexploitative (a better measure than the unemployment rate here is the Social Security Disability rate), and real wages have stagnated.
- Middle-class divorce rates (different than what the author references, which is not-getting-married rates) have only started to decline over the last decade or so. The link between middle-class families--where the author writes "Poor and working-class people follow suit"--is totally unsubstantiated by his sources.
- I've not read this book, but looking at a synopsis [0], it's unclear to me how you could take a book clearly about women (162 of them!) and walk away with the conclusion that the root problem is no one expects men to stick around. It feels to me like more of a character study of broken systems (again War on Drugs, income inequality, etc.)
- The paper referenced at the end [1] is junk? Contains a lot of self-cites and no original research? I can't dig into the secondary sources, but the amount of editorializing makes me skeptical of the foundations here. It also seems at odds with the rest of the post: if men will do whatever it takes for sex, it seems like they should be working hard to stay out of prison? Or to hold down a job? Is the argument that women should be more discerning?
I'll also say I keep seeing this weird line from conservative or conservative-ish posts about people on the left not speaking up for marriage. I'm super left and that's not my experience or anyone else's I know? I mean, we're very in favor of gay marriage, and everyone I know acknowledges the research is pretty unequivocal in favor of two-parent households, so I think there's some nuance missing from this conversation.
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Broadly though, I do 100% agree our society is busted, and not just for systemic reasons (though those are big pieces). Many of us have lost a sense of community and place we once had. I don't know what about our culture has done this, but it's bad.
Many of us have lost a sense of community and place we once had. I don't know what about our culture has done this, but it's bad.
The marketing, political, religious, and cultural industries that divide and conquer us into ever finer slices of demographic identities to sell us things have convinced everyone that they can only be themselves by emphasizing their irreconcilable differences with others. In doing so they have robbed us of any sense of common identity.
It's no longer acceptable to be thought of as part of broad category A where everyone has different interests and affinities. Instead now, we have to be exclusively XYZ and W, and nobody else could possibly understand the XYZW perspective.
I agree retrenching pluralism is necessary, but it's a long road to hoe. I've been reflecting lately on my day to day, how even before the pandemic I never knew my neighbors or anyone in my neighborhood, had a low-key resentment towards any forced or incidental social interaction where I'm not 100% in control of my experience, sometimes I load up HN and high-road people for an hour or two or some online dating app, blah.
It's like, no wonder things are depressing, and I'm super privileged. Mostly what I'm running up against is existential and abstract. It's hard for me to even imagine working gig jobs or being back in tech support.
Maybe this is just rehashing what you're saying, but I find modern life intensely dehumanizing. There's so much space between us--on purpose--that we're just adrift.
My brother and I were talking with an older guy a couple years ago, and he pinned the blame for this on garages. Time was you parked in your driveway and had a neighbor interaction, but with the garage, you just slipped in and no interaction. Was it always an awesome neighbor interaction? Definitely not, but it had a cohering effect. I think he's wrong in the micro, but it does to me ring true in the macro, where we have so much more control over our interactions that we just don't get the incidental mixing. Then again lots of people in our society have tons of unwanted interactions (e.g. women) so dunno if this is at all right.
IDK this was weirdly personal and whiny, but I don't know how else to really get at what I've been thinking for a while.
>Many of us have lost a sense of community and place we once had. I don't know what about our culture has done this, but it's bad.
Every community is a social organism fighting uphill on an energetic gradient. Therefore in order to survive a community always has to have a boundary. If you cannot delineate "These people are Us and those people are Not Us" then you cannot store energy in social bonds. People watch their cultural and societal investments get cracked open and poured out for the benefit of outsiders. Then they stop investing and turn to rationalized materialist systems that are more reliable. And then you do not have a community.
Here's an effective strategy if you're part of a materialist system: at every turn, make a moral argument for why the investments inside a target community are actually evil and must be cracked open. Mount a massive and continuous campaign to redefine the core concept of community (loyal in-group preferentialism) as an exploitive world-historic injustice. Then coordinate this as a basis for reward and punishment at scale. Now you can watch people trip over themselves to leave their community and seek material protection inside your system.
Rinse and repeat et voila, you've perfected technological metabolism of human culture. Bye bye, sense of community!
I think the problem with the whole argument being made in this article is exhibited in your pull quote as well: working class people don't know or care what that "highly educated and affluent person" thinks about anything. It is not then clear to me how that person's stance on this - which I don't share - could possibly be the cause of the problems of people who don't care what that person thinks.
It's not the opinions of any one person that matter, it's the expressed opinion of society as a whole, which is made up of the expressed opinions of every individual. It has to start with someone, but I don't think anyone here is under the illusion that one person speaking out is sufficient to alter the culture.
Fair, that was an oversimplification. I don't believe that that substantially alters my point, though: no one is saying that if only wealthy person X would speak up everything would be better. People are arguing that we need a surge of people speaking up in defense of the choices they made that contributed to their success.
I think the article significantly overplays the extent to which that doesn't happen. I don't actually think there is any shortage of affluent / professional class / cosmopolitan people who are outspokenly proud of their stable families. But I don't think they have any influence whatsoever over the working class culture exhibiting the problems highlighted. They're two different cultures without much overlap or influence over one another.
A big challenge with rigid social expectations is identifying the beneficial ones and removing the harmful ones. In practice, there tends to be little introspection about which traditional expectations help and which ones hurt. Instead, people appeal to tradition itself as evidence that an expectation is helpful. If we could more effectively iterate on these social expectations then we'd be able to more effectively optimize. But efforts to do this (e.g., discussion of topics like "toxic masculinity") are by-and-large rejected out of hand by traditionalists.
Another challenge is that social expectations may help on average but they may completely fail in individual cases. For example, having both parents raise a child will, on average, lead to improved outcomes. But if we codify this as a rigid rule, then people are unable to escape abusive relationships where the presence of both parents is a negative. Social expectations are necessarily generalizations and people need the freedom to identify when they are not helpful for their particular situation and adjust accordingly.
The tentatives to artificially engineer the society to be more just, fair and inclusive only resulted in a less just, less fair and less inclusive society.
The society should be left to evolve on its own, in a natural way. If we don't want to replace small disasters with big disasters.
Civil rights for gay people and black people were criticized "artificially engineering society". As were voting rights for women or access to birth control. Subservient roles for women and labor roles for black people were seen as "natural." I think you'd be absolutely crazy to consider rights for these populations to have led to a "less just and less fair society."
There is no such thing as natural society. Society is constructed by humans.
I think the crux of the current debate is the tension between cultural liberalism and cultural socialism.
The philosophy of the cultural liberals is to remove restrictions that inhibit people from living the social lives they want.
The cultural socialists want to use the power of institutions to distribute a culture across the population. They believe their culture is societally optimal so reducing liberties to propagate it is morally justified.
I’m sure most peoples beliefs lie somewhere in between the two. But the cultural socialism maximalists in the west have been getting louder and louder and it’s beginning to terrify me.
I predict in the next 5 years, womens’ voting rights will be an actual political topic. It will start with “ironic” jokes and “rational” thinking but will get increasingly normalized in discourse.
We've already seen Thiel float the "the world would be better if women couldn't vote" thing. Far right communities online already express sanitized versions of this belief system. You can see it when far right women end up in discussion spaces. Their participation is ultimately contingent on the approval of the men they are around, with sexist rejections of their contributions showing up frequently.
We are already at the "ironic" jokes and "rational" thinking phase. Terrifying.
There’s a whole online subculture of women adopting traditional aesthetics and dressing like pilgrims. It’s hard to gauge their sincerity, but they are “converting” to Catholicism and fundamentalist Islam.
Being transgressive is definitely cool for disaffected trust fund kids who didn’t get into Deloitte, but I think there are darker undercurrents like you are implying.
The real irony in all of this is the post-modern and Marxist influences of the movement. Which is hilarious due to the Red Scare level of hysteria reactionaries have about those ideologies.
I think this subculture you've noticed might actually be part of that "Red Scare."
I really don't like the "cultural socialism" phrase. There are too many connotations in it and it's probably too vague for everyone. The way I see it there are really three extremes you can take on any political issue: One is an authoritarian preservation (or restoration) of culture, another is the authoritarian deconstruction (or liberation) of culture, and one is the libertarian position (which is almost moderate by definition; the individual communities are left to figure out what they want.)
The socialists/communists/bolsheviks (and in a more moderate sense, progressives) or in other words "The Left" are near the "authoritarian deconstruction" extreme. Examples of these might be the American progressives trying to take control of children's sexuality away from parents or the people writing laws against the cast system in India.
The Fascists, monarchists, religious fundamentalists, and in a moderate sense conservatives, or in other words "The Right" are near the "authoritarian preservation" extreme. Examples of these include the Taliban, America First etc.
The libertarians/liberals/anarchists are what we already know. Something I don't think people appreciate about them though is that they allow for consensus in some situations where none is achievable. People often confuse them for the Right because of the US's tradition of liberty and because of the freedom of association thing. They confuse them for the left because of how destructive anarchy is.
None of these extremes are ideal. All degenerate into something horrible if you lean hard into any one. It's much easier to understand your own position on any topic along with someone else's because they become a vector of sorts made up of these.
I think you've grouped the two authoritarian extremes under "cultural socialists" and are confused because they're different phenomena (often reactions to each other.)
I’m definitely not scared about a small subculture of Brooklyn art chicks and permanently online disaffected 20 year old woman. I brought it up because monied interests have taken an interest in the aesthetic. The question is, why?
Edit responding to your edit: I 100% agree that any extreme is bad. A society with no restrictions would be anarchy (note mores and peer pressure are means of restriction). But in a democratic society, anti-democratic ideas must be resisted. Once the structures of power are changed, it’s almost impossible to reverse. Therefore, I believe it is imperative to call out these ideas for what they are.
Also I disagree that progressives fall in the same bucket as leftists. All leftists are authoritarian leaning but progressives can be liberal or authoritarian.
I don’t think it’s usefully either to endlessly categorize political movements. If you are partial to post-modern thought, you could say categorizing things is a way of exerting power of them. This has clearly been the runbook historically of dismantling the left in America. This is mostly self afflicted due to the tendency of the left to over intellectualize things, but there has been a conscious effort by provocateurs to infiltrate left wing groups and cause discord.
We reached the max comment depth. I don’t disagree with your points. One point of clarification is that when I say democracy I mean republican or parliamentarian style government.
I sympathize with the critique of democracy. However the failure of more authoritarian systems of governing is and always has been the lack of transparency and trust. In a democratic style of government there’s at least an attempt of oversight. Good luck making a FOIA request to a king or private corporation. Autocrats abuse this flaw to amass power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the population.
Democracy is also inextricably tied to civil liberties. Disenfranchised citizens have less recourse when their civil liberties are attacked
1 (biological) person = 1 vote. Unweighted by wealth. Anything less than that is a kleptocracy or a apartheid state, regardless of what the online obscurists will have you believe
Sorry, I've edited it again (I tend to do that a lot, it's easier than typing everything out only to discover I've used up my post quota for the day.) Liberals are definitely not in the same bucket as leftists, they're arguably just another kind of libertarian.
Democracy is another extreme you don't want. Many people have written about how destructive it can be and should definitely be balanced with something slower (in the past this was an aristocracy/monarchy, in the US and Canada you have the Senate.) I really don't think maximizing democracy should be an objective.
To respond to your edit: This categorization is a pretty old one that comes from the french revolution. I think it makes empathy easier which makes political ideas much easier to communicate and reason about. Precise definitions and catagories (as long as they're consistent) are not oppression, they're necessary for communication.
The extremes go far beyond your examples, in both directions. For extremes in the "authoritarian deconstruction" direction, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, would be well-known examples. On the "authoritarian reconstruction" side, we have many cases from fascist regimes to religious theocracies and many other examples. Even a "communist" ideology like North-Korean Juche has many elements involving authoritarian construction of a rather structured culture.
Partially. You have to have some rules to ensure people can participate. Accommodation for disabilities for example. Even if people would try to accommodate them out of a sense of duty, you cannot skip to have binding rules because it just simply isn't on peoples mind all the time.
What isn't helpful at all, on the contrary, is thinking about new words how to call disabled people.
I hate to be "that guy", but you guys have this whole thing backwards.
What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.
If sex is free then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, but it won't cause those men to work harder. Why? Because sex is free. Full stop.
If sex costs more than most men will ever have, then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, most men will still opt out. Since they know their chances are nil. Why? Because they'll never get sex, it costs more than they have. Full stop.
No amount of ideology is going to change these facts. No matter what the ideology is. (Of course, now I think about it, you could probably change it at the barrel of a gun. That is, the government could make blunt force laws that would force women to lower their prices for sex and companionship, or force men to work hard even in environments where sex is free. Or both I suppose? But that's not ideology moving men and women, but fear of the government's guns.)
And that's it. There is no grand philosophy behind it all. It's just a bunch of guys out trying to get off. And women out trying to get the best deal for what they offer. This is the kind of issue where liberals and conservatives generally go off the rails. They usually never account for base, vulgar human nature in their grand philosophies.
>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.
Too simple, though what you say captures the essence. People have breakpoints for how hard they are willing to work for various things. Some of them are progressive (relationship -> kids -> family). Some are lateral (relationship, starting a business).
For a lot of men, they see getting a relationship is more difficult than just having low effort sex. So they get exactly that and continue on with their lives otherwise.
Next step, families and children. Have a relationship? Cool, now look at how much effort it takes to start a family and raise kids. Look at the risks involved. Look at the demands it takes. Loads of guys go "nope, too much, too risky, too little reward" and check out.
Society has been pushing to make it much easier to have sex risk-free. They have made it much harder to start a relationship, let alone start a family, by introducing all these risks and incentives not to. Plenty of men still want a family more than or on top of sex. They just don't want the current deal given to them.
Cherry on top, almost every time the debate opens as to why men in particular don't want this deal (as opposed to "why do people / women not want this deal"), the discussion turns into shaming men into taking the deal rather than evaluating things and working together. No civil conversation, just a bunch of monkeys flinging poo. And people are surprised men are ghosting society, when you won't even pretend to listen?
Straight hetero male here confirming. Too much work for real relationships and kids and marriage and all that. Much easier to just date around, get laid, and bail if things ever get hard.
I fully believe (though despise) the harsh but true evidence that I have seen in my life. Love is a lie, children are a burden, the future is bleak, etc. I would love to live in a world of community, great for kids, having a family is awesome, etc., but that's not where we live. Best to live for short-term rewards and after I die let the rest of the humans destroy themselves. I won't add another person to the madness.
When you can see that nothing we can do can derail the train headed for the cliff, and that the game theory at play has reduced relationships to transactional, short-lived interactions, you can choose to "hope for the best" and get burned, or just check out, try to enjoy your short term by working as little as possible in the machine, and then ending it if you get too old/sick to enjoy anymore.
A good example is just watching the lib/conserv and pro/anti male sentiments in this thread. It just makes it glaringly obvious that seriously participating in this system is an exercise in futility.
Its kinda like starting a game of monopoly with all the spaces owned. I'm gonna role the dice and I assume I'm not getting ahead. But I'm sure as hell not going to get invested, invite more people to play, or do more to enrich the bastards who setup such a crappy game in the first place.
>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.
Both men and women want sex. And they want sex because Nature taught them so, as sex is vital for perpetuating the species.
Both men and women want food, shelter, financial stability and to feel good.
Both men and women were taught by their natural instincts and by the thousands of years of evolution of the society that they have to care for their offspring for the human kind to evolve and for their genes to spread.
What has the violent sliding of the society to the left has taught both men and women is to be hedonistic, selfish to not care about the others and to only search for instant gratification.
So both men and women were fooled by this poisonous ideology but while biology has made men more independent, they made the children more dependent of their moms than their dads, so once a woman has a child, it is harder for her to walk off.
Otherwise, women have a very low interest to get married, keep their marriage and have children. So they have a very similar attitude to men.
The point quoted is a pretty lazy effort that simplifies "what men want" down to something that is highly incomplete and obviously inaccurate. I think a sarcastic reply is sometimes the best response to low-quality, reductive comments.
>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.
I think you are close, this is probably mostly true for the 16-24 yr old crowd. But I think that the actual drive is to produce kids who make a family that he can provide for/care for.
The primal urge is steering the ship, but it's a step (or two) deeper then sex.
Liberals and conservatives agree on the basics and disagree on the scope - which is why conservatives are always defending the so-called “liberal” policies of a generation ago.
Admitting the base and vulgar nature of humans puts the whole concept of a liberal democracy at risk.
If it's admitting the truth, then it should be at risk. Anything else is just delaying the inevitable and not planning adequately for its arrival in the meantime.
We’re starting to see the seeds of this in various ways - an example is realizing that laws and penalties against speeding don’t really do anything, but changing the design of the road can do everything.
There are many, many more examples for us to find.
The article is specifically about men having children with women, then leaving the family by one means or another. While your inclusivity works in many places, the problem here is well defined as young men not striving for family stability.
Your interpretation of my implication is incorrect, and it's not my implication anyway - that belongs to the author of the article.
Even still, this article is examining one aspect of a problem, not the whole problem. It's okay to look at problems in parts without addressing the whole.
The implication of "liberal values = high divorce. Conservative values = low divorce" might make sense intuitively (as one group claims to put more shame on it than the other), but until it is backed with data it is just "an impression".
I have sorted that list several ways (rate of divorce in 2000, in 1990 and average). Of the top five (Nevada, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho) only Wyoming voted Democrat in 2020. The lowest five (Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusets) Iowa and Louisiana voted Republican, the rest voted Democrat.
That seems to go against the "intuition" that divorce is less prevalent amongst conservatives.
The list also seems to show a steady general decline across all of the states in divorce rates between 1990 and now.
Comparing divorce rates like that is very hard because where divorce is culturally stigmatized, cohabitation is also stigmatized. The result is you get a bunch of people who get married, have kids, find out they're incompatible, and get divorced.
In other states with different cultures, that exact pattern (including the kids) can play out but never end up in the divorce stats because instead of getting married the couple just lives together for a while. Once kids are involved the negative effects are much the same as in a divorce (minus the legal bills), it just doesn't show up in the stats.
I think you're wrong. I'm French so my "social conservative christian" parents still taught me to roll cigarets, that abortions saved young girls' future and that you shouldn't beat your wife if she wants a divorce, which is for me american "social liberalism".
The way I see rigidity is to associate set roles to women, beating the gayness out of gays or shunning you for marrying out of your parents' religion. What you describe is complete laxism, maybe not telling men that they do have to own up their decisions, especially raising children that even someone like my dad did, despite being more flexible maybe than your parents ?
And I'm socially liberal in the sense I married a Chinese and raise my daughter telling her mariage is not the only goal in life, that if she's gay it won't matter, and that religion is BS, but I still expect her to raise her kids properly if she has some... so I'm not sure your parents raised you well because they were rigid or simply because they were good honest people... which even the liberals you dislike could also be !
"This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability."
As someone both from a somewhat conservative immigrant background who is basically a coastal elite type myself, I think that statement is not particularly accurate or insightful. My main point of contention is that low-income whites tend not to care for what the highly-educated and affluent think anyways. Absurd to blame the "educated and affluent" for lower-class abandonment of their own cultural values.
"Social change has swept through America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. But that illustrates my point."
I think that has more to do with hypocrisy and is symptomatic of deeper cultural and moral problems erupting among "conservatives" both rich and poor.
"It’s the rest of America that most needs a supportive culture that tells men that by getting a job, any job, and supporting their family, they can attain a measure of that same dignity."
These cultural groups can have that with or without the help of "elites". Again, they don't like elites. The article cites some anecdote about a UN meeting--these people tend to not even want the UN to exist. They don't know about the UN does, nor do they really care. No outcome of that meeting would sway their behavior.
Ultimately, the issue isn't that somehow the culture of "[t]hose who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder" is failing these people. These people have failed themselves, some might argue in part precisely because they would rather NOT mimic what the people are the apex of the social ladder do. These people of course love to place the blame elsewhere, particularly on immigrants, but ultimately their culture has become degraded and their moral fabric destroyed from the inside.
> Absurd to blame the "educated and affluent" for lower-class abandonment of their own cultural values.
The author isn't blaming the elite for the trend. In fact, he acknowledges that it has impacted all strata, even though the impact is greater at the lower end. What he's saying is that family stability is no longer a universal value. The thesis is that the elite set the fashion. He writes:
"Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant."
When you say that "low-income whites tend not to care for what the highly-educated and affluent think," there may be something to that at some level, but I think these are trivial levels. The elite make the laws and rules and systems, and we all live with those. I think that is beside the point, though. It's not that the elites are saying, "Start a family and stick with it," and therefor everyone else is acting out in protest; it's that the elites are not saying it.
I'll admit/concede I may have inferred a stronger and more specific conclusion than the one the author actually meant to make.
"It's not that the elites are saying, "Start a family and stick with it," and therefor everyone else is acting out in protest; it's that the elites are not saying it."
I'm not sure what you mean here, though--like, my point is that elite rungs of society saying "Start a family and stick with it" is simply going to be irrelevant to a lot of the people the author is talking about. Would you disagree?
Like, operationally, what difference would it make? Would unemployed, lazy, drug-addled fathers unmarried to the mothers of their children get their act together if Obama had said they should more when he was POTUS? If professors at Stanford or Harvard or Brown started writing academic papers that touted this as correlated with success?
I think this is more than me just being sassy here; the author has, IMO, failed to articulate a nexus between the problematic behavior he is calling out and the on-the-ground results he laments.
The hints contained in the article about what he seems to think or imply a better situation would like just don't seem...realistic. E.g., the UN lady vocally and openly supporting stable family units and this making it into the final product of whatever they were doing--it just strikes me as nakedly preposterous that anything contained in a UN report would have a real impact on the individual behavior of anyone in America.
And I get that that's a very isolated example and that the aggregate effect of all those little interactions and omissions may be real, large, and worthy of serious attention. I just don't see the fundamental link between the phenomenon and the problems he is concerned with.
Again, I think the ultimate issue with the article is that the people he is talking about already aren't trying to strive by the criteria of whatever mixed-bag of societal values we do have. Middle-class and higher, people value education. In terms of children, they are having them later and later in life (outside of certain communities, usually religious, but sometimes ethnic/racial in general). People generally value work and they value taking care of their families. So the people in the article are already failing to take heed.
Indeed, most of us don't seem to need some distinct and clear societal emphasis on not having a kid out-of-wedlock at age 21 after having not tried to pursue either higher education or some stable trade/skill. If anything, I can't think of any group that doesn't stigmatize this. Even the groups he is referring to in the article don't need to be told that's not the proper way; it's just sadly somehow become normalized for them.
> my point is that elite rungs of society saying "Start a family and stick with it" is simply going to be irrelevant to a lot of the people the author is talking about. Would you disagree?
No, I don't really disagree with that. If it were just elites shouting down, then you're right. It was the manner in which it used to be conveyed that matters. The mass media is no longer propagating that messaging in the way it had been for past decades. Pop culture celebrated families, especially in the age of television, from the '50s through the '80s. There were some hangers-on in the early '90s, like Family Matters, Full House, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but it was waning.
The contemporary messaging is very positive about nontraditional lifestyles. The people who control the media are the elite, and the messaging is delivered via pop culture stars.
I don't know which way the influence actually flows, but I think this is what the author is getting at, and it not too far out there if you ask me.
We need to find a better reason why this happens. I don't believe it's liberal social values which are not lived by.
First of I would believe it's an educational problem and second it's a 'who cares' problem.
There are plenty of areas/ghettos of low income and low education around.
The blog also contains the following:
"The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else"
How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.
Richer people have kids in their thirties, so the media is full of people in their twenties living it up. Poorer men have kids in their twenties and then they feel like losers for living the boring lifestyle of a responsible breadwinner. They want to copy the carefree lifestyle shown as "normal" by our culture.
Perhaps the best way to copy that lifestyle would be to, well, copy the choice to not have kids in their twenties (or teens). It’s hard to see how the choice by some to delay kids is somehow undermining others.
Conversely, the choice to have kids earlier brings its own set of benefits (having more physical energy is one that I wished for somewhat often and I think there’s evidence of earlier pregnancies being lower risk).
It’s sort of funny: they make the same mistake the “red pill” crowd makes. First they want to emulate a false reality that doesn’t exist, then some of them end up rejecting that same false reality that never existed (the red pill crowd) and end up tilting against windmills. Both groups have deluded themselves by choosing keep their eyes closed to the actual reality they exist in which is far more mundane.
> How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.
I read a book [1] that argued the upper middle class follows very traditional values (two-parent families, marrying before having children, having at least one adult working 40 hours a week) but doesn't really advocate for those traditional values.
People in the upper middle class will praise the bravery of single mothers and say there's nothing to be ashamed of - but when it comes time to have children of their own, rarely choose that for themselves.
It's not entirely hypocritical, of course; just because I think gays have nothing to be ashamed of, doesn't mean I have to become gay myself!
Changing the meaning of words (i.e, reducing stigma) never works. It's a practice used by authoritarians to get what they want fast because it's cheap and relatively easy.
I'm curious what the GP was told that makes them think the alternative to endorsing single motherhood is worse. The alternative to reducing stigma would be fixing the underlying issues that cause the stigma...in this case the lack of ability for a single parent to provide. We have plenty of resources to fix this, but they're disproportionately distributed in favor of those at the top. Funny enough, both the left and right at the top have solutions different than what I described. The left wants to destigmatize, and the right wants to shame (another cheap and relatively easy tactic used by authoritarians).
There is a stigma in pushing stable values. In a very real sense, it’s created by a media environment that eschews non-progressive (it’s not liberal - at least in the USA) family structures.
Let’s face it, Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.
> Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.
The life available to Homer Simpson included a skilled job that he could obtain without a college degree (and also while being an idiot). He was able to purchase a four bedroom home in the community he grew up in and provide for his wife and three children on that one income.
That was the norm, now it's practically gone. The lack of accessible economic opportunity, housing, and childcare are major barriers to having kids. If the same opportunities were available to my generation as they were to Homer Simpson's, this article wouldn't exist.
No one I know is delaying or avoiding a family because "the media" didn't show them how to start a "non-prgressive" one.
I don’t think you should blindly trust everything you see on TV. I doubt being able to afford a 4 bedroom while working in a low skilled job was ever the norm (even without being an idiot).
In any case Homer was an engineer in a nuclear power plant, while he was probably quite underpaid, his income should had still been relatively decent.
When I was in my twenties, I thought having a family before you were in your thirties meant you were kinda dumb. That’s what people who didn’t have ambitions did.
Fast forward to now and it is one of my very few regrets. I have three kids, but wish I would have started in my twenties and prioritized family more.
When I was in my twenties, the homer Simpsons of the world were idiots. In my thirties, they were the ones who got it right.
It makes sense upper middle class wouldn't advocate for traditional values. They instead put up barriers to join the upper middle class. The book "Dream Hoarders" captures this well (restrictive zoning, parents helping finding internships, etc) [0]. If the playbook was available to everyone, then it would make maintaining your own position in the hierarchy all the more difficult. One thing the upper middle class fears the most is losing their position in society: the class provides solid income, but it isn't enough wealth to prevent being wiped out by a health incident or a bad investment.
I'm paraphrasing, but Charlie Munger [1] recently said that our economic system depends on agony to get ahead.
> what makes capitalism work is the fact that if you’re an able-bodied young person and you refuse to work, you suffer a fair amount of agony. It’s because of that agony that the whole economic system work.
Most people follow the conservative values, being "normal" is easiest. Its a matter of tolerance to other ideas or situation.
Some either utterly rejects things that don't conform, or just wish to hide and shame them.
Other people feel tolerance to differences is a good idea. And some people go full circle and want to shame anyone who doesn't completely identifies with the different ideas.
From what I've heard the problem are divorce courts granting women nearly everything. That rigs the game against dads.
Marriage is a huge liability. Men are gambling with nearly all their lives on their partner's unwillingness into a divorce.
On the other hand I've heard rumors where therapists were suggesting divorce to married women. I don't know how widespread that is but maybe something worth looking into.
Does it though? In a typical marriage, one side goes to work and the other stays home. The one who stays home has a pretty stale resume during the years kids can't be in school and they often don't make it back to the workforce at all. This is a decision that's usually agreed to because the long term plan is to stay together and this is the agreed upon model for load distribution. Then comes divorce.
The party that has always been the primary caregiver is expected to keep that role, in general. Without a partner who works and gets paid, they are left scrambling to find a job. Since their resume has gone stale, they end up making a fraction of what they would have, had they stayed working. Don't forget, they're still probably the primary caregiver and have to handle finding daycare or babysitters so they can work and take care of of kids.
You can guess which parent generally get the more difficult role. So which side has it better?
My wife hasn't worked since she completed her Masters. If we split, she'd have a degree that qualifies her to be a teacher but not valid certifications. I make a very good salary. She'd have our kid because there's no math that would make sacrificing my job a reasonable option. I could give her half my net and I'd still live the high life but she would have to deal with all the details of scheduling our kid's life and I'd be able to opt out of it. I never plan to split but my life would be much easier than her life would be, if we did.
As far as I know, in the US, the custody and house/apartment is almost always given to the parent who /wants/ the children. Men often don't fight for custody. They should.
Also, the division of assets is not out of proportion I think. If I got married and my partner left the workforce to take care of the home/children, I do think they should get their fair share of assets in case of divorce.
Do you have a study for this? When I researched it briefly years ago it seems when men ask for custody they often get exactly the custody they ask for, and the narrative they don’t is something largely spread by people who are either ignorant or men who were denied custody for heinous examples of abuse. Men simply ask for custody less or ask for less custody broadly.
> noting that nearly 30% of fathers surveyed did not want physical custody
> The outcome matched the re-quest for maternal custody in nearly 90% of such cases. See id. In contrast, paternal physical custody was awarded in only 75%
> in a 1992 study of 1,124 divorced families, 67.6% of children lived with their mothers; 15% lived with both parents on a joint custody basis; and only 9.5% lived with their fathers
This fails to correct for how many fathers won't even ask for custody because there's such a low chance of getting it.
If it was the 19th century and I observed that most women who took the bar exam passed the bar exam, would that prove that men and women were on an equal footing?
> If it was the 19th century and I observed that most women who took the bar exam passed the bar exam, would that prove that men and women were on an equal footing?
It would require other evidence (of which there is plenty, for the 19th century legal training pipeline, including explicit institutional discrimination) to show the bias.
But other evidence isn't just an unsupported narrative.
This was published well over 20 years ago. Do you have anything more reflective of modern days? Taking it at face value, assuming nothing has changed (a big assumption) it’s still the case that the vast majority of men who ask for custody are awarded custody.
I'm not sure how you possibly reached that conclusion.
~30% of men don't want ANY custody. Yet ~67% of children live only with their mother.
Assuming that 100% of children that the father didn't want go to the mother (they don't - some go to the system or relatives) - that means in 47% of the other cases, the mother gets FULL custody.
So this means for 100% of those 47% of cases, the father did not want the mother to get FULL custody, but that's what the court decided.
Women also file for divorce 60 - 75% of the time (up to near 80% in the black community). Men are risk assessors by nature, and see no benefit to risking their livelihoods for such little benefit.
I loved the idea of this comment, so I read the article.
It says that men are more likely than women to take risks across several domains. This does not support the idea that men (more than women) are "risk assessors by nature".
The article also says that women and men are equally likely to take risks in the social domain... which probably includes marriage.
In general, I think the blithe characterization of men and women in this way does not move the dialogue forward.
Because the parent comment was ignorant and stupid. Making statements like "one gender does a thing by nature" that is not tied to a core biological function is ridiculous. Now, if we want to have a discussion about "by nurture," then we're able to talk honestly. It's beliefs and statements like that, that make honest conversation nearly impossible and therefore true equality just an idea.
Plenty of much more sophisticated and educated men continue to get married despite that, but you're suggesting that these less educated and knowledgeable men are incentivized by modern family law?
> How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.
I don’t think they do this on purpose; I think they’re well meaning and don’t “want to judge.” The problem is that social judgement is what creates signals for what’s good and bad and what’s worthy and unworthy; what has value and what doesn’t. And people respond to signals.
Imagine that you’re just an average dude growing up in the middle of nowhere. College isn’t in the cards for you—you’re not cut out to be a Facebook engineer. But the local canning plant needs people to work. Do you think social signals don’t affect what choices you make?
There's the 40 page document of all the medical reasons you won't qualify for military service, one of which I have. Everyone says just join the military, but I suppose 7 year old me should have thought of that before I chose to get bone disease.
The third bullet here is basic economics. When you create demand for a product by subsidizing it, people will create supply.
Practically, these subsidies mean that poorer women who could marry the father of their children will often choose not to because they are getting money from the government that exceeds what the man can bring in. It is a little bit like the effect of a very high minimum wage: it helps a certain group of people, but prices many others out of the market. Each step of the process is a perfectly rational economic decision, and it completely destabilizes the home.
I have witnessed this firsthand with some of my relatives, who unfortunately behaved exactly as the microeconomics predicted. They had children out of wedlock, wanting to get married but also wanting to keep their benefits, and then ended up separating because the man's attempt to work like a dog to provide more than the government burned him out (he actually wanted to get married and do the right thing).
Edit: I also want to add that I'm pretty sure the second point here is not true. Lesbian and gay two-parent households don't seem to have worse outcomes than heterosexual couples.
Thank you for sharing. It sounds like this is an unfortunate side effect of the law and not the intention, though. I wonder whether the laws could be updated to prevent these perverse incentives.
Minimum wage * 50 hours per week is less than the benefits you would lose from it. There is literally a >100% marginal income tax at the bottom income brackets if you factor in loss of benefits. This also was in New York where benefits and taxes are high.
> The second point I’m less clear on myself: is there evidence that children of lesbian couples are somehow worse off?
No the aren't:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121135904.h...
"The family type that is best for children is one that has responsible, committed, stable parenting. Two parents are, on average, better than one, but one really good parent is better than two not-so-good ones. The gender of parents only matters in ways that don't matter."
i don't think that is what the second point is about. there is a difference between having two involved parents and having one of the parents present but not involved with the kids at all. regardless of the gender, the latter will affect the children in different ways.
For point #2, we can follow the idea to its logical conclusion. (Note: I have zero issues with gay parents, this is just a thought exercise)
If it stands to reason that if the children of lesbian parents are indistinguishable from those of mixed-sex parents, then men play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? They can be swapped out by a woman with no change for the child.
And conversely if a child raised by two gay men are indistinguishable from mix-sex parents, then woman play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? Replace the mother with another man and nothing changes in that child's upbringing?
And therefore, one could argue that a single parent (only a man or woman) are only worse off due to limited parental resources (not to be underestimated), but not because an opposite sex partner would add anything unique to the childrearing.
Children raised in a non-dysfunctional two parent household (regardless of parental gender / sexual orientation) witness healthy interdependence, cooperation, negotiation, trust, respect, conflict resolution, love etc. between their primary caregivers during their critical development period. Raising a child with a good partner is about more than resource availability.
Having both genders is really valuable, by providing role modelling and interaction with the neuro-diversity of both genders.
Of course these days some people think the genders are not different, or whatever, some people think every strange though under the sun. I'm not speaking to those people they can believe whatever they want.
Have a read of 'Families and how survive them' for some detailed analysis of the roles of both genders in childrens development at various stages in their life.
That's an entirely partisan take, and a hacky one.
There are plenty of wealthier families who shelter their children in ways poorer families cannot who have exactly the opposite views & approaches from what you described. Those efforts are often carried out through churches.
Schools in the US are funded by property tax. It makes no sense to do that unless the goal is to keep everyone in their place and prevent kids born into poorer areas from competing on equal footing with the children of wealthy people.
Schools in poor areas have higher funding than schools in rich areas, the property tax funding is only one part of where schools get their money from. See this report for example: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs95/web/95300.asp (it's a bit old but nothing substantive has changed).
The paper you linked to opens its summary of results with the following:
"How do education expenditures vary with alternative district and
community measures? Students in districts enrolling the lowest percentages of students in poverty and the lowest percentages of students in need of special education services received the highest expenditures."
I don't know about "undermin[ing] the norm" but I see this kind of hypocrisy in my own family. They shout about all life being precious and abortion being murder and also how single mother's need to get harder and how they shouldn't have to pay more taxes to help lazy poor people. Both positions have one thing in common: they negatively impact non-whites and the poor more. They can't self reflect and see it, unfortunately. My family is not unique. It may not be intentional but they still clearly think that the only way they can succeed is by having others fail.
If you're not in the top 5% - I'm not sure this an insane world view.
If you just want to have an average job and not a career in the right field or run a business - life seems less like a positive sum game and more like a zero sum game.
It's easy for us at the top to talk about "making a bigger pie" when we get 90% of the bigger pie.
We're long past the time when we need to be concerned about maximizing children output as a societal goal. I'm much more interested in ensuring people have lives with meaning and growth than trying to pop out as many children as possible. If that means a woman has a career, great. If that means a woman wants to be a stay at home mom, also great.
There are many reasons. Values, mental health, family baggage, opportunities (there is no shortage of opportunities in America - regardless of race). Yes you may need to work twice as hard but none the less it’s an opportunity.
Assuming young healthy men, the next big issue is values. Are they self centered? Prideful? Presumptuous? These are values parents teach to avoid and cultivate beneficial qualities - they cannot be delegated to others. A growing trend is the absent parent (entire other thread on its own - not faulting the parent). Schools or anyone else should not teach children this. Out of need it happens at times and what you see is a reflection of the broader community.
>The contrast made me realize that professing liberal social values that one doesn’t live by harms society. It matters what we say about what’s good and what’s bad, what works and what doesn’t. Creating a culture where men can attain dignity and social respect by providing for their family and staying with the mother of their kids matters.
Liberal social values includes committing and providing for your family
Those pressures forces you down a narrow path. Steve Jobs from an immigrant background would have never become what he did if he was forced into your situation.
Freedom means you get to choose. Many choose unwisely. Without that choice you are limited to established career paths that can be easily communicated.
Giving birth to a baby without being married is a religious point of view.
I am supposed to believe that a "sociology professor at Princeton, and Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University" can somehow convince me that he knows what a "low-income woman" thinks or does in her life. I've lived around "low-income women" my whole life and I haven't figured it out.
"The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births."
Whose conventional view? This is not the view of poor people.
"Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men.", the book this came from was written by a conservative scientist from Iowa. I tried to check some of the stats and every one of them seem to be wrong.
This is a horrible article that seems to do nothing by try and place blame rather than provide a solution to a problem that does not exist. I will go as far as to say this article is quite racist. The article says "American" men but then only targets white American men in their statistics. Which is it, American men or white American men?
He says at the beginning of the article he was one of America's "lost boys" which already tells me he has no idea what it means to actually be lost or poor. His other blog posts reveal his religious rhetoric. Remember when Cambridge produced leaders and not followers?
This is a poorly written article based on personal views and statistics that don't even target the proper demographics of the content of the article. Unbelievable.
Both of them are right, this is a common confusion in unemployment statistics. Unemployment as a technical term refers to people who both don't have a job and are "in the workforce", meaning they gave the right answers for the survey taker to conclude they're looking for a job. People who aren't trying to find a job are "out of the workforce" but not "unemployed".
They aren’t in U-3 (the most commonly cited figure), but might be in U-4, U-5, or U-6 (or might be in school, retired, permanently disabled, or something else that most people wouldn’t think of as “unemployed”).
> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it.
You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce'
and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth that have created pressure that exacerbates marriage instability and numerous other social ills.
Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that.
> Creating a culture where men can attain dignity and social respect **
We do in fact need a culture where it is possible for people to attain human dignity.
I don't think that the path to gaining this needs to be a rigid and proscriptive 'return to tradition'.
For example, with the advent of no-fault divorce, divorces went up, but female suicide rates dropped by 20%.
It wasn't all streamers and light when the 'guard rails' were on.
And speaking of America specifically, dignity and respect were not equi-distributed if you were a simply a 'married man' in decades past. It was quite a bit stricter: white, middle class or higher, married men were the ones afforded government support and social protection.
> My family’s rigid expectations have been such a blessing.
I won't dwell on this, but not every (or even most) children benefit from this approach to parenting.
Extreme rigidity, in fact, is more associated with negative long-term outcomes.
Finally, historically speaking, decrying the next generation as depraved, lost, and needing traditional discipline has been something the older generations have done since at least the invention of writing (across all cultures too!).
Yet I'm still continually shocked that this argument continues to be unironically employed century after century.
So much of the elite wealthy class and their media sock puppets on both sides of the traditional left/right political divide are dedicated to pushing the identitarian culture war theme - because what they don't want to deal with is something like this:
"Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."
> "Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."
Whether hard-working folks can attain dignity and social respect is a factor of society itself, not merely a side-effect of material circumstances. The poorest countries in the underdeveloped Third World have far more recognition and respect for those who work hard and provide for their households (and the happiness/life satisfaction indicators to go along with it) than much of the rich West.
As notacoward observes… literally 'men'? To my ear, 'people' would've worked too.
I feel it's always worth asking whether there are unstated axioms here being snuck into the discourse. Especially in a big conversation about how 'everything is being ruined because people won't stick to the old good ways'.
Though it may be an uncomfortable question to some, to what extent does this rest upon female humans serving as livestock and spawning/rearing children, being relatively disposable themselves?
If you REALLY want to maximize 'men attaining dignity and social respect', to what extent does this rest upon the existence of a subhuman underclass which doesn't count as 'men' and can be enslaved for their labor? Dignity and social respect are RELATIVE. The easiest way to make them seem enhanced for some is to strip 'em from others. People vary far too much to make 'free market' human interaction easy and seamless, and every time we run up against a conflict our dignity and social respect takes a hit.
How badly do you want your dignity? And how much is your end goal just you and not anybody else? (this would be an abstract 'you', not intending it as an argument that the original commenter is this 'you')
All humans, indeed every life-form, are for "serving as livestock and spawning/rearing children", period. Until somebody invents Dune-style axolotl tanks to clone people and robot nannies, that's not going to change. If a society and its culture can't perpetuate itself, it will be replaced by one that does so we all need to come up with a balance that works to perpetuate the type of society that we want.
In the meantime, maybe ease up on flamebait language like "subhuman underclass" and trying to insinuate the person you're replying to is some kind of scoundrel and try suggesting solutions to the fraying social balance instead? Because it's increasingly obvious that there's a problem here.
No, I don't think so. I specifically exempted the person I was replying to in my 'you' unless he wants to lay claim to being the sort of person I meant, and I'm happy with my language in the context I expressed it: 'if you really want to maximize your dignity and social value of men'
From my perspective we are looking at social balance that incorporates more variation, and that there were obvious problems with the previous balance that's now said to be 'fraying'. I think 'dignity and social respect' is a zero sum game, and largely dependent on power balances: you can never truly feel 'I am treated with dignity and social respect!' unless you're being kowtowed to by at least some. Otherwise, your perspective will inevitably be challenged, perhaps a lot if you mingle with a lot of varied people.
The state of actual freedom, is a state of social instability. Nobody defaults to the dominant, nobody's guaranteed to win, and the larger the pool you're in, the more likely someone is going to turn up, compete hard, and make you VERY challenged indeed. And they're in the same pool so there's doubtless something making them very insecure in turn, even if they're stomping all over you.
You can make this seem like a solid, reliable, secure social balance as long as you're able to crush opposing forces and have whatever your class/gender/race is, totally dominate everyone else. Then it won't seem 'fraying' or 'a problem' at all, because you'll not be in serious danger: others will.
The nice thing about humans is that, as thinking life-forms, we get to self-govern the appetites we share with dogs. As such we cease being livestock. This counts for women, too, exactly as much as it counts for men: it's more aspirational than practical. But we do get to question these things, both personally and societally.
Now I really have to wonder, do you get social recognition from your livestock? Of course you don't. So why even make that argument? Dignity and social respect can be a positive sum game; in fact, this is effectively the key insight behind the notion of social capital. In a well-functioning society, more social respect for women can fully coexist with dignity for men and vice versa.
Any culture that equates women having and raising kids with “being livestock” will be replaced by a society that doesn’t see motherhood that way. By definition.
It's the exact same culture that sees "happiness" for women in pursuing "a younger, richer, more x partner", as noted by a sibling commenter. The idea that many women as well as men might find genuine happiness and fulfillment within stable, well-functioning household relationships is entirely foreign to some "modern" ways of thinking.
Not sure of you realize it, but by focusing a common social-justice phrase on men alone you promote exactly the same kind of "identitarian culture war" that you decry. Might not be that effective.
> “Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."
What does that mean? Is everyone going to attend college and become coders? Who is going to collect the trash. In my home country the dominant job opportunity is subsistence farming, people still manage.
The lack of dignity and social respect conferred upon those who perform jobs like trash collection is precisely the cultural ill OP is describing.
One of my favorite parts of living in Germany has been the relative lack of social hierarchy associated with one's job. I'm in a martial arts class with a mix of doctors, lawyers, musicians, carpenters, students, and (actual) garbage collectors, and not once have I noticed a stratification or class connotation in discussion during or after class. They have very different economic means of course, but "dignity and social respect" is exactly the right description for the quality they all grant each other as contributing members of society.
It's a cultural quality I've come to accept as a marker of a functional social democracy.
> What does that mean? Is everyone going to attend college and become coders? Who is going to collect the trash.
The obvious solution is to discard classism and extend dignity and respect to the garbage-collectors. Why shouldn't they be respected? They perform an essential service for their community.
This! Most of the flaming identity cultural wars are basically a distraction. The problem as always is class, and elites vieing for control.
Yes progressive values are a thing, but its media representation is nuts, on purpose.
The it's us vs them narrative leads to subjucating all values to pure "survival". This promotes long term irrationality. The powers at be know this and capitalize it.
On both "sides".
In my biased opinion this sort of Machiavellism is more common with conservatives, but its definitely common enough in non conservatives.
Why do you think it's more common with conservatives?
You said it yourself, cultural wars are just distraction to keep the elite in power and talk about everything except classes. People in power don't care about conservatives or liberals, they just pick a team and play the game.
Which party is dedicated to importing massive numbers of cheap workers from other countries to allow business owners to undercut working class wages and pocket more profits?
I suspect that you're implying that the answer is the US Democratic party, but it's really not.
By making immigration-without-visas a criminal offense, rather than an administrative one, the anti-immigration movement serves to drive immigrants (but not immigration) underground and makes their labor cheaper.
It's a lot like prostitution: since prostitution is a criminal offense, all prostitutes are criminals. They can be abused freely because they cannot go to the authorities without certainty being punished themselves.
By the same token, an undocumented immigrant cannot contact authorities to report they're underpaid, stolen from, beaten, imprisoned, or enslaved. (These are all things that happen regularly.) Their "criminal" status is used as a cudgel to abuse them.
Keep in mind, these are all people that just want to work in exchange for money, and they're responding to people and companies that want to hire their services. The "illegal immigration" posturing is just the buyers' way of artificially depressing prices.
- are severely uneducated. Consider distribution of political alignments in Academia. Consider the fact that antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists are in their overwhelming majority politically conservative and authoritarian. Belief in conspiracy theories is highly correlated with an impoverished interpersonal functioning, such as interpersonal paranoia, narcissism, disagreeableness, insecure attachment and Machiavellianism [1]. Impoverished interpersonal skills signify lack of empathy, which fuels dehumanization, and enables exploitation of others.
- grew up hammered by propaganda and the red scare, where anything that resembles social welfare is considered communism even if they themselves are dependent on such systems. Accepting that one needs help is exceptionally difficult for a person high on narcissism and paranoia.
Furthermore, when threatened, the brain takes "conservative" stances, i.e. stances that preserve the status quo. When faced with an ever changing world that does not resemble anything that they were accustomed to, they cling on to the closest sense of status quo even if the person or structure that supports it only does so for optics.
The lack of education makes it difficult for them to see that they are played like pawns by the bourgeoisie, that they receive preferential treatment through systemic issues [2], and finally they misattribute the reasons for their successes due to their obliviousness [3].
People tend to be absolutist about whether it’s better for kids if unhappy parents get divorced, but as the saying goes every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Some marriages are hell for everybody involved and need to end. I put abuse situations in that category of course and also marriages that have so much animosity that they can’t stop fighting. On the other end of marriages that may end in divorce are situations where one partner gets wanderlust and doesn’t want to be tied down by a family or are disappointed that their lifestyle isn’t what they expected. In those cases it is probably best for the kids if the parents learn to be happy within the bounds of their family.
Women control the social capital and function as norm setters in our society. Fixing men won’t help if women and the prevailing culture remain broken. All the divorces I’ve witnessed, nearly every married childhood friend of mine has been the victim of unwanted divorce - in every instance initiated by women who simply wanted a younger, richer, more x partner. All were heavily endorsed by the surrounding social groups. It’s framed by their culture as an issue of women having equal rights to live life the way that makes them happy. Well who could argue with that. It sounds great that people should just be free to be happy, and to restrict women’s freedom in this domain harkens back to the past which we as a society have decided was a bad time, when women couldn’t vote and were the property of men. I can’t argue with that! But the children are robbed of a chance at something better, something their parents had, a stable family. Sometimes the little boys will then decide to become females. Who could blame them! I have learned that it’s better to accept these changes than to swim upstream like an old salmon or something. As long as boys can become girls, hypergamy seems fair, more symmetrical. That said, this current state of affairs amongs the coastal working class doesn’t seem like the optimal arrangement with respect to mental health outcomes.
I don’t understand how you get from family instability to sexual identity confusion. Can you explain the connection and preferably substantiate it with data.
The gist of what you’re saying is true: family instability causes one to question their identity. You fixated on sexual identity so explain why.
Since it seems like you have a pretty good sample size, I am curious whether you have noticed a difference or pattern in upbringing among the current and/or former wives of your childhood friends.
Sure. Children of divorced parents are more likely to opt for divorce themselves, based on my sample. That is consistent with everything we know and expect about humans. Whether and how these apparently heritable differences are due to nature vs nurture is to me the more interesting question. Many in the lower class have imperfections that seem plausibly linked to biology rather than culture, like fundamental biological differences in capacity for impulse control, cognitive deficits whether congenital or epigenetic in origin, etc If someone is abusive due to lead exposure for instance, maybe them divorcing their partner capriciously, as a result of poor impulse control, may in fact be the best outcome for everyone. But what if these biological factors can be ameliorated through culture, say through meditation or more traditional means, then problems of nature can be addressed through culture, and perhaps there alone. That’s a line of thought that might fructify other progressive efforts to improve our culture, should the progressivists pursue it.
I tend to think any imperfections are a result of negative socio-cultural (parenting) impacts, although that can of course be driven by one whack-a-doodle relative (biology as the pebble and socio-cultural as the ripples.)
In my experience families that are dirt-poor but land-rich tend to have successful offspring. Maybe that sense of place contributes to the needed stability for children to do well as adults.
“Moving forward, McFarland is analyzing the racial disparities of childhood lead exposure, hoping to highlight the health inequities suffered by Black children, who were exposed more often to lead and in greater quantities than white children.”
Divorce is a legal proceeding. The Government is ipso facto involved, and even more so when kids enter the picture since otherwise there would be no one to stand for their interest.
> and even more so when kids enter the picture since otherwise there would be no one to stand for their interest.
The situation in my case was so extreme that my father ended up with custody, but from what I’ve heard from others it doesn’t sound like the government is standing for the interests of the children. The courts for example, in my fathers parents’ divorce, gave custody go him and his siblings to his broke, alcoholic mother instead of his mentally and financially stable father.
And what do you think the government is going to do when you eliminate no-fault divorce as this whole thread of cowards are happy to imply but not state? What do you think happens then?
> You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth
It's six of one, half a dozen of another. As the Chinese philosopher Confucious was already well aware of, a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures.
> Finally, historically speaking, decrying the next generation as depraved, lost, and needing traditional discipline
Except that it's not merely "the next generation", i.e. youth that's being so described. The ongoing fraying of the social fabric in late-stage modern societies, especially among those most vulnerable to marginalization due to a broad variety of added factors, has been ascertained quite objectively.
> a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures.
But you're missing an important part there: the "tight-knit" part doesn't just mean "stays together no matter what". It means "genuinely care about each other and work well together."
Yes, a close, loving, supportive family is hugely important, for everyone in it. But a) the nuclear family you're almost certainly thinking about (a married couple and their children) has not been the norm for the vast majority of human history (and certainly wasn't when Confucius was writing), and b) whether you have a nuclear family or not, when one or more of the relationships at the core of your family is dysfunctional and causing significant stress, breaking that relationship apart can be a big improvement for the family as a whole. (In fact, when you don't have a nuclear family, it's much easier and safer to do that, because you're much less likely to be losing half the income in the household, or the only stable adult-to-adult relationship in the household.)
> Yes, a close, loving, supportive family is hugely important, for everyone in it.
Telling people that it doesn't matter if they divorce and that they should put their own short-term happiness first and foremost is tantamount to denying this. And when it's the liberal upper class doing this, they're pretty much pulling up the ladder to effective social cohesion behind themselves, even as they hypocritically enjoy its benefits while denouncing the horrific plight of those most socially marginalized. The fact that some people in terrible relationships are genuinely better off if they split apart doesn't mean that celebrating divorce as anything other than potentially a lesser evil is a sensible idea.
> Telling people that it doesn't matter if they divorce and that they should put their own short-term happiness first and foremost
That's a straw man, though. Nobody relevant is telling people that. You're either not listening to the primary sources and are getting a distorted representation by politically motivated secondary sources, or your own biases are clouding your understanding when you're reading the primary sources.
The BLM movement explicitly supports "dismantling of the nuclear family structure" as one of their goals. How many progressives have voiced support for BLM? How many have bothered to denounce and disclaim support for these peculiar aims, that seem to have remarkably little to do with benefiting Black lives, and that quite a few Blacks would themselves oppose?
Disclaimer: while I support the BLM movement, I've never personally interacted with it in any meaningful way, so I don't know exactly what they mean by this, to the extent that they have, in fact, said it.
"Dismantling the nuclear family structure" doesn't mean "throw organized families to the wind, let children fend for themselves, force everyone into single-parent households" or anything like that.
Like I said in my previous comment, the "nuclear family" is not the norm, it is not a particularly stable or sustainable model for family units, and what we had before, while it certainly also has its flaws, tends to be much better for any family that doesn't completely fit within the happy fairy-tale ideal of two parents who love each other completely, 2.4 kids, and a dog.
Through most of human history, "family" has meant either "three generations of blood relations living under one roof, out to aunts/uncles/cousins or even farther, all sharing responsibility for things like child-rearing" or, even more broadly, just "the entire community, made up of a big extended family (with or without blood relations)/tribe/clan." When two parents didn't get along, even if they didn't "divorce" in the way we understand it today, they could still stop being pair-bonded without it significantly affecting the children, because those children were being raised more or less in common with a half-dozen (dozen? score?) others in the much large "family unit", by all the parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc.
"Dismantling the nuclear family" doesn't mean breaking it down and sending the component parts off to do their own thing individually. It means removing that very specific and very inflexible structure as our society's only acceptable model of what it means to be a "family," because like many other things that emerged in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, it may be helpful for some people, but it's deeply harmful for many, many others.
Unfortunately, the radical left's contempt for the bourgeois nuclear family is only exceeded by their far greater contempt for the traditionalism of extended family structures, which often entails "staying put" for multiple generations in comparatively rural towns and villages - far different from the inner-city concerns of the rest of the BLM movement, and the leftist progressive movement more generally. So, while there's much to say for what you're advocating here, it's not the kind of change that BLM is going to meaningfully pursue.
The question has to be, why is there open hostility to the nuclear family by this and other movements? Why is there a negative statement about it needing to be disrupted/dismantled? Why can't there just be a positive statement about supporting different arrangements where it makes sense?
Yes, there are some social norms around the nuclear family in the West, but it isn't a requirement in society. Nobody is stopping anybody from living how they want as far as who you can have in your life or whether extended family/community can support each other. Nobody is not hiring people because their parents are divorced.
There IS evidence that growing up with both parents greatly increases the likelihood of success. Does that mean having 2 parents is the only way to live? No, it doesn't. But why be hostile/negative towards something that evidence shows is positive? Why not just be positive towards something else?
> why is there open hostility to the nuclear family by this and other movements?
The term, as used in there criticism, refers to the social norm and institutional structures centered on it, not the existence of families that happen to fit the norm..
> But why be hostile/negative towards something that evidence shows is positive?
The nuclear family norm is not positive for the community BLM is concerned with, it both stigmatizes what is common in that community (a harm in itself) and idealizes something which evidence shows is harmful for that community (almost certainly more due to present material conditions than inherently, but the reason isn't that important for this purpose.)
However, I don't think they support the idea that the nuclear family is harmful to african-americans.
A few points:
1. Logically, if certain behaviors/social arrangements are common within a community, then they inherently become 'norms' themselves.
2. The study you linked, associates cognitive scores at 2 years old to household structure. I personally don't think using data for 2 year olds is the best measure for determining the impact of household structures on life outcomes/the community. There's also a lot of massaging of the data to produce its final results, which raises a flag for me without further investigation (this does NOT mean anything untoward has happened, just flagging that).
3. All that being said, the study linked shows that the nuclear household is the second best household structure for african-americans (as measured by 2 year old cognitive scores), bested only by also having a grandparent around. Interestingly, grandparents weren't net good in every case. Here's a further quote directly from the study:
> Supplemental split models showed that for African American children, living with both grandparents and other adults was associated with a significantly lower cognitive score than living with grandparents or in a nuclear family
4. If that study is the backbone of the idea that the nuclear family is harmful for african-americans, then more attention should be paid to keeping other adults out of the house, and keeping biological parents in the household.
5. Just a word of advisement, as far as American social norms go for sharing data on cognitive scores across different racial groups, there's a strong norm to NOT share the data if it doesn't suggest perfect equality. The study you linked doesn't show perfect equality, so I would just be careful sharing in other environments.
We can't easily do empirical studies on the effects of family structures besides the nuclear family, because the nuclear family is the norm in Western society right now (and especially America).
That means that a) there will be very few such families to study (and where you do find larger populations that have non-nuclear family structures, there are likely to be other confounding factors, as they are likely to belong to some particular subculture). This reduces your sample sizes and makes it hard to draw rigorous conclusions based on the data you are able to collect.
But also b) any such families you find will be necessarily marginalized to some extent, because, again, the nuclear family is the norm, and that fundamentally means that those who eschew it will find themselves underrepresented and frequently discriminated against, both overtly and subtly.
That means that outcomes for such families in the real world, today, will be almost guaranteed to be worse than they could be otherwise, because of the exact thing BLM is trying to change (the nuclear-family norm).
The post I was responding to was attempting to use an empirical study to support a given sociological position for a given group (which from reading the study didn't actually support that position).
Now you are responding to me and saying empiricism cannot be used to support the given sociological position. Did you mean to respond to the poster I was responding to? I did not put forth that study in this thread.
Even given all of that, I strongly disagree with the anti-empiricism notion for this topic and any other related one.
On sample sizes being an issue:
-The US has 330 million people.
-There are 130 million households in the US.
-There are 74 million children in the US.
-35% of children have lived with a relative (i.e. non-nuclear) other than their parent or sibling at some point by age 18 (source: umich link the previous poster posted)
-And when you look beyond the US, the world has a population of 7 billion people
-Needless to say, we don't have a dearth of data to lean on to answer questions such as these
-There's also such a thing called statistical significance, which can be used to display the confidence of a result given the sample size. Studies usually use p=0.05
On the idea that non-majority populations/lifestyles automatically means guaranteed worse outcomes, I do not agree that's a given, and don't accept that it must be the case here. I have seen no causal chain presented yet (that also accounts for the available evidence). A couple counter-examples:
-Non-overweight people are the minority in the US, but their outcomes are much better, even though there are norms around larger/higher caloric meals in the US
-Same-sex couples, a minority, have higher household income than heterosexual couples
Do not misread the above examples as saying there's no discrimination going one way or the other or there being no confounding factors. They are showing that living a minority lifestyle does NOT guarantee worse outcomes. And we shouldn't assume that's the case without evidence for other things.
That just isn't true. Extended families are common and coexist with nuclear ones throughout the Mediterranean-influenced world, including the bulk of Latin America. That's a huge population to study. Not to mention Asia.
> We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
The key word you’re missing in your interpretation of that quote is “requirement”. I may love hiking, but I am not in favor of requiring hiking for everyone.
I imagine this is in response to various conservative proposals over the years to put forth (straight) marriage as a solution to various unrelated societal ills.
My comment didn't feature an interpretation, it was directly quoting the BLM site... but now I will offer an interpretation based on your comment:
I'm not in favor of requiring hiking or certain family structures either. Serious question, is there a requirement for the nuclear family?
Let us not conflate norms and legal requirements. Where I live, there is most certainly a norm around hiking being a really positive thing that you should do, and it's associated with being higher status (local fashion trends even favor looking like you are a hiker). Not everyone is a hiker, and some people don't like hiking. But I'm okay with the norm existing, but would never support a requirement for it.
> Serious question, is there a requirement for the nuclear family?
The answer depends on where you are. It's nowhere as strict as "if you have a child outside a nuclear family, you go to jail". But there may be all sorts of softer pressures in place.
Now, I don't think having such pressures is necessarily bad in all places. It becomes bad when it's a "one solution fits all" approach, and the pressure is applied even in situations where dissolving a traditional nuclear family would be in the participants' (especially the children's) best interests.
Putting myself in the shoes of black folks, I can certainly see how certain conservative initiatives cross that line.
Why did you ask for evidence in the first place of the claim that BLM held a position against the nuclear family if you wouldn't accept any evidence?
If your position is just a flavor of the 'No true scotsman' fallacy, why even bother?
Why not just come out and say "There can never be a true BLM source! You can never cite an authoritative position from BLM! You cannot cite anything because there are many local chapters, and the movement can exist even independently of that! BLM can never be criticized thusly for any positions! Ha!"
That is your position here, no?
It ignores that THERE IS a central hub for the BLM network. And the website for this is blacklivesmatter.com, which is what I cited. This is the primary website for the BLM org and movement. It is by far, the most heavily trafficked website in the BLM movement. BLM started with the group of people who created the org for which the website serves as the face for. Calling it 'purportedly onboard' the BLM movement is incredibly ignorant of its history. Yes, there is a broader network. But this is the center of that network.
This central hub (which runs blacklivesmatter.com) took in $90 million in donations in 2020. And it then distributed $21.7 million of that to local chapters.
Anecdotes mean just what they mean. However as some one most closely aligned to leftys vs other political identity or group, I’ve not been around too many leftists so focused on BLM specifically in a central/organized way or treat it as such.
> That is your position here, no?
Not at all. Your core point revolves around me thinking about and using local chapters as a core defense. I didn’t even know that was a thing for all of this.
The comment revolves around various assumption. Pointing to a caricature of an immature left wing person who craves getting one under everyone to the right of them. Like “if you wouldn’t accept any evidence”. I asked because I don’t particularly care much about BLM a specifically because caring about oppressed minorities has always been a core tenant. i knew little about this most famous blm group**. Similarly, I can’t remember the last video feed in the past year I’ve gotten from YouTube that was about BLM from a lefty source. Except for two specifically focused on black issues in America.
** I searched “blm vs black lives matter group”. I see a majority of front page news and other stuff being conservatives foaming out about stuff. As if a lot of the issues and “facts” of BLM centralization are something greatly discussed by all sides. Not just the people upset over it. Now I more likely believe how big this org is. If they get this much attention from center and right leaning media. Not dissimilar to the over exaggeration done by the mostly centrist and neoliberal media of focusing on Trump so much (though definitely including more left wing media a lot too). Still. Not every one on the left or sympathetic to certain issues thinks this way. Nor is every one on the left a smarmy smart ass. People aren’t a monolith.
I think the BLM group and the BLM movement should be differentiated. While many progressives may have supported the BLM movement I don't believe the openly Marxist organization is as popular. Also, just cutting the quote at the dismantling part without including the rest of that statement seems disingenuous.
A lot of this discussion seems to be wrapped up in the idea that the lower classes look up to the upper classes. Is there any evidence for this point? It seems to imply poor people unable to think critically and independently. Yet, there exists households of modest means where each partner holds their other half accountable-- yet nobody is talking about those people. What's different about them, and what differentiates them from other lower-class households that can't keep it together?
Because when people think critically and independently, they get called "deplorables", "bigoted" or "conspiracy nuts" by the liberal elite who don't like what they have to say.
I’m with you on the wildly wealthy and also elite people like Ted Cruz or that Shapiro fella. Or Josh Hawley. Cant be more of a coastal elite than that! Even I’ve visited the mid west because I wanted to, for non political reasons, more than he has and he’s from Missouri. Which he fled from to go from one coastal elite institutions after another. Or that Tucker fella who a few weeks ago sarcastically brought up Biden paying off his Yale student debt. Even though Biden at most would do $10K debt relief. And Tucker is an heir while going to Yale as a wealthy person is as elite as you can get — no relation to the common person.
Same issues with out of touch elites like Biden and Mrs Harris throwing every other struggling person in prison if it benefits them while pretending it is being tough on crime and prevailing justice. Or Pelosi, or the Clinton’s, and oh so many more. Pelosi with her “let me trade investments with possible insider knowledge as possible” heh.
Conservative echo chambers are just as strong as liberal ones. You best be towing the party line with your thoughts when participating in any political affiliation.
This seems to be rooted in the notion that the liberal upper class benefits by having cohesive families while at the same time saying that divorce doesn’t matter and, in fact, celebrating it. I can’t help but ask you to support that, because it seems like a bizarre claim to me. The only type of person that comes to mind for me when thinking of people that celebrate divorce are people that have been divorced.
> I can’t help but ask you to support that, because it seems like a bizarre claim to me.
There's little about this claim that's "bizarre", and the OP brings relevant evidence. Celebrating widespread, no-fault divorce and dismissing the importance of household-scale social cohesion is indeed a key part of the current Zeitgeist amongst intellectual, often left-leaning elites.
It’s quite possible I missed the relevant evidence as I skimmed through a lot of it. There was certainly a relevant supporting anecdote, but I assume you’re referring to more than that? I won’t bother responding to the part that is essentially “support through repetition”.
> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that.
Tons of people dispute this. The thinking is that people staying married when they don’t want to stay married is worse for kids than people getting divorced and creating two separate households the kids float between. I don’t agree with this thinking, mostly because I’m the product of divorce that saw the aftermath and have seen the deep regret of what happened on both the parent of the previously married parents and the children. I suppose the good thing that came out of it is that neither I nor any of my siblings have gotten divorced, despite now all having been married longer than our parents ever were. Divorce is rarely the answer and does terrible things to children.
I was a child of divorced parents. It seems logical that which is 'better' depends on just how irreconcilable the differences are, relative to the parents in question. I mean, it seems staying together could only work if the parents had small changes to make, simply because people mostly don't make big changes to themselves, at all.
My mother sat my 2 sibs and I down before and asked for our thoughts/feelings, and we all said "Do it" without hesitation or doubt. In my case, we were all clearly worse off materially after. I think we kids were a little better off mentally and emotionally, but a large component of that is that my mother would have continued attempting suicide otherwise, and it's possible she might have succeeded.
It's useless to speculate about whether they could have stayed together if they'd had the capacity to put others above themselves, because they didn't have it, and no amount of counseling could have endowed them with it.
> Divorce is rarely the answer and does terrible things to children.
My mother was shocked that I supported my parents' divorce. She couldn't imagine how I wasn't devastated. They screamed at each other frequently. They'd stayed together "for the kids," and that was a nightmare.
Right. I don’t think it’s divorce that does terrible things to children but bad relationships. Whether that relationship ends in divorce or not, growing up in a household full of toxicity and people fighting and hating each other and full of animosity is what is terrible. And yes, that often leads to divorce. But it’s the toxicity that is terrible, not the act itself.
(My parents are not divorced and have had a quite good, tho imperfect, marriage so I can’t speak for either scenario. But this is what I gather knowing and observing people who grew up with parents who divorced or remained married while miserable and hating each other.)
Divorced dad, anecdote. My kids, my ex, and I are much better off now. Having the kids around 50% time is a huge sanity boost and allows me to be there for them more than before. I’m lucky to have remarried to a very engaged stepmom, but even without her we’d probably still be better off.
I also saw my parents become much happier after they split up (when I was an adult.)
I'll add a +1 to this as the kid of parents who divorced (when I was about 11). Home went from being an unpleasant place to be to being a nice place again. It is horrible to feel stuck between two people who don't want to be there.
It was one of the best things that happened for me. And my parents.
I meant the fact of a divorce involving children sucks (for the kids especially).
I wasn't arguing that parents with children shouldn't divorce at all.
Each couple will need to consider the pros and cons as best they can.
I myself was a product of a home that tried both 'stay together for the kids' and 'extremely messy 6 years long divorce' in that order.
That relationship was doomed from the start, it would have been better if they'd never met.
My dad is/was a high-functioning drug addict (among other thing), divorce was always the best answer for them.
My parents no longer being married did nothing to me. Zero.
My parents trying to get me to hate the other parent caused severe damage and was entirely ineffective at its goal.
Not being able to spend much time with one of my parents, especially the one with the most life survival skills was bad. I had a relative that could have stood in, but they declined to really be there regularly.
An amicable divorce with some mitigation of the parenting structure would have turned out just fine. And, maybe part of that would have been achieved with an earlier divorce.
>> Also, divorce sucks[1] when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that.
> Tons of people dispute this.
Divorce with children clearly does suck, statistically and practically. Those who dispute it are simply wrong, for whatever reason they wish to assert. That's obvious, with the data we have today.
[1] "sucks" is a fairly broad word, but graciously, it can be considered "not good".
"don't want to stay married" is worth exploring. Why don't they want to?
Maybe a part of that is attitude and culture and values, and not so much unreconcilable problems. If they felt strongly about providing for their children together, and that was highly respected by society, maybe the problems they have would look trivial.
I was the opposite. My parents "stayed together" in that they lived in the same house but had separate bedrooms and lives. Most of the time when they were interacting it was some kind of power struggle. By age 13 my sibling became an addict and is to this day unable to sustain a job. I attribute it to the instability in the household growing up.
We're always going to see this through the lens of the experiences we grew up with.
Whatever works for you, but be aware your experience might not generalise to the whole population. I'm not going to say "everyone's situation is different", there are more than seven billion of us, I suspect our experiences fall in to approximately a few broad categories,
My parents stayed together much longer the should have. One day, much later, my mother cried and apologised that she hadn't left my father 13 years earlier.
My father was a massive piece of shit, the lung cancer couldn't have taken him soon.
We wouldn't have been floating between two houses, rather we would have had one stable home.
I don't believe the people arguing for divorce in some situations are saying "divorce doesn't suck", but there's at least some chance it might be better than the alternative.
I appreciate the candor but at the same time wonder about the lack of counterfactual experience. What if your parents had stayed together and you grew up in a household of constant fighting? Would that have been better?
I don’t know how many people actually dispute that divorce sucks tho, even if they think that it is the preferable or better or even good outcome for a relationship.
Like, I don’t know anyone who argues that divorce is easy and fun and causes absolutely no issues for kids who are involved. What I do see people argue is that divorce can be a better outcome than staying together and being miserable.
> And speaking of America specifically, dignity and respect were not equi-distributed if you were a simply a 'married man' in decades past. It was quite a bit stricter: white, middle class or higher, married men were the ones afforded government support and social protection.
You're conflating dignity and respect with government support. These are not remotely the same things. Some highly respected men were actively opposed by their respective governments because they stood up for what they saw as right despite the corruption of their governments, e.g. MLK Jr, Mahatma Ghandi, even Jesus. All dignified and respected by large numbers of people, all opposed by their governments.
I think you're making an attribution error by suggesting they are able to get others to do anything, that would imply that the person first realized that something needed to get done beyond establishing their brilliance.
At this point I think my sons may accomplish more in life if they remain unemployed as adults.
>> I won't dwell on this, but not every (or even most) children benefit from this approach to parenting. Extreme rigidity, in fact, is more associated with negative long-term outcomes.
Nobody is advocating "extreme rigidity". Consistently enforced boundaries have benefits for people across the board. I would argue that's the most important thing (maybe even the only thing) in raising kids to become responsible adults.
> "Suicides among children and young people aged 10 to 24 rose 57% from 2007 to 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... In actual numbers, the suicide rate among 10- to 24-year-olds jumped from about 7 per 100,000 in 2007 to nearly 11 per 100,000 in 2018, according to the National Vital Statistics Report published Sept. 11."
That's called massive societal failure any way you look at it. Oh well, I guess there's the upside that wealthy boomers can ride off into their cruise ship futures on the backs of 401K retirement plans financed by investments in student loan debt, fossil-fueled global warming, price-hiked pharmaceuticals and the war machine. What a wonderful picture, really shows the mentality here.
Jim Morrison was speaking for that class when he said, "I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I'm gonna get my kicks in before this whole shithouse goes up in flames."
> You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth that have created pressure that exacerbates marriage instability and numerous other social ills
Considering that the divorce rate has increased massively while poverty has decreased, it is nearly impossible that the cause of marriage instability is poverty.
> For example, with the advent of no-fault divorce, divorces went up, but female suicide rates dropped by 20%. It wasn't all streamers and light when the 'guard rails' were on.
This statistic "with the advent of no-fault divorce, divorces went up, but female suicide rates dropped by 20%" seems very surprising to me. By googling I haven't been able to find a source for it. If I look at women's suicide rates over time they seem to be trending up. No fault divorce starts in California in 1969 and is legal in the last state, New York, by 2010. If that causes a significant drop in suicide rate I can't see it on this graph.
Additional Googling has turned up for me a paper that gives the 20% reduction claim. Still not clear to me how a 20% reduction in female suicide does not show up in a chart of female suicide rate.
Another interesting thing about this paper is that it references another paper that found the opposite result - i.e. that no fault divorce seems to have increased the suicide rate.
I tried to find suicide rate in California specifically around 1970. Ideally, I'd like to see a graph going from 1950 to 1990 and see that there is a ~20% drop around the legalization of no fault divorce. I found this paper that does mention a big drop in California suicide rate, especially among women and teens, between 1970 and 1990.
This paper does not attribute the drop in suicide rate to no fault divorce though. As I understand it this paper is saying that the suicide rate drop is explained by two main factors.
First, a change in how California coroners coded suicides relative to how other coroners did it. If I'm understanding correctly it seems in 1970 California coroners were inclined to mark deaths resulting from suicide attempt damage as suicide. Because of this, in 1970, California cities had about double the suicide rate of US cities. By 1990 California coroners were doing what other coroners were doing and California cities had effectively the same rate of suicide as US cities.
In my imagination this works as - if a woman attempts to kill herself by overdose, but survives the attempt, though has irreparable organ damage and dies from that a month later - in the 1970's California coroners would call that suicide, but by 1990 they would call it an unintentional death. Since men tend to kill themselves with guns or by hanging men tend to die when they attempt suicide. Women are more likely to try poisoning or drug over dose and thus are more likely to survive the attempt but take an eventually fatal injury. This would explain why women's suicidality is apparently more affected by a change in coroner practice than men's.
Second factor is changing demographics. American Indians are the most suicidal, then white people. Between 1970 and 1990 the proportion of these two groups declined and the number of the relatively not-suicidal Hispanics increased dramatically. Thus, the suicide rate in California will appear to plummet - not because of any change in behavior or policy, but simply because there are more less suicidal people moving in.
After reading about this for the last hour my current impression is that we probably don't know the affect of no fault divorce on female suicide rates. The academic literature is contested (I've seen two papers on the specific point with opposite claims), the statistics are not clear (female suicide rate is trending up), and in the state with the sharpest change in suicide rate following no fault divorce legalization (to my knowledge this is California) there are other explanations for the change.
> declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth that have created pressure that exacerbates marriage instability and numerous other social ills.
The article disputes that:
"Most social scientists who study poor families assume financial troubles are the cause of these breakups. After all, these young people grow up in a context of extreme disadvantage, at least by American standards, and they come of age with little education, few skills, and not many future prospects. Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die."
Society would be a hell of a lot better off if more people practiced what they preached.
I really respect the hardliner commies and theocrats on their respective ends of the spectrum for consistently doing this and for consistently acknowledging and not liking when they are forced to do things not consistent with their beliefs.
As a side note with regard to familial stability in general, look how dis-incentivizing familial stability and fostering government dependency worked out for the communities it was done to in the 1960s and who benefited and who is still befitting. That's why it's being pushed, because the people who benefited want to go around again but with different/more demographics.
Recently I've noticed that divorce rates amongst the richest are actually quite high too. Gates, Bezos, and Musk are all divorcees and Buffet has had an open marriage situation for something like decades I believe. Just something I found interesting.
I think “preach what they practice” would mean publicly speaking (more?) in an effort to nudge behavior more towards how they act (in your example, to speak out in favor of sticking out and improving marriages).
My problem with takes like this is that they are based off of a really sanitized historical worldview, and they don't take into account any materialist factors. To say that Trump is a canary of our social change ignores all of the equally debaucherous presidents we had throughout the 20th century. In my opinion, the biggest change has been the lack of financial reward for the average person. The bar for achieving financial stability is much higher than it was say 40 years ago. It was much easier to raise a family on a blue collar income.
> I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public
I don't consider believing in matrimony, fidelity, and prioritizing ones' children as socially conservative.
It's just normal.
Just spend some time watching Tiger King to pick up on their lifestyles and politics: They might appear liberal because Joe Exotic is a freewheeling, open homosexual with multiple partners. But on closer inspection, they love Trump and hate Nancy Pelosi.
This seems like a lot of misplaced and irrelevant moralizing. Even in this article it is reported that men find little opportunity in labor markets that leave them with low pay and low respect. If low end jobs paid enough to support a family and might lead to higher pay over time then the situation would be different. Blaming this situation on expectations doesn't make sense when the labor market is clearly both critical and broken. Working class pay has steadily fallen for decades and economic mobility is near zero. In such an environment expectations and the attitudes of the upper classes have no bearing.
Right. If there is, in general, little to no chance for advancement in a profession, then there is little to no reason for a person (male in this case) to work hard to excel at it.
I think too much attachment to humanity, in its historical incarnation, is misplaced. Those periods of coherent, functioning civilization may end up just being the gentler slope of the asymptote before things started going nuclear. The same underlying tendencies have always been present in us, they just weren't manifesting at the same scale.
"Coherent and functioning" sounds great, but in practice that coherence was usually bought on credit, by pushing negative social externalities somewhere out of sight. Those externalities are more easily ignorable when the boundaries of the world are smaller. Just push the trash into the river; just tie the witch up in the forest. Just shut up and marry, girl.
I think this comment could be longer, but I think it has an in important point. The article ignores a huge change over that time period: increasing freedom for women from patriarchy.
Any sort of "staying with the mother of their kids" argument has to acknowledge we can't just turn the clock back. The truth then and now is that a lot of men were not and are not good partners. (Anybody who doubts me should spend time reading Am I the Asshole. Not only are bad male parental partners rife, but they are often bad in ways that echo patriarchal beliefs that would have been perfectly acceptable back in the day.) Just as an example, marital rape was not outlawed in all 50 states until 1993, and it was legal everywhere until 1972.
Young men do need plenty more education and pressure on how to do it right. But we must acknowledge it's a new kind of right. And I think we need new kinds of measures. "Family stability" in an unhappy or unsafe home is not something we should be aiming for.
>Young men do need plenty more education and pressure on how to do it right.
People in general need more education on how to do it right. Women aren't exactly free of guilt on this.
>Anybody who doubts me should spend time reading Am I the Asshole.
This only confirms men are more often outed as poor male partners. A forum full of anecdotes being labeled does not imply a large population of bad male partners. That's about as ridiculous as going to 4chan and implying a significant amount / too many women are promiscuous because it has enough examples of promiscuous women.
Single moms outnumber single dads 5:1. People in general need more education, but much more the men. Partriarchy left women holding the bag for a lot of things, so they were more prepared for a post-patriarchy world. Men will need more explicit support in learning to adapt to their new societal role.
> This only confirms men are more often outed as poor male partners.
Technically true, but unless you have some data to suggest it's meaningful, I think that's just a distraction. Reddit is 2/3rds male [1], so if anything we would expect more stories to be about bad women. But in the real world, women initiate the bulk of divorces [2]. And men are more likely to be the kind of bad partner who, say, turns murdery [3]. So I think my inference that men are on average the worse partner and need more help is reasonable.
>Single moms outnumber single dads 5:1. People in general need more education, but much more the men.
How is this relevant to your point? You might as well turn it around and ask why single moms are selecting men who leave them to be baby mommies. Birth control is still accessible to many and rape isn't so omnipresent these women didn't have a choice in the matter.
>Men will need more explicit support in learning to adapt to their new societal role.
They seem to be doing just fine when society incentivizes them to "pump and dump", and they end up doing just that. Again, it takes two to tango. It's not just "teach men not to do this", which school has been doing for decades. It is also "teach women not to accept this".
>Reddit is 2/3rds male [1], so if anything we would expect more stories to be about bad women.
This implies there is an in-group bias. Can you prove that? Furthermore, can you extrapolate such an in-group bias towards the select few communities which label these men?
>But in the real world, women initiate the bulk of divorces [2]
This doesn't say anything on its own except "women initiate the bulk of divorces". Something as simple as "there is a financial incentive for women to divorce men" or "men are more attached to their relationships than women" can just as easily counteract the premise and require further investigation.
>And men are more likely to be the kind of bad partner who, say, turns murdery [3]
And filicide is rising among women while dropping for men, with women being the primary offenders[0]. See, it's pretty easy to pull a statistic from a site which supports your PoV and paint a broad stroke. Just teach those darn girls not to kill their kids!
But really, just look at your source: what does it say of the total population? How many cases are there? How many "male perpetrators" are there in the total male population? Do I think as well of the source I randomly pulled? Of course not, it is so extremely superficial it says nothing of why this is happening.
The premise rests on some "look, men are most on X, so this needs to be educated on!" despite the actual numbers and reflection in the whole population. If that were really the problem, you could teach women to practice less filicide, less bullying, and more.
Worse, by focusing on men alone, you're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that men are inherently bad or worse, instead of treating them like people. How someone who supports "dismantling the patriarchy" in name of having women be seen as people advocates this, is beyond me.
>So I think my inference that men are on average the worse partner and need more help is reasonable.
I think it's more reasonable to infer you're pressing an agenda by presenting information and then retroactively fitting your rationality into it. These things aren't saying what you think they are, and to come to such extreme conclusions is diminutive to men, women and humans as a whole. Nor do I believe you're helping women as much as you think you are by spreading this information.
>Ah yes, think of the men!
And everyone else. There's no need to be this reductionist. Again, it takes two to tango.
> pressing an agenda by presenting information and then retroactively fitting your rationality into it
Healer, heal thyself.
I'm pretty clear about my agenda, and have been for a long time. As the Hindus put it, "May all beings everywhere be happy and free." One specific application of that is helping to end patriarchy, the millennia-old system of oppression of women.
You certainly have a facility for objecting so much to every twig and branch so that you don't even glimpse the forest. And obviously, I can't make you see the it, so I won't try. But just so it's clear for others, I think patriarchy is also damaging to men and that they especially need education in coping with a post-patriarchal world. It was certainly a struggle for me to throw off a lot of that nonsense. Women need less help, especially these days, because a) a lot of that education has taken place starting with the suffragettes, and b) a lot of the post-patriarchal changes for them are ones of increasing opportunity, and so are easier to adapt to.
This has been a really good read! Thanks for sharing, the only place where I had a strong disagreement was this, which could definitely be based on cultural differences:
> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.
I am not from the USA but I don't believe this is true in e.g. Europe. At least in my country (Spain) and where I live now (Japan), it is understood even by the upper class that it's better to live in an educated society than in a criminal one. Sure there's some within that upper class that might want it, but I'd say it's a tiny minority of classists and not the upper class overall. But I also believe that in these countries the upper class is closer to the middle/lower classes, while in the USA I can see how the huge gap might make more people in the upper class think that it's an impossible goal and just give up and try to isolate the classes.
My feeling is that the 'undermining' the author refers to is not a conscious attempt to keep the lower classes down. It's just middle/upper class people spouting fashionable political views, going along with the 'right message', and not really thinking about it. When it comes to their own personal behavioural decisions that will affect their kids, they take it more seriously, basing their decisions on their deep-down sense of 'how things really are', and then they come up with some kind of rationalisation of how this conservative behaviour actually fits in with their anti-conservative political views. This rationalising process has become second nature and they don't notice they are doing it at all.
It is also often of form of courtesy. You don't want to burden single parents further by elaborating how damaging this can be for their kids, especially if you have them in your audience and it makes it even worse if they take it to heart. So in that situation being polite and being honest collide like in many situations. There are some true believers, but they are far more rare.
Criminality and education are not distinct. Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate, they are just far less likely to be caught. Either the nature of thier crimes does not lend itself to reporting (embezzelment v. bank robbery) or they recieve different treatment by the legal system.
> "Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate"
That's a really strong claim IMHO, do you have sources? I would strongly expect that better education is correlated with lower crime rates, and all research and articles I've been able to find so far seem to suggest that:
> Results show that increased college graduation rates corresponds to a significant decrease in the crime rate. A 5% increase in the college graduation rate, for instance, produces an 18.7% reduction in the homicide rate
>Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate,
I'm gonna call bullshit on this.
Even if you assume all demographics are snorting coke and beating their wives equally there are so, so, so many laws you can just trivially comply with by expending a little bit more money and there is so much less incentive for petty crime when you are in a career track where misdemeanors matter.
Tax evasion, child abuse, embezzlement, drug abuse/dealing, drunk driving ... all crimes that can easily go unreported and if are reported result in reduced punishments for those who can afford good lawyers. Look at Rush Limbaugh. Plenty of drug-related criminality there but zero convictions. Will smith just attacked someone on camera but just walked away without even an interview by police. It isn't just the ultra-famous/rich. They are just the best examples of what privilege really means. (And the Russ/Oscars
incidents are polar opposites of the political spectrum.)
>"Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that."
I hate to be the person to point this out, but this ideal has all of the same problems as the incel plan. Women are going to find whoever they think is attractive attractive and there's nothing you can do about it no matter how high or low your social aims.
Yes, a lot of people would love to rewrite human nature to make pudgy men with stable jobs the peak of male form but that is as ridiculous as it sounds. :-)
If you want to do anything about this it's going to have to involve changing men.
Women's attractiveness to men (and vice versa) is based strongly on societal expectations. Those societal expectations have been getting programmed by hollywood and media for so many decades that a massive amount or even majority has very unrealistic expectations.
The ones that seem free of this were lucky to have a really good role model of more healthy realistic relationships in their family.
In summary if we stopped programming people to have unrealistic expectations, they just might, maybe, don't you think .. form relationships more.
I think though I'm not as sure that this applies to women more then men, based on the stats showing that most women will reject most men but not the other way around (1).
1) Reference for this is the OkCupid blog which has been deleted but would still be available with searching.
>Those societal expectations have been getting programmed by hollywood and media for so many decades that a massive amount or even majority has very unrealistic expectations.
Hollywood is not going to stop hiring physically attractive actors, that's another impossible intervention.
>Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.
I'm afraid that the author got it wrong. All social norms were destroyed between 1950's and now. If society desires hard working, law abiding, family loving young men, it should rebuild what it destroyed.
The only interesting point in the story was about that "expert" which publicly behaves how society coerces her now to behave but secretly raises her own children in a way that she deems better for their well-being but comes into contradiction with the norms of the day.
So yes, trying to destroy family, religion, men self esteem and purpose in life, by creating a hedonistic society with no morals will prove a disaster for Western society. A disaster which if extended for long will equate to suicide.
I wouldn't blame young men but those evil people who continuously waged war on Western civilization and tried to demolish everything good while promising freedom, justice, equality. Freedom, justice and equality nobody got.
Religion destroyed plenty of people and continues to right now. In the 19-20th centuries of the USA it wasn't such a pleasant life for non-WASP or women.
Pre-modern life was a meat grinder of poverty and back-breaking work for everyone except a small privileged elite. Sex or skill color could make things better or worse for you, but in general everyone was screwed anyway.
> The educated class decides cohabiting partnerships are just as valid and important as marriage. And they also believe it’s okay to walk away at a moment’s notice from a cohabiting relationship.
This is very dependent on whether there are children or not. I don't think the educated class believes that it's ok for a father to just walk away from their children and refuse to be a major part of their lives.
I think these "chattering classes" overestimate their influence on how young people grow up. Their position papers and articles in the Atlantic are nothing compared to the tidal wave of media from Youtube, Tiktok, Hollywood etc. And those media engines prize the quick dopamine hit above all else - criminals, gangsters, hustlers - anything but a hard working family man.
Social media also encourages people to present a highly exaggerated and curated, if not outright fabricated, view of their lives to the world. Others in their networks then compare this to their actual lives and feel inadequate.
I wonder if people's fabricated online lives actually become real to them. The brain is capable of all manner of reality distortions. Perhaps such instagram fakery becomes a sort of virtual reality for these people.
Maybe this is an idiotic thought so forgive me if that's the case.
Does it seem that a lot of this is "we hollowed out these areas for economic efficiency and then all the dudes (regardless of race...) became layabouts and drug addicts". I grew up in Kenya after the SAPs were imposed by the IMF and I vaguely remember complaints of alcoholism just spiking. I guess my dumb thought is maybe dudes just need to build, farm, or produce something tangible otherwise they become heroin addicts.
Soon all low profile jobs will be performed by robots (one way or another). We wont run from that.
Im curious what rich will have to say to few billion ppl on Earth then.
“Dude just get a better job”
“Just try harder” “Some generic slogan that doesnt work in reality.
The whole modern world is a ponzi scheme. There have to be ppl starving so that I can write that post on my iphone while sitting on the toilet in 4 bedroom appartment..
For that to change we need a system change. And we all know it will never happen, because humans have greed and inequality encoded in DNA. (Its actually true if you search for right papers).
Which is extremely sad, because our human nature is probably what will destroy us in the long run.
Semantics; social nurture is embedded into Maslow pyramid, not the other way around. The issue with poverty and lack of social security doesn’t arise from a lack of expectations if the lack of expectations, at its core, arises from poverty and lacking social security.
I’m not disagreeing with the notion that people want to appear progressive and thus don’t want to discourage “new family models”, of course they do, but that’s a symptom of identity politics, which are a direct result of the absence of culture, which, imo, is a direct consequence of Maslow pyramid.
Fix social stability, then we can afford to talk about fixing culture.
Replace "expects" with "encourages" and you'd be on to something.
Women are massively encouraged in society today, by a barrage of persistent and positive messaging across all mediums. Young men are not. The results were highly predictable and it has been warned about for multiple decades at this point.
Women are subsidized and favored in their pursuit of education. Men are not.
Today from a young age girls are told they can do anything, they can be anything. Today they're openly told they're better than boys and that's not considered sexist. Women walk around with shirts or other propaganda formats that say: The Future is Female. That's hyper sexist, hyper bigoted against men, and yet in society it's tolerated. This cultural behavior is regressive and intentionally promoting of inequality.
The pendulum is increasingly swinging hard against men. If you want a collapsed society, allow it to continue. The deficit is already so bad it'll take decades to repair, in society broadly, from the damage that has occurred amongst younger males.
Rob Henderson also coined the term "luxury beliefs" which is one of the most apt name for something we've been witnessing lately ("defund the police" or "healthy at every size" or "marriage is just an oppressive institution of the patriarchy"). I highly recommend that other essay too https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...
I find his overall argument that it is "trickle down values" that are responsible for many of the overall social ills of the poor extremely lacking in evidence, and if anything I think he's confused cause and effect.
Totally agree. I don't understand what the mechanism of values "trickling down" is meant to be. In my experience, none of the people "downstream" care or are even at all aware of what the "upstream" elites think. Like, is the claim really that the deadbeat dad in his 30s mentioned in the OP got his values from an academic seminar on family formation? It's incoherent...
The people downstream watch hours of TV shows and internet media every day, most of which is created by people with elite-aspirational values. They also receive the clear message that these values are elite values. This is how values trickle down.
Especially since the argument seems to be that ‘elites’ actually live by one set of (good) values while somehow imposing ‘bad’ values or expectations on the lower classes. How exactly are these bad values communicated from the elites if they don’t live by them? How do the elites enforce the ‘good’ values among themselves without transmitting them to lower classes?
I agree there is doublespeak about values among some elites, but I disagree that is the major source of single parent families.
“Luxury beliefs” puts a name to a phenomenon that I’ve been wondering about. Like the availability of venture capital and calories, I strongly suspect there are many behaviors that will go away or retreat if the economy faltered. We’re seeing interest rates rise, so I suppose that I’ll get to see whether or not this is the case.
Defund the police blew up because it was a simple sounding solution that outsiders could support while they didn't have to deal with the consequences.
Actual members of impoverished and minority communities never supported it, they wanted more policing to keep their neighborhoods safe. The base of support was privileged members outside of those communities.
I’m affluent but grew up in an inner city. I NEVER had a positive experience with the police. Neutral was as good as it got.
Wanting more policing and wanting to defund the current system are not oppositional. I want more cops doing shit that matters and less of the current police department.
I grew up in rural America and I would describe my experiences with police in the same terms. Of course, the purpose of policing is to deter crime, not give “positive experiences”. And thanks in large part to these luxury beliefs, police departments are doing less preventative policing (routine traffic stops, etc) especially in communities of color for fear of being the next Ferguson, and consequently violent crime is soaring all over the country.
Thinking back on it, I never had a positive experience in terms of outcome. Positive experience in terms of interaction would have been the consolation prize.
Pulling over more people for expired tags and other pretext stops is hardly what we needed more of. I once had an officer decline to take a copy of video of my vehicle being stolen since he said it wasn’t going to be investigated anyway. How does a department like that still have time to hand out turn signal tickets, and pop people for going 10 over at the bottom of a hill?
The problem with analyzing based on your own experience is that you don’t experience the crime that you don’t experience. The evidence coming out of this crime wave does seem to suggest that preventative policing works even if it leaves you and I with a bad taste in our mouths when we’re the ones pulled over.
Has “preventative policing” been dialed down, measured how? The “Defund” movement basically accomplished nothing in terms of budget reductions. Are cops now refocused on other tactics?
In places where it has been dialed down are crime rates that different when looked at over a long time period?
There is quite a lot of fuss about a crime wave right now, but we are at historical lows in a lot of places. In SF shoplifting actually peaked in 2014. In SF the murder rate has risen since the pandemic… to 2017 levels. There were some high profile smash and grabs on the national news, but having your car broken into in San Francisco is something that has been a thing for a LONG time. There’s nothing new about the tenderloin being a shithole.
I think that to call the current conditions a “crime wave” is a bit too non specific considering the massive societal upheaval we experienced since 2020. What specific numbers, or measurable trends concern you?
You’re right that it isn’t official “defund the police” policies that were passed. Instead the pressure to defund the police has had a sort of “chilling effect” on departments. There are various studies which have shown things like preventative policing measures dropping off abruptly and dramatically in cities which experienced large BLM protests and crime rates shooting up commensurately. Criminologists are still piecing together the evidence—it’s not yet proven, but the picture that is emerging suggests the BLM movement has been a major driver in the violent crime wave.
> There is quite a lot of fuss about a crime wave right now, but we are at historical lows in a lot of places. In SF shoplifting actually peaked in 2014. In SF the murder rate has risen since the pandemic… to 2017 levels. There were some high profile smash and grabs on the national news, but having your car broken into in San Francisco is something that has been a thing for a LONG time. There’s nothing new about the tenderloin being a shithole. I think that to call the current conditions a “crime wave” is a bit too non specific considering the massive societal upheaval we experienced since 2020. What specific numbers, or measurable trends concern you?
The crime wave has affected the entire country, not just SF. It’s also a violent crime wave—the number of homicides in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population had been declining for many decades and we reversed much of that in a few years time. So we aren’t just talking about a bit of shoplifting (though what’s going on in San Fran is absolutely novel). It also begins around 2014-2015, not merely since 2020. This violence also disproportionately harms communities of color, which should concern people who were vehemently impassioned in 2020 that “black lives matter” considering how many more black lives have been claimed in a single year by this crime surge than have been taken by police in the last 30+ years.
I feel like the "defund the police" slogan that was used as shorthand for radical reform and demilitarization has become an unfortunate focal-point in what should be a nuanced discussion of a very real problem. This seems to be a pattern. Americans seem to get stuck fighting at the surface level. It's amazing how much my conservative in-laws and I actually agree on if we remove any triggering key words from conversations.
The Americans I do know who really hate defund are the very definition of latte swilling liberals complaining about crime going up in their nice suburbs in SF, Portland and Seattle while... complaining bitterly about rich white liberals.
The one supporter I do know lives a few blocks from George Floyd although the slogan seems to mean something different to her (transfer funds and responsibilities for mental health to social service departments).
That's what most people mean when they say "defund". The problem is that America has an issue with being reactive instead of proactive. Instead of treating drugs and crime as an economics issue and getting ahead of it with social policies, we react to it after the fact and criminalize everything and pay for a standing army with zero accountability. Creating an arms race between gangs and police, with the average citizen paying twice-- once with their taxes and again with their freedoms.
You’re defending one luxury belief (“defund the police”) with another (“the black experience with police is exclusively one of victimhood”). Notably, your “backlash” includes 81% of black Americans according to Gallup.
"Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working."
Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all.
It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.
And it’s a particularly bad short slogan because it says something a) no one really believes and b) something that is particularly unpopular. Defund the police sets back the very things it’s trying to address.
Contrast that to “Black Lives Matter” or “We are the 99%” which are also short slogans that encapsulate the broad and varied beliefs of the respective movements without being off putting to even the people who agree.
> Contrast that to “Black Lives Matter” or “We are the 99%” which are also short slogans that encapsulate the broad and varied beliefs of the respective movements without being off putting to even the people who agree.
Err, the former had people shitting themselves over it online for years.
People who disagreed with the movement. People that agreed liked (and posted signs in their yards, etc) found it to be a moving slogan.
Contrast that with “Defund the police” where even where there is broad support for alternative policing initiatives, you don’t see support for the slogan.
It’s not a great slogan, sure, but it’s got staying power, and enough people clearly understand (or are willing to listen to) what it actually means, so maybe we can all get on with enacting some change instead of bike shedding what would have maybe been a better pithy slogan.
Sure, I actually agree. But I'm also a) not American b) not black c) not an anarchist, nor a liberal [I'm a radical socialist by conviction, not a liberal]. So take following with that in mind:
There are two separate things here, to be analyzed separately: slogan/demand vs . an actual proposed policy. I think it's a huge mistake to confuse the two.
So I dunno, I don't walk around saying "that's the wrong demand", or "say something else, you don't want that." I'd rather understand where it's coming from and who is saying it, see?
Slogans are tactical, part of a movement, and the activists involved do not have state power, they pretty much never will given the structure of the US state, and as I see it the purpose of the demand is to primarily to point out the injustices, contradictions, and limits of the existing system.
In that respect "defund the police" is probably somewhat successful from the POV of the people who propagated it, who are mostly, from what I can deduce, anarchist movement types. (And yes, they probably actually do believe it. But I'm not an anarchist, so) They've made a broad swathe of the public see something that is frankly true from my POV and others: policing as we have it now has an awful history, and frankly its primary purpose in our western society is the routine maintenance of existing power structures and inequities, and in the US especially this takes a fundamentally racist form. It's getting increasingly hard to deny that, even for mainstream liberals and some conservatives.
Is it universally true? No. No phenomenon in society works that way. But on the whole there's a structural aspect of policing that may not be reformable in our current society. I saw a poll the other day that a very large % of black Canadians (my country) trust the government, but do not trust the police. I think that's an interesting and powerful distinction: Especially in light of how police have behaved here at e.g. various anti-vaccine/anti-COVID measure protests vs how they have behaved at other protests (BLM, etc.) in the past.
I think "defund the police" is a "transitional slogan" which might boil out into something better in terms of a more concrete demand if the movement it floats along in grows.
This is the flip side of the “take trump seriously, not literally” argument that went around trying to normalize him in the last election.
There are people who absolutely
Believe that any police force is a slave enforcement force (or derived from one) and a tool of white tool to subjugate others. To them it must be eradicated.
I recall an interview on KQED with an activist who absolutely was proposing to get rid of the entire police and carceral system. When asked how they would deal with, say, a murderer, their response was a) there'd be fewer murderers and b) there would be meditation between the murderer and the victim's family. I really wish the interviewer had asked, what happens if the victim doesn't have a family? Does this mean that rich murderers can pay their way out of any crime? Presumably it would!
It was fascinating, partly because what was being described is a premodern world, in which crime is a purely personal matter and not the business of the state. It's a world of vendettas, in which the powerful operate with true impunity. I don't think the partisans of _really_ defunding the police appreciate this.
(Note, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that the police are doing too much, especially around mental health crises, and some funding could usefully be diverted, etc etc.)
That’s actually a good take though and probably would have highlighted some of the issues with him better instead of boring “orange man bad” jokes and other things that got boring after two times.
You don't get to call your movement a name and then cry foul when that name is taken at its plain english meaning. "Reform" is just as pithy and just as easy to say, and infinitely more accurate.
Does that poll support your argument? Spending and funding isn't directly correlated with "spending time". Chicago spends almost two billion dollars each year on police. Yet it's often cited as one of the most dangerous cities. I'm sure plenty of folks in Chicago's South side would love more patrols. Is the right way to go about that really to keep throwing money at a system which appears to be squandering the funds? Especially when they spend tens (or some years, hundreds) of millions of dollars settling misconduct lawsuits?
The idea of "funding" is just a rough proxy for what people really want (or don't): more police presence. Garden-variety "defund the police" advocates think that, due to police violence, bias, and so on, the police should be a smaller part of how we address crime. The people in areas affected heavily by crime think that the police should be _more_ involved. That's the disagreement.
But do they think the police should be more involved in exactly the same way they are now? I don't know, but I do assume that if asked they would suggest some changes in behavior: "police should be more involved but also they should stop with the X and do more of Y". Either way, that angle is certainly missing from the single question cited above.
When it came to race, 63 percent of Black voters polled supported allocating portions of police funding to social programs, while only 35 percent of white voters agreed.
Your comments upthread were better; here you're just flinging polarizing labels and showing a massive lack of empathy for people who live a wholly different existence than you (and incidentally generally don't post on hackernews). "Defund the police" was dumb, but if you're gonna sink to trolling to "own the libs", then downvotes are going to rightly turn the volume down on it.
Yes and you mentioning about hypothetical stays in Compton Airbnbs was such a massive addition to the discourse that my reply was such a downgrade! Incredible the mental hoops people like yourself jump through
Like I said, your comments upthread were better. Then you started trolling. I don't know what you were hoping for. I should have just downvoted, I normally would. HN sucks when this kind of thing breaks out. But I guess comments intended to provoke anger and division, hoping for an emotional reaction, some kind of engagement, sometimes get it. Shame to ruin Sundays that way.
I’d be grateful to see this broken down by municipality (or by precinct within NYC). If it is possible for a company to develop a dysfunctional culture which leads it to fail at serving its customers, why would the same not be true of police departments?
If this hypothesis is right, then the problems of these communities are more tractable.
Counterpoint: it’s easy to support abolishing the police, when a clogged milk foamer is the biggest threat to your personal safety. Live in a wonderful sheltered community, say ”I don’t see why we would need law enforcement”
While it is true that there are people who actually do propose completely defunding police activity or abolishing the police, they are a tiny minority of those who took part in protests about police behavior towards non-white communities.
It's so easy to make cheap digs about that handful of people instead of actually tackle the issues that this misnamed movement was/is really about.
If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it?
I hear what you're saying, but words matter. I can never support a slogan I explicitly disagree with.
There's plenty of better slogans out there. I'd support "end police violence" or "stop killer cops" or something.
Thats certainly much more catchy than the full slogan right now, which seems to be "Defund the police, but we don't really want to do that, even though some people in our movement actually do want that, but they're a minority - we swear. But we want political power anyway and it'll be fine - you can trust us".
You can tell its a bad slogan because of how much oxygen gets spent explaining it. (Eg, right here)
"End Police Violence" has been a slogan in fact. It didn't really do much, precisely because not enough people who consider themselves unaffected by the risk of police violence were drawn in by it.
By contrast "Defund the Police" definitely generated a "say what?" response from just about everyone, whether you agreed with it or not.
As for the political power thing ... given the difficulty that existing politicians and political bodies have in exerting control over police authority, the idea that any new group would somehow be able to actually accomplish anything remotely close to abolition is crazy. Look at what happened in Minneapolis as an illustrative example: probably the closest to "actual abolition", and it just fizzled out completely.
What you heard as a “say what?” was a politely phrased “you guys haven’t thought this through” in a lot of cases.
“Think different”, “Think outside the bun”, “Just Do It” are good “say what?” examples. I don’t think “Defund the Police” accomplished the goal to make curious and enlist fence-sitters to the cause and instead likely pushed more people towards supporting their police departments.
Intent and good-faith argument also matter. If you're not willing to look past another person's inexpert use of grammar and/or syntax in order to understand their meaning, then you're doing it wrong. No trophies for elevating language to be a rigid and immutable thing.
From a purely practical perspective, if you're trying to convey an idea the onus is kinda on you to communicate it clearly. If the literal meaning of what you're saying ('defund the police') is not actually what you're trying to convey, it seems unproductive to accuse people of acting in 'bad faith' when they understandably misunderstand. It's like designing something badly and then blaming your users for 'not using it right'.
Sure, I absolutely take your point and as a lover of language generally feel similar leanings. But by the same token, everyone seems to be everyone else's audience these days, so there must be some reciprocal onus on an audience member to realize that a person calling to "defund the police" in Minneapolis might not agree with the statement "law enforcement is universally bad".
If someone says “vote for me, I want to defund the police”, I’m not sure what to believe. Do they support a terrible policy (defunding the police)? Or are they lying? If they actually get in to power and actually do defund the local police, I don't think we get to complain about the outcome.
It might be an ASD trait, but I really like to take people at their word. Please speak what you actually think. I have a hard time trusting people who say one thing while they believe the opposite. Especially in politics.
“Black lives matter” is a much more defensible slogan, because if you believe all human life matters, you should also support the idea that black lives matter.
“Defund the police” is much worse because it’s explicitly naming and promoting a policy idea which activists promise they don’t actually want.
> If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it?
No, because that's a rational and reasonable statement, where "defund the police" grabs attention, but is ultimately divisive and alienating. Like so many popular talking points, it's a complete failure of marketing and communication, and everybody who says it ends up having to redefine or explain it on a constant basis because on the surface it sounds completely irrational.
Maybe it could have been more successful if the name actually reflected the goal. As-is, the supporters either actually believe in abolishing the police (which was also called for), or they are saying something they don't actually mean in a literal sense because it grabs more attention. The detractors in turn are only arguing with what a minority of the supporters actually even want, because we've grown so unconcerned as a society with actually conveying our points and getting people on our side, and more concerned with simply being noticed.
“Defund the Police” was not an attempt at abolishing police. However, I do understand there are outlets that positioned it as such to gain emotional investment. The idea was to reallocate some of the police budget to mental health experts. The idea behind that idea is that we’d had better outcomes if mental health experts helped those having a breakdown (suicide attempt, etc) than armed police.
edit: There's something correct here, because if you want to look for people who supported defund, they were probably working in food service, making you coffee.
Agreed, Like any social program there is a constituency that supports policing. They experience far less violence and use the service an outsized amount.
This isn’t the burn you intend. Henderson is talking about wealth/status privilege while the left uses “privilege” as a shorthand for racial or gender privilege. Henderson is clearly not ceding that point here (implicitly or otherwise).
I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. Here's an article on "everydayfeminism.com" about the broad view progressives take on it: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/
> I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege.
The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)
You have it exactly backwards. Centrists center class privilege while leftists center race/gender/etc privilege. For example, when discussing racial inequality, leftists will tend to argue “disparity thus discrimination” while centrists (and moderates of all stripes, really) will argue that the mechanism is classist but it manifests as a disparity because the class distributions aren’t uniform across races.
I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.
Eh, I think he's right. On the ground, the "centrists" are mostly the Clinton/Obama wing of the party who are very fluent in identity issues and the "leftists" are mostly the Sanders wing of the party who are more focused on economics.
Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.
Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, "moderate Democrats") are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief. Clinton and Obama might've capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing, but that's the point: the identity stuff is coming from the far left side of the party which is absolutely breathless about identity stuff (Sanders here is the exception to the rule). On more than one occasion, Obama explicitly cautioned against left wing identity extremism while "The Squad" cheerleaded the BLM riots. Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really "moderate Democrats" or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
> Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, “moderate Democrats”) are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief.
> Clinton and Obama might’ve capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing
If you look at where Hillary Clinton’s support was vs. Bernie’s , Bernie’s was on the economic left, Clinton’s was with all the identity-politics factions. (Not just what is predictable by “exploiting her identity” as straigh cisgender heterosexual white woman.)
It can be confusing, because there is also a leftist/progressive identity politics which is highly intersectional and also highly integrated with class politics, but the dominant neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party has long been deeply dependent on the very different bourgeois identity politics which rejects the class struggle, as what distinguishes them from the more moderate fringes of the Republican Right (this was especially true during the period of the neoliberal consensus, less so since Trump replaced corporate capitalism with a side order of culture war social politics to energize the base with White nationalist culture war populism as the center of the Republican Party.)
> Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really “moderate Democrats” or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
I think all of them (even Warren, who remains overtly pro-capitalist and is more centrist than the others) center economic/class issues more than identity politics, and all but Warren do so fairly explicitly because the kind of identity politics they engage in are precisely the progressive/left kind, not the bourgeios kind.
I guess I disagree with your taxonomy, and I think The Squad has wrestled with being progressives while also being unwilling to let identity issues go. I'm very pro-Warren, but I think if you look at the policies pushed not just by her but by the other women you named, you'll find a lot of economic and climate policy (I mean Green New Deal, come on).
The right-wing propaganda machine is very hard on ambitious women (as a former Hillary staffer I can attest to this), and it's definitely part of the plan to smear these folks in particular. I think we should be asking why there's a concerted, well-funded messaging effort against these women and not against people saying similar things like Hakeem Jeffries or Bernie Sanders. My personal view is that it's raw misogyny. And, frankly, I think you're repeating a lot of it here. In particular your use of the word "cheerleaded" is a pretty gendered criticism.
We're all misogynists, we're all racists, we're all homophobes, because of the culture we grew up in. But by introspecting on this, we're able to fight against it and create a fairer society.
The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders. (: Anyway, I reject most identity doctrine, including that we are all racist, sexist, etc.
> The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t.
It feels like you missed Sanders' entire campaign then [0] [1] [2].
The main differences between Warren and Sanders is that Warren's policies are better, and Sanders is a Jewish man (I feel like potentially being our first Jewish president didn't get enough play, but it would have been a powerful moment for the US and humanity as a whole).
> it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders
If you use phrases structured as "[stereotype] [people the stereotype is used against]", that's a stereotype. If your excuse is that the stereotype isn't absolute, it's a tacit admission that you used a stereotype against people. Own it or don't, up to you.
The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders.
Just an FYI, you and the person that's responding to you are talking about the same people but use two different words for them. A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US; progressives are not that for certain. To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
Progressives and leftists are approximately the same thing in US politics, not just among the right (the American right doesn’t even distinguish between liberals and progressives—it just calls everyone left of center “liberals”).
You’re observing that political labels vary semantically between political systems. “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context (although I suspect “global” here is really only accurate for Europe, but that’s a debate for another day).
> “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US.
Liberal doesn't have any consistent meaning in the US. (Like, nearly every point on the spectrum uses it differently
> Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context
Not particularly. Except in the propaganda of the American Right, where it is one of a pile of indistinct labels like Marxist, liberal, Communist, woke, critical race theory, etc., applied indiscriminately to everything they disagree with.
It's a word salad all around. Folks on the US left exhibit similar symptoms when talking about the right. I responded initially because I think distinctualizing US progressives and global progressives is important. I don't want to see US progressives, their policy, or their values gain more traction; I am on board for a party that reflects global progressivism, it's policies, and it's values.
It does seem like there's a split on this thread about
- whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
- how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
> Folks on the US left exhibit similar symptoms when talking about the right.
Yeah, for a good while there, everyone who wasn't a staunch progressive was described as uniformly "far-right".
> I responded initially because I think distinctualizing US progressives and global progressives is important. I don't want to see US progressives, their policy, or their values gain more traction; I am on board for a party that reflects global progressivism, it's policies, and it's values.
I disagree with your politics, but I agree on the importance of this distinction.
> whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
I think US progressives are roughly "global progressives" plus identity stuff. Some US progressives care more about identity than economics, but there aren't any US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing economics even if they don't care as much about it, and there are relatively few US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing identity doctrine even if they don't think it's terribly important (e.g., Sanders).
> how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
The right generally doesn't distinguish between different "bands" (in the sense of a frequency band in a frequency spectrum) on the left of the spectrum any more than the left distinguishes between different "bands" on the right of the spectrum. Some right-wingers use "leftist" for everyone left of center and others use "liberal" for left-of-center, but in both cases they're using a single term for "left-of-center" and thus failing to distinguish. You see the same thing with people on the left referring to the right homogeneously as "conservative" or "right-wing" or "far-right". Few on either side recognize the nuanced beliefs on the other side.
imo, being so caught up in identity is what makes US progressives so toxic. Once you go deep into identity it becomes an abstraction that replaces the root cause, which is class distinctions. Identity is useful in solving specific problems, like systemic racism, but US progressives are practically blind to class problems which makes them especially problematic when they can't recognize how rural areas have class overlaps and alienate those constituents and problems. Hence, US progressives are so volatile and wildly different from the global landscape. Whether or not you believe the basis of global progressivism starts with class distinctions or not and how the US perspective based on identity erodes that is likely where we differ. I'll admit that my bias doesn't favor US progressives because I belong to an identity that's frequently ignored, if not mocked in various ways, by progressives (I'm a vet) and there's little in the way of a future reckoning for that.
I agree with the last paragraph. Anyone that does not understand the various striations of politics but attempts to speak on broad groups negatively without that understanding does immeasurable damage to discourse.
> Whether or not you believe the basis of global progressivism starts with class distinctions or not and how the US perspective based on identity erodes that is likely where we differ.
I think we agree here. Most "progressives" outside of the US are a lot more likely to focus on class distinctions while US progressives are preoccupied by identity.
> A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US
Yes, it does.
Because of the electoral system’s strong pressure to duopoly, there isn’t a substantial real leftist party in the US, but there is a real leftist ideological group.
> progressives are not that for certain
US progressives overlap with, but are not the same as, the left.
> To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
To the American Right, a leftist is a Democrat, including a center -right neoliberal corporate capitalist democrat.
I disagree from extensive experience. Unadorned, “privilege” refers to some identity privilege 99% of the time. For example, “check your privilege” virtually always refers to some identity privilege.
Moreover, the salient point wasn’t “the left doesn’t believe in wealth privilege” as much as “no one disputes wealth privilege and thus Henderson isn’t being hypocritical here as you imply”.
I think the left gets caricatured heavily by the right (there's a "both sides" counterargument here, but my view is that the right is very easy to caricature because it's mostly absurd, and my arguments are gay marriage, gun laws, climate change, immigration, and fiscal/monetary policy) into an image of a huge Twitter mob canceling people for saying the wrong words and miscounting the number of genders. I'm very unsympathetic to people coming from this view of the left; it feels lazy and motivated entirely by insecurity and animus. Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight.
Or TLDR, yeah sometimes we get carried away on Twitter. But at least we're not roasting the planet.
I agree that the right has a lot of problems and I disagree with them on most issues. I even agree that the problems on the right are worse than those on the left in a certain sense. I also agree that the right-wing view of the left is a caricature like you describe, but I think that caricature is rooted in some truth. For example, while there are other concerns on the left, identity has become a hugely popular issue on the American left in the last decade. To that end, it's disingenuous to portray this as "a right-wing concern" when lots of liberals are concerned about it as well. Moreover, many people (myself included) think that this identity politics stuff is tearing at our social fabric, not only by fostering racial divides, but also because Americans of all stripes are losing trust in institutions which have increasingly rejected aspirational neutrality and objectivity in favor of progressive activism. I don't know how to compare this to certain Republican policies which are more immediately damaging.
> Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight.
I have plenty of bad things to say about Republican policies, but the Iraq/Afghan wars were bipartisan and I don't think deregulation is a clear and universal evil nor are unions an unmitigated good. Agreed that climate inaction is prevalent among Republicans, but I consider Democrats' empty words and gestures (as they pertain to climate) to be just another kind of inaction. Democrats will get bragging rights when they rally around a serious climate pricing policy--if you believe (as I do) that the world is really burning, why don't Democrats offer a budget proposal which reflects that? Why don't they rally around any of the annually-proposed carbon pricing bills? Why did they allow themselves to be completely and wholly fixated on an obviously fake crisis of racist police killings for the better part of the last decade? Why do we allocate so much of our national debate bandwidth to pronouns and bathroom policies if we believe we're veering toward mass extinction?
That said, I think it's super destructive to use Republican behavior (or in many cases, a caricature thereof) to excuse every criticism of Democratic behavior. That's a recipe for racing to the bottom IMO. Instead of responding to "Democrats aren't taking climate seriously enough" with "well, Republicans are worse ergo Democrat climate inaction is fine" it would be great if we could focus on ways to improve Democratic climate policy.
I wrote a lot, which believe it or not I try not to do, so to summarize I'll just say this: your argument, essentially, is that given a stat like "Black Americans represent 12.7% of Americans, but make up between 30-40% of police killings", the people causing the problem are the ones saying it's unacceptable, not those responsible for a system that kills ~3x more Black Americans than White Americans. I find that to be absurd.
---
> identity has become a hugely popular issue on the American left in the last decade
I know we're sparring on this in another thread, but it really gets to me when people dismiss the concerns of Black Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Women, Native Americans, etc. as "identity" issues. It's undeniable that people in these groups have an entirely different, objectively worse experience than straight cis White men. My arguments here are slavery, forced incarceration and sterilization, and genocide, to say nothing of ongoing discrimination and prejudice and institutional problems today. This country hasn't been dealing with "identity" for a decade, it's been dealing with it from before the time its 1st president was a slaver. The idea that this has only been a problem roughly since Obama was president is... the nicest thing I can say here is naive.
> Moreover, many people (myself included) think that this identity politics stuff is tearing at our social fabric, not only by fostering racial divides, but also because Americans of all stripes are losing trust in institutions which have increasingly rejected aspirational neutrality and objectivity in favor of progressive activism.
It's true that there are more voices at the table, voices protesting police violence (a real problem), the wage gap (a real problem), the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault (a real problem), mass incarceration (a real problem). Addressing these problems is gonna be pretty hard, and accountability has to be a part of it. That means when White dudes sexually harass women at work, or when White women threaten to bring down state violence against Black birdwatchers minding their own business, or when cops murder people, they're gonna face consequences (hopefully, anyway). It's easy to see how that creates resentment amongst those currently in power: the rules are changing and mostly not in their favor.
So if you think the problem is that people are talking about this stuff, then I guess a reasonable solution is for them to shut up about it. But if you think the problems are the problems themselves, then shutting up is actively harmful. Hence slogans like "silence is violence", etc.
> the Iraq/Afghan wars were bipartisan
Nah, Bush/Cheney lied [0]. A lot.
> I don't think deregulation is a clear and universal evil
Totally agree, for example before Carter deregulated airlines they were a hilarious mess. But like, rolling back EPA standards is an obvious bad idea, unless you're a company that's only profitable by ignoring climate destruction externalities.
I think loss of faith in institutions is less that they're moving in the direction of progressive activism (honestly can't come up with any examples here, regardless my counterexample is SCOTUS) and more that they're blatantly partisan and corrupt: like the widely panned CDC halving of quarantine times right around peak holiday travel time. I think we've been frog boiled so long in corruption we don't even notice it anymore. My partner was listening to NPR the other morning and they had the exchange at the end:
> INSKEEP: Oh, that's right. Trump was not happy with Kemp because Kemp told the truth about the 2020 election. Is it possible, though, that Greene could actually be thrown off the ballot?
> FOWLER: Well, the short answer is no. A federal judge did rule that this complaint process could continue, but it'll be a high bar to meet to remove Greene. Also, remember; the final decision rests with the secretary of state. That's Brad Raffensperger, who's facing a Trump-backed primary challenge next month, too.
Great, public servants not doing their job because of party affiliation. After decades (centuries?) of this, how could Americans not be cynical about public institutions?
> I consider Democrats' empty words and gestures (as they pertain to climate) to be just another kind of inaction
Democrats have tried again and again to get something going, but Republicans continue to block it. And hey guess what, fossil fuel energy companies are huge Republican donors and essentially run many State parties. I'll give you Joe Manchin though, I guess he is technically a Democrat?
Re: carbon pricing, it's a little involved but basically it's very politically unviable: businesses tend to push these costs onto consumers and these kinds of policies can fail under misinformation campaigns [1]. The fossil fuel industry knows this, which is why their lobbyists push it [2], because they know it will never pass, because they're very able to launch an intense misinformation campaign against it.
> if you believe (as I do) that the world is really burning, why don't Democrats offer a budget proposal which reflects that
Because of Republicans (corrupted by the fossil fuel industry) and the filibuster. Remember that one time the Obama administration invested in green energy companies? The right refers to it as the Solyndra scandal, the left refers to it as "the policies that gave us Tesla".
> Why did they allow themselves to be completely and wholly fixated on an obviously fake crisis of racist police killings for the better part of the last decade?
It is extremely not fake. The stats are totally off balance [3]. Black Americans represent 12.7% of Americans, but make up between 30-40% of police killings.
> Why do we allocate so much of our national debate bandwidth to pronouns and bathroom policies if we believe we're veering toward mass extinction?
This is a wedge issue pushed by Republicans to try and get Democrats to defend "icky" trans people in competitive elections. Democrats aren't the ones pushing this. We'd love it if conservatives were just polite and used people's preferred pronouns and stayed out of our private lives (bathrooms, bedrooms, and doctors' offices, for example).
> That said, I think it's super destructive to use Republican behavior (or in many cases, a caricature thereof) to excuse every criticism of Democratic behavior.
Oh I hate whataboutism, but that's not what I'm doing here. You were making an argument about Democrats tearing our country apart with identity politics in the last decade, and I counterargued that identity polities are extremely important, and not new. I'm also assailing a false equivalency between Democrats' identity policies (stipulating they're bad, which they're not) with Republicans'... all other policies. There's not a "both sides" to be had here. The Republican party is bankrupt, policy-wise, and the way they win elections is through wedge issues and fake (Fox) news to get their voters frothed up with rage and resentment. It works, sure, but it's Faustian, and we're seeing the effects of decades of that kind of politics.
What the heck? He did reply to the argument. He didn't call anyone in the community names, and the beliefs and position held by the author absolutely DO matter in this context.
Dang you need to really revaluate your decisions on when to post or call people out for "rule violations".
I don't see any reference to beliefs or positions in the GP comment, nor replies to arguments. "Luxury columnist" is obviously being used as a dismissive label in this thread. If you toss in "Yale" as more or less a bad word, then the entire comment reduces to name-calling. This was not a borderline moderation call.
(Btw the guideline against calling names isn't limited to people in the community.)
The fact that it's considered a epithet is more revealing than anything else.
Him being an elite - someone who knows he's intrinsically superior to everyone else by virtue of selection - is 100% relevant to his opinions being flawed.
Where did this idea come from that we cannot see what exists outside of ourselves and our experiences?
I can empathise with people who are nothing like me. I can understand silly things that people like me do, and how they must look to people who are not like me.
It is only infant humans that can’t understand that anything exists outside of themselves.
I'd like to chime in on one very narrow issue that's a personal axe.
I'd appreciate your consideration.
Due to some widely shared youtube videos and other new and zeitgeisty trends, empathy has been put on a pedestal and sympathy and been thoroughly denigrated.
The problem is that people are not that capable of real empathy in complex or strongly divergent experiences, this modern "synthetic empathy" generated in peoples imaginations is actively harmful, is not empathy, and is worse than sympathy (which was always a serviceable emotion and the most accurate framing for many circumstances.)
As someone born with a heart defect that almost killed them and forced me into formative and constant meditation on death starting at 4 years old, and then had my parents die young and my family financially ruined by medical bills so I had to quit highschool and start working fulltime I have personally observed that empathy as a mental model has a strong failure mode.
I doubt at 15 you could have had empathy for me, (unless you shared a similar experience) I doubt older wiser you could still empathize with 15 year old me in any meaningful way, certainly no peer I ever met at the time could (agqin, unless they had dealt with the same.)
I think peoples ability to empathize has been far oversold, so while you can understand and empathize with "silly things", outside of that I'd settle for some good old fashioned (and real) sympathy.
Sympathy has a certain acknowledgment of lack of understanding and thus intellectual and emotional humility, and I think humility is what is missing in this modern synthetic empathy.
Experiences in general and certainly extremely divergent ones do not have the same qualia and empathy is a false siren.
People don't understand as much as they think, they should show sympathy to those whose experiences are far outside their own and help them tangibly when possible.
Psychologists recognize that a surprisingly large percentage of people have no little to no ability to visualize abstractions or engage in mentally taxing feats of empathy.
These people are more prone to believe that it’s only possible to obtain insight about a circumstance from only those individuals in said circumstance.
When people comment about this, it generates confusion for people like you. :)
He went to Yale, yes, but he doesn't have the typical Yale graduate background of wealth and status. He had a drug addict mother and was sent to foster homes until he was adopted. He experienced the various levels of society first-hand.
Not typical - he's a veteran. I admire that. But he still got in. Therefore, he's superior (nearly intrinsically, on almost every dimension) to 99.5% of the American population and has the privileges that come with it.
Once you're in, you've got the same privilege as everyone else.
Homeless to Yale isn't that different from Cisco-engineer-parents to Yale. You're still at Yale. You're still hobknobbing with the elites, and you are one of them.
He is part of the problem, even if he doesn't get it.
Right. He's someone that went from low to high class; he's writing about high-class beliefs from the perspective of someone who has first-hand knowledge of how they play out for the lower-classes.
> Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more.
I just watched "Dancing with the Birds", a documentary on Netflix with great footage of male birds of paradise and bower birds seducing their mates. It strongly underlines the above proposition. These birds perform absurd, bizzare, wildly expensive behaviors for no other purpose but that the chicks dig it. After that the male gets under the female tail feathers, and that's his last contribution to fatherhood.
I think we typically underestimate how much this applies to humans, and how much female political power is also sexual power, and visa versa, for good and ill.
> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.
Yep. If you were raised in poverty, the WORST thing you can do is listen to "approved" mainstream advice. That culture / media isn't there to help you, but to sell you things or make money on telling you what you want to hear.
I'll go one step further and say that if you are a man born into poverty, check out Aaron Clarey's asshole consulting. Don't agree with everything he says, but as a starting point, that's 10 times better than what your guidance counselor will tell you.
So I strongly disagree with that point, which could be based in cultures (specially in Spain where I have more experience seeing these things); I haven't seen enough of the mainstream USA advice, but for example I believe mainstream advice is still to get a degree in the USA, while if a degree costed $100k+ I believe in Spain it'd def not be mainstream advice and instead to tell people to strongly consider other alternatives. Luckily a degree is almost free here, so the advice is to get it, specially those degrees that have good job prospects.
So I'm genuinely curious about examples you could give about this? Do you consider e.g. /r/personalfinance as "approved" mainstream advice? I believe it caters fairly well to the low-middle-even-high classes, but probably not to the lowest (homeless) or highest (super-rich).
Honest questions deserve honest answers. First, I am coming from a US-centric position (the article dealt with that, I am from the US, and the my response deals specifically with that culture... though Canadians likely would benefit from it too). As to education and degrees, there is a HUGE divergence in the types of degrees that are worth the money, and those which act more as institutional pyramid schemes. This distinction is well known on the example advice channel I recommended, but largely absent from mainstream culture.
As to what qualifies as mainstream culture, before the internet it was a clear delineation (based on broadcast and print), now there are perhaps tiers (and that's a broader conversation). One thing to note is that the more direct influence that institutional power has via gatekeeping (by directly promoting ideas through things like textbook publishers or narrowing discussion via tech censorship policies) the more the area caters to the desires of those in power, rather than those using / consuming the service. I steer clear of reddit myself because several times in the past when areas have become too divergent from "acceptable narrative" they have been closed down.
There's plenty more that could be said on this topic, but that would likely require a book on epistemology. Hope that answered your questions about my intentions and views at least.
r/personalfinance is largely fine if you've made it that far.
I read the comment you replied to to be the, follow your passion, university is required, lean-in, girl-boss, live your dream, it takes a village, shitty advice that permeates culture in the US.
The messaging that children out of wedlock is pro-poverty and marriage is anti-poverty is nearly non-existant in the main stream. Same with the negative outcomes of boys raised by single mothers.
Okay University required is the one I knew in the US that should be controversial but is not too much yet.
Follow your passion seems to be similar to live your dream, and I can see that being terrible advice for young lower-class. This is AFAIK only a path encouraged for rich kids in Spain and only to certain extent, since they will inherit whatever. But probably due to chronic young unemployment, our society highly critical to studying degrees without good opportunities. Ironically the only places I've seen this in Spain as advice from high class to everyone is where we've strongly imported USA culture, among "modern entrepreneurs".
Had never heard of "girl-boss" nor "it takes a village" as financial advice! Reading about girl-boss [1], I'm assuming (please correct me if I'm wrong!) it's about empowerment and not taking a "normal" job and instead try to be your own boss, specially aimed at young women. Which is great if you are upper class and can fall back to your family for help, but obviously a terrible idea if you don't have a plan-b/good fallback, resulting in poverty. Right?
And about "it takes a village"? I cannot find much relevant info, everything seems to be about getting help from your community. Does it mean that it's great advice if you are surrounded by successful driven people, but bad advice if the community is a poor one riffled with crime?
Sorry for so many questions, most are confirmations to make sure I understood things correctly
Girl-bossing is also the desire / goal to achieve success in a traditionally male fashion; Elizabeth Holms, Sheryl Sandberg, Carly Fiorina, etc. The obscured bit to this is that men typically don't value this sort of success in their wives or mothers of their children and many woman chasing this success end up in mid-level make-work jobs anyway.
With the breakdown of marriage and the increase of 'non-traditional' families / decrease in nuclear families, this proverb was bandied about as marketing for 'non-traditional' families. Of course in practice the outcomes match what you'd expect a child raised by an African village to be.
> So I'm genuinely curious about examples you could give about this? Do you consider e.g. /r/personalfinance as "approved" mainstream advice? I believe it caters fairly well to the low-middle-even-high classes, but probably not to the lowest (homeless) or highest (super-rich).
Nothing on Reddit is 'mainstream'. Most people have never visited the site.
Fair enough, that's why I was asking whether Reddit advice is similar somehow to mainstream advice. What would you consider mainstream advice then? Do you have any article that shows mainstream advice (for the USA)?
I don't live in the USA, and have never been exposed to its mainstream. Probably the best way to find out would be to go outside, talk to random people, and ask them where they get their news and/or advice?
> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs
which is another example of the bullshit-y parts of TFA.
1. the idea that "the people with the most money and education" form some sort of coherent cultural and ideological group is absurd. Does anyone think that the raft of Republican members of congress who went to ivy league schools shape culture and customs in the same way that, say, Beyonce does?
2. the idea that "the people with the most money and education" actually shape culture and customs is also open to substantive debate. Are they influential? Of course. Do they have some sort of exclusive control ? Doubtful.
3. the idea that there is a single culture or single set of customs is absurd on its face.
At first you had extended families as norm and that was a huge safety net. Then even with nuclear family, the wages people earned were enough for one to manage by themselves, even without the wife working (if she did, ever better). Now there is little familial safety net, wages for low-paying jobs are all-time low, people are doing 2-3 jobs to survive, stress-levels are all time high, no body wants to have a conversation and is ready to walk at a moment's notice and the root cause of the broken family is that poor people are following upper class's example? Sure, why not.
To me this reads like an opinion piece that will date quickly. Though the problem it identifies certainly exists.
> At the event, Parkinson stressed the importance of stability and two-parent families for children.
As oppose to a single parent that needs to work all the time, sure. But just read a few anthropology books, every possible combination of family and child raising method has worked in the past. Children raised in a small village, or extended family seems like it would be even better than a some modern concept of a traditional family where one member works and other cares for the house and children. In the UK the popular opinion in Victorian times was that children should not be shown affection because it would make them weak. Or even continuing to this day that the upper class don't really involve themselves with the child rearing too much - nannies and boarding schools. Probably that's another rearing method that's quite poor https://bylinetimes.com/2021/04/28/boris-johnson-is-a-boardi...
The best analysis I have seen makes an interesting case that we are essentially still in shock from entering a post-marriage-norm society.
All the institutions that promoted marriage are ignored, so people are testing the shark-filled waters and going it alone.
Society-wide, this is self correcting over a couple centuries though, as the families which prioritize values are out-breeding those that do not (e.g. birth control is quickly segregating population growth by culture).
Good parents don't just create good children, they also create good parents.
Government programs (as presently conceived) will never catch up in terms of effectiveness because they don't have this self-replicating behavior. They can provide relief but not much in the way of lasting improvement.
We should focus a lot more efforts socially and politically to create self-sustaining families and avoid culture and policies that disrupt them.
> Absent fathers and broken family units are major factors for many social ills. It’s obvious but no one wants to talk about it.
This is just not true. It's almost constantly talked about, it's even a trope in movies, jokes, singers saying about it.
What is really not discussed is the other side of the equation. Who chooses those men?
Are women equally capable to make moral choices (I believe they are). Or are they just kind-of-sentient robots that are programmed to have kids, will grab any man that will make them pregnant and deserve only compassion when that "random choice" does not turn out to be a good dad?
I think (in terms of culture) this is closer (than what the author claims) to the truth: Complain about men not pulling their weight. Never mention women responsibility. It's taboo to discuss it openly in a good faith. So now we have a fringe claiming men are only victims of women evil, which is another side of this stupid-coin. We can't meet in the middle anymore.
Why should we believe that the author's perceived value signaling by some class of society (which is debatable already in a somewhat puritanical society) is the primary responsible for other adults' behavior? This seems so infantilizing. The poor do have agency too.
This is such a weird take. Is the conclusion here that the upper class needs to adopt a sigma grindset and get married more because it'll influence the poors to be less antisocial? Like none of the systemic rot or declining wages over the past 50 years matters?
The article makes some fantastic and insightful points but one thing it ignores that I think is important is the fact we started paying people not to get married in the form of increased public benefits for single parents.
Sorry, for going a bit of topic, but I perked up my ears at this sentence:
>For example, there are many studies on identical twins separated at birth who are adopted by different families.
How the hell are there 'many' studies on this? I'd think this Prince and the Pauper scenario would be so fantastic, that there'd be no more than a dozen cases, owing to the extreme rarity of circumstances which all need to happen for this sensational scenario to come about.
Or do psychiatrists make sure somehow that identical twins in orphanages are adopted with people from different socioeconomic strata?
We're living in an utterly corrupt society. I know the middle class types on here don't like to hear it, but it's true. At the bottom of society, one can see clearly how bad it is. In the middle, you are insulated in your little suburban homes with your inflated sense of self-worth.
Many people here are outright slaves. They are trapped in a predatory system that prevents them from gaining any dignity. It should be no surprise that some people say "fuck this," and drop out of the system or refuse to climb the corrupt social hierarchy. The millions of young men missing from the workforce are all speaking with their actions, "I don't approve of this system. I'd rather die than comply with it."
Without an effective system of representation, this is how people express their discontent: drop out or commit crime. No one that believes in their country becomes a criminal. A precondition for criminality is always a loss of morale. That's why the system comes down on these "criminals" so hard, not because their crimes are so bad, but because they are dissidents.
Some of you drive to work along streets full of homeless people. You are told that these are just drug addicts or problem makers. In truth, they are obsolete or noncompliant slaves.
This can't last forever. One day we'll all be asking how we could let it get so bad, but it will be too late--I fear.
While I broadly empathize with what you're saying here, this:
> No one that believes in their country becomes a criminal.
seems completely indefensible. There are all kinds of criminals who see it as a legitimate way to exist and thrive within society. There are also many different kinds of crime, including white collar. Particularly when you live in a "got to get ahead" society, pretty much anything that can you help you "get ahead" ends up feeling legitimate.
The law is supposed to be the sacred foundation upon which a nation is built. Perhaps this view of law has been forgotten, which further emphasises my point about corruption.
Breaking the law, in a serious way--I'm not talking about jaywalking--shows contempt for the foundational order of a nation.
When I was younger, boy scout and all, I truly believed breaking the law was the worst thing one could possibly do. I was told how important the law is and that it deserves our utmost respect. From this mindset, breaking the law and becoming a criminal is percieved as a monstrous act-- inexusable. That's how I saw things when I believed in America.
Things have certainly changed, as your comment demonstrates. People now think it's more important to make money than abide by the law. The law is just seen as a referee, something to get around, not a noble set of rules that are laid down to govern our conduct for the good of us all.
That's not true! Poor people can escape if they live perfectly and don't make a single mistake and don't get unlucky. /S
(Unlucky = health emergency, family emergency, wrong place wrong time, etc - advantaged people have accidents and mistakes but they have money and safety nets that catch them)
The number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. is healthcare costs. The horror stories I've personally witnessed are shocking. At the bottom of society, where I have dwelled, there's a whole undulating sea of broken toys. Ex engineers, disgraced financiers, all sorts of people that once were somebody in society, but fell down somehow into the land of the living dead; where there's no hope and mostly a silent endurance until we die in complete isolation.
>We're living in an utterly corrupt society. I know the middle class types on here don't like to hear it, but it's true. At the bottom of society, one can see clearly how bad it is. In the middle, you are insulated in your little suburban homes with your inflated sense of self-worth
It's a fairly accurate representation of the way things are, as I see it.
>This can't last forever.
I think this was the way it was since time immemorial. Probably worse.
How many civilizations have lasted since time immemorial? You could have said this in Rome and you would have been right. You could have said this as a slave to the pharos and you would have been right.
Ok, you are correct, to state it more accurately as long as civilizations ( in it's current form) exist, there have been slaves, and all indications are that it will not change. Unless somehow each individual somehow become physically powerful enough to stand up to large a collective of the 'enemy', slavery in some form will always exist.
Is there a country outside of the US that does not have some of the corrupt aspects you mention? Does this corruption pervade only at a national level or also at state and town and community layers?
The U.S. is a special case because of it's grandiose claims. We are supposed to be a nation by the people and for the people, a nation that is supposed to be a bastion of liberty against the dark tyrannical forces of the world that routinely attempt to enslave man.
Corruption in this context is more severe than equivalent corruption in countries differently constituted.
It's like a catholic priest who has sex with women on the side. Many men do that, but a priest is supposed to be held to a divine standard. Therefore the priest's actions are interpreted as a severe form of corruption,whereas the actions of a common man doing the same thing are perhaps not even seen as a bad thing.
America is like a high priest of liberty. When there is corruption here, it's even worse than equivalent corruption elsewhere.
Practicality speaking now, this is a huge problem because many people still believe that
America is still abiding by its high ideals. This has the effect of making people blind to corruption. "That could never happen in America," is the attitude of a lot of people who still believe in the premise of this nation.
I'll admit that these are difficult questions. I don't necessarily have the best answers. All I can really say is that there's a spiritual sickness here eating away at us that undoubtedly comes from a long accumulation of lies and betrayals that undermine our collective faith in the nation.
The mysterious spiritual sickness is just the expected arrival of weaker souls: they have the right to live too, but they won't be able to uphold the standards set by their greater ancestors.
It seems to be claiming that differing social norms leads to unstable lower class families.
But a) im pretty sure being a deadbeat dad is still considred bad among all social classes
b) if that was the case, why is this disporpotionately affecting lower class. Do middle class have different norms?
C) the article talks about a woman who broke up with her partner because he was a shit partner. Isn't that the opposite of the thesis of the article? Man did not meet expectations so was kicked to the curve?
What an amazing article, and bravo to the researchers for this amazing analysis.
Now, I will get onto my down voting.
I have watched generations of men devote himself to video games. They develop amazing skills in these artificial worlds. At the same time, I was reading tons of books, writing a few of my own and generally avoiding TV and video game. Of course, I was the freak. But I cannot wonder if that life in the fantasy land a video game has not left its traces in these men.
Have you ever considered that it could be a multitude of reasons?
It’s easy to preach on high about enjoying books but I think that’s folly, we all enjoy different things and just because yours is “socially accepted” (for lack of a better term) doesn’t mean it’s inherently better. What you read is usually more important than the fact that you read, for example.
Regardless of that particular point: I find that men, especially young men, are consistently being told that their behaviour is bad. No matter what they do.
If they seek career status then they’re contributing to sexism by not making space for women (an extreme example but one I have been accused of openly).
If they seek male companionship and shared experiences they’re accused of “lad” behaviour and if it’s in public they’re usually targeted by police for loitering or giving an aura of unsafety.
If the world is hostile to you, why not retreat into a world where you basically put everything aside and feel a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment from a virtual world? The benefit is that nobody makes you feel bad about it while you’re doing it.
It’s only after the fact that people look down on you for enjoying yourself.
Note: I don’t really play games and I read a lot of books like you, but I make games and I really despise that people look down on my customers for enjoying themselves.
Reading books are another type of fantasy land - games vs books have their pluses and minuses. Video games can be far more social, but can be vapid. Books can also be vapid, and very isolating, and give you the false belief that you are experiencing things. Books and games can be intellectually and emotionally stimulating. I've read a lot and played a lot, and, as usual, I've found a balance to be the best. I don't read as much as I used to (at least fiction), and going back and reading the occasional fiction book now and then has given me a different perspective on books.
> "I was reading tons of books, writing a few of my own..."
How is this not the a different flavor of the same "fantasy land"? Even if the majority were non-fiction, there's a difference between acquiring skills and acquiring trivia [1]; pop non-fiction is not all that deep.
[1] And I say this as a person whose book collection is measured in tons.
My purpose is to make money for a woman and children, thats it? I might as well be a cow providing milk. Wow no shit, that doesn’t sound attractive to me.
Well in the old model of marriage, the woman also did things for her man in exchange, looked after him and the house, respected him, showed him appreciation.
That's out of fashion now, attacked by the caustic branches of feminism.
Giving birth to a baby without being married is a religious point-of-view.
I am supposed to believe that a "sociology professor at Princeton, and Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University" can somehow convince me that he knows what a "low-income woman" thinks or does in her life. I've lived around "low-income women" my whole life and I haven't figured it out.
"The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births."
Whose conventional view? This is not the view of poor people.
"Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men.", the book this came from was written by a conservative scientist from Iowa. I tried to check some of the stats and every one of them seem to be wrong.
This is a horrible article that seems to do nothing by try and place blame rather than provide a solution to a problem that does not exist. I will go as far as to say this article is quite racist. The article says "American" men but then only targets white American men in their statistics. Which is it, American men or white American men?
This is a poorly written article based on personal views and statistics that don't even target the proper demographics of the content of the article. Unbelievable.
I don't understand why it is stressed that all of this is connected to marriage (or absense of). Parents walking away from responsibility is a cause for problems in children, no matter whether you are married or not. Also, I doubt that the degree of married parents is connected to class. We have both a PhD, a child, and live together for 15 years, failing both to see a reason for marriage.
Maybe there are some saintly principled people who will never walk away from responsibility no matter what, for whom marriage adds no value, and maybe there are some feckless unprincipled people who will walk away from responsibility at the slightest provocation, for whom marriage also adds no value, but maybe there is a large intermediate population who may occasionally feel a moderate urge to walk but are dissuaded by the added difficulty that breaking a marriage presents (stigma, cost, legal process), and thus decide to stick it out. Maybe marriage is for those people.
> Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.
> But nobody wants to admit it because it upsets people.
This is the main thesis of the post sandwiched by loads of data and charts yet completely unsourced and devoid of evidence. Maybe true, maybe not. This is basically a well-reasoned hypothesis but there's no reason to believe it's true.
> You put a guy in a chaotic and impoverished circumstances. And then you decide not to expect anything of him.
How about not put them in chaotic and impoverished circumstances? Sweden does not have these problems at the scale the US has.
Also after World War II, a working class guy could get a job at a factory in Detroit, and be able to afford his wife staying home to raise kids in a house he owned, commuting in a car he owned. Maybe going to school on the GI Bill at some point. All of this is gone. People like Charles Murray spent decades attacking the US working class, and now he bemoans that wage slaves are not interested in pursuing the Sisyphean tasks he has laid out.
All of this is concurrent with the material destruction of working class life in the US, which is why the first thing Henderson has to try to knock out is it has anything to do with material conditions.
It was a hell of a lot better to be a working class man in 1960 then 2005. Two thirds of union jobs are now nonunionized etc.
> This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability.
Well, like most forms of discrimination, THAT'S THE POINT. These people aren't blindly going through life, discriminating without a cause. They know damned good and well what they're actually doing and will use the current state of things as justification for why they should continue the trend. In other words, conservatism. And no, it doesn't really matter what they call themselves or who they vote for, because money speaks louder than ballots.
Most parents are well aware that their kids aren't inherently special past their genetic connection. But if you can automatically cut 30-70% of the population out of the competition for the opportunities you crave for your own kid, then that works to your benefit.
Not really, there were quite some people that suggested that in elite circles the classical relationships still dominate. Not applicable to media stars or hollywood but pretty much the high society beyond that. They were completely honest about it too. There are other elements that advertise patchwork families, as if that wouldn't be a huge compromise not only for the parents, but for the children too.
I can't find a point in history where the extreme left produced anything else than doom.
As someone who grew up in a poor Eastern European country, I felt both envy and admiration for the US. I thought the Americans had best of everything. US seemed like an ideal in many senses.
20 or 30 years later, I feel grateful we still have families, traditions, respect for ourselves and a way of life which can lead to moments of happiness. All of these are under pressure from self appointed far left elites trying to "civilize" and "westernized" us. I hope they won't succeed and that the West is starting to come back to it's lost senses. A civilization built in thousands of years shouldn't be destroyed in few tens of years by madmen and lunatics.
I will happily accept all downvotes, but I rather get downvotes then not say what I feel.
Yeah I do wonder if the massively destabilizing influences of the left on the social structure of the west are fomented by psyops from adversarial countries.
> Affluent families in 1960: 95%
> Working class families in 1960: 95%
> Affluent families in 2005: 85%
> Working class families in 2005: 30%
Ok. Maybe that has something to do with this:
More than six out of every ten American households (64.7%) in the bottom fifth of households by income had no earners in 2020. In contrast, only 4.5% of the households in the top fifth of households had no earners last year, providing more evidence of the strong relationship between average household income and income earners per household.
>bottom fifth of households by income had no earners in 2020
Can we not use covid era numbers?
A whole bunch of people were earning more money by not working during and taking unemployment during covid. You can't make social conclusions about economics during those distorted times.
> Over the past half-century, the number of men per capita behind bars has more than quadrupled.
This then talks about poor people dating too much/families being unstable… as if the instability isn’t put on the poor by overpolicing. Is this more blaming poor people for their poverty?
In my relatively wealthy EU country there are two types of non upper class young men: those who are set to receive a relatively large inheritance and those who don't.
People in the second group have to work much harder than those in the first group to achieve well-being, even if they are professionally successful. People in the first group can afford to underachieve, since they will progressively become richer than those in the second group anyway.
The way I see it there is not simply a low and middle class, there is a multitude of subclasses among them that are mostly defined by inheritance. Partly as a result of it, we now live in awkward economic bubbles that don't mate with each other.
I've always wondered about the inheritance argument. People tend to live a long time now, so that inheritance may come in your sixties or even seventies. The money will provide security in old age, but does not affect the decades when the parents are still alive (apart from the fact that you can make less, because you don't have to save for the old age).
BTW I wonder if financial sector will start offering loans against expected inheritance. They would solve this problem.
> And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on. Today, these norms have largely dissolved. Young men have responded accordingly.
I mostly agree, but I think there are more causes than what is implied by OP.
My suspicion is that working hard is still a social norm, but the way wealth has been distributed over the previous decades no longer lets workers climb the social ladder simply by working hard.
I think birth rates are low because having kids is a luxury, particularly when you have no safety net. Certain low/middle subclasses (for instance, those who inherit several properties) tend to have kids eventually, but they increasingly have them at an advanced age (35+).
Some countries economies -mine, at the very least- have been disfigured to the point where there really isn't a clear motivation to have kids unless you are rich.
In Australia with a strong safety net for single parents its very adverse consequences, there's quite a lot of children with parents on welfare, then 'middle classes' are opting out or having less and later, while upper middle and above still having them though trend is above 30 even to early 40s for women.
If having children, and time, is a big reward in life many of those who work harder and getting a worse deal than those who didn't bother.
> Poor and working-class people follow suit. To the detriment of themselves and their children.
Uh. I know the author grew up rough, but yeah, I'm going to need a citation on this one.
This entire article is based on one huge assumption - everything was better when people felt compelled by society to get married. Was it? Was it really?
Is that why there was an entire genre of boomer humour that can be condensed down to "hahaha, I hate my husband/wife?" Were there no social problems attributable to dysfunctional families in the 1960s and 1970s?
Also this...
> And a lot did use to be expected [of men]. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on. Today, these norms have largely dissolved.
They really have not. Try going on on Tinder as man without a job, see how far that gets you. Now try it as a woman, you'll be shocked and stunned, I'm sure, to see that it's still considered far more socially acceptable to be a woman out of work than a man out of work.
Gender roles are still very much baked into our society. I am the primary caregiver for my children, thanks to being a dev, I work from home full time, so I can do all the things that need doing, yet my wife, their step-Mum, has missed out on several jobs because people assume that she'll need to take too much time off if they get sick - right after she's told them that I'm the primary caregiver who works remotely so is at home for looking after sick kids, and during school holidays etc.
People flat out don't believe her, because they're still stuck in the mindset that men provide, and women care.
Idk about over there but where I'm from men are expected to make money well, and women are expected to marry well (marry men who make money), whether they like it or not. As a man, if someone tells me there is no social expectation on me, then I don't know what to tell them, fuck off may be.
On the other hand, my younger sister received less pressure from my parents to success academically. In fact they never expected anything from her, and I feel that's unfair for her, because as a result, she's achieved less than me at her age. I know for a fact that this is a documented phenomena (first borns are more successful).
This actually indirectly incriminates feminism, article says men will do what is required of them to get sex and feminism sees women being promiscious as "right". But in turn allows one night stands to be common thus lowering the requirements to get sex. Contrast this from older times where majority men would get sex if they were okayed by parents of a woman and then got to marry ... Parents would look at character, wealth, profession, and more all indicators of stability. So men responded by pursuing those things .... But with tinder why bother let's play COD all day and be high 24/7
What about young women? Aren't they supposedly the gatekeepers to procreation? The ones that have evolved to choose what's best for their kids (a two family home)? Did they stop choosing right?
The incentives changed drastically for women. You used to have to be married to a man to access his coffers. Try collecting alimony or child support from a guy who can move 100 miles away and essentially be unfindable. Now all you need is just a dna test and the state will hunt him to the ends of the earth. The state, through welfare, has also provided a higher bar than some lower class men can provide for women.
What a strange mix of important observations about social conditions and mores and stuff verging on culture war bullshit regarding "elites" etc.
For example:
> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant.
The author proceeds to quote an anecdote from a UN conference to supposedly back up this point.
In reality, what is actually going on here has nothing to do with "elites" at all. There is a political ideology (to which I suspect the author at least somewhat subscribes) that puts a high priority on self-reliance, "pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps" and an avoidance of state intervention in the lives of individuals. There is another political ideology which acknowledges that we all benefit when society offers support and assistance to people in need of help, in part because none of us really know when or if we may find ourselves experiencing bad luck or bad judgement or both.
The latter political ideology wants to try to help and nurture everyone to whatever extent possible, to avoid judgement on the decisions/mistakes that people make and focus on how to get them back on their feet and how to minimize the social cost of those mistakes.
The former ideology opposes these efforts, and uses the tools of both the law and of funding choices to try to limit the extent and availability of a social safety net, in the belief it is an overall negative influence on society and the individuals that comprise it.
So when people who believe in the social safety net try to avoid condemning single parent families, what they are actually saying is not "family stability is unimportant". They are saying "we know that relationships sometimes, even often, do not work out, and we think that as a society we should provide as much support as we can so that the children and parents in such situations suffer the least harm possible."
They are met with responses like Rob Henderson's, that mischaracterize their concern and empathy, and with responses from legislatures that essentially say "We're not spending our money to support poor people who make bad choices, they should get their act together and hold themselves to higher behavioral standards."
I'm not taking a position here on whether either of these views is the correct one. But I do get tied of people like Henderson trying to fold fundamentally different conceptions about the role of government into some snide dig at "elites". There plenty of wealthy highly educated people in positions of economic, political and cultural power who both insist on the value of family stability AND refuse to provide meaningful support in cases where it isn't happening. Those people are "elites" too, just as much as people who suggest we should be more understanding and forgiving of these failures. Instead of taking cheap, meaningless shots in a useless culture war, it would be better to cogently lay out a rational basis for why your preferred political ideology is better for society overall, given the criticisms that already exist of its real world effects.
> men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex
I wish there was some kind of pill without much side effects, that made you asexual. Then men could focus on science and other interests.
For Example Sir Isaac Newton's self proclaimed greatest achievement was his lifelong celibacy.
I wonder how sexual selection affects humans overall intelligence... Have human intelligence gone up in the last 200-20000 years or is it the amount of free time that is responsible for the technological boom the last 200 years ? Or does technology advance exponentially ?
> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.
His very weak evidence for this was one affluent person who didn’t want to admit publicly that she prioritizes stability for her children over self gratification - a value which goes against the grain of her inner circle.
Interestingly, of the two towns - Belmont and Fishtown, you immediately know which one is poor and which one is rich. What if we rename Fishtown to, say, Barbeau?
> This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability.
Why would such a person ever do something like this? This is basically living a lie? Has society gone so low that it’s considered admirable to take such a position?
Not admirable, however understandable. They are afraid of getting cancelled in the toxic culture wars and losing their livelihood, career, and everything that depends on it like family and home. Because, 'social justice'.
> People think that if a young guy comes from a disorderly or deprived environment, he should be held to low standards. This is misguided. He should be held to high standards. Otherwise, he will sink to the level of his environment.
In my city, the local government stopped arrests for crimes like theft, property damage, and open drug use. For crimes involving assault, they would maybe do an arrest, keep the person locked up overnight, and then let them go.
The local politicians argued this was right and moral, because these people only commit crime because they come from poverty or generally don’t have “privilege”.
Well… it’s no longer a desirable place to live. The streets are littered with trash, there’s a problem of used drug syringes in public parks and other public spaces, and there are homicides just about every day in the news, or stories of some homeless person assaulting some pedestrian. Just the other week, some old Asian woman got sucker punched. I think a few weeks before that, some drug addict beat a woman with a bat at a public transit stop.
I’m a fairly progressive person, overall. But I look around, and I’m not sure what country I’m in at times.
And I’m writing this on HN because I think the tech industry is part of the problem. When I was at Amazon, we had essentially stopped hiring any demographic in engineering roles except for Indian nationals. We’d bring them in at slightly below market pay (still respectable salaries), but these folks often had 30 days to leave the country if they quit Amazon’s grueling corporate environment. Meanwhile, we didn’t give them the right to vote, effectively shutting down out from the political process. And, for the most part, these folks were willing to work with a toxic work culture, since the alternative meant having to uproot their families and leave the country, perhaps hoping for permanent residency in Canada.
In retrospect, we decided to not hire people born in this country. But we also didn’t want to give the full rights to the people we brought in to substitute them. We knew full and well that if it becomes easy for them to switch jobs, we wont be able to extract the same work hours from them.
Meanwhile, America’s poor are completely forgotten and lost.
Perhaps there is a reason that historically, a lot of cultures (and religions) encouraged stable family units, and discouraged or even tried to outlaw breakage of that pattern (ie extra marital sex, which at the time was very likely to lead to kids out of wedlock, and divorce).
“Alienated children in the suburbs and bored housewives in the homes need to experience flow. If they cannot get it, they will find substitutes in the form of escape.”
Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in the book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play
And good for them- if they are happy with that. If young men do what they like, I'm happy with that. If young women do same, I'm equally happy. Why should anyone expect anything from someone else? I expect things only from myself.
This whole article has a pretty offensive view of people. It reads like "nobody dares to say these things because they are unpleasant, but I'm brave enough to say them and therefore they must be true".
Does the author self-declare their philosophical and political beliefs?
In my view, doing so is necessary for an author to be intellectually honest and open.
Generally speaking, I'm not looking for an author to 'sneak in' a belief by way of a good narrative.
I've read similar commentary by a socially conservative author writing under a pen name (Theodore Dalyrimple) [1]. He wrote a highly selective account that matched his beliefs. It is one thing to so this -- it is another thing to try to hide the underlying belief system which preceded the commentary.
The argument should be true, or not, whatever the author's leanings. Why would you find an argument more or less convincing were the arguer to label themselves?
Putting authors into a box is the opposite of any intellectual or philosophical approach. Why would you even believe that? That would intentionally numb your understanding of any statement. If you need that box to evaluate those, intellectual approaches might not be too suitable.
This article is failing to see a fundamental distinction in spousal relations between "now" (present era) and "then" (pre-1970s): economic dependency between women and men.
On the whole, if you mothered children in the pre-feminist era, and you didn't have a spouse... you and your children could starve. Because there was very little space carved out in our society for women to work. And under the cover of that asymmetry of power men got away with all sorts of abuses.
Yes, the family may have stuck together. And there was a defined and potentially socially responsible role for men in this context: provider and economic glue and source of authority for the family. But at what cost? Spousal and child abuse rates were sky high, though they may not have even been perceived as such at the time. They were just part of the normal authoritarian structure of the family.
Have young men suffered from the changes that have come along with women obtaining additional powers and the bonds of the nuclear family becoming less strong? Quite possibly. But we also have to accept that what was holding that together was also potentially toxic.
Put another way: In general -- over the last 200 years -- capitalist market relations have severed many traditional bonds and obligations. The primary obligation of an adult individual, in our liberal capitalist society, is as a wage labourer, an economic contributor. On the whole people "are" what they "do" (for $$).
The family structure has always been a mix of authoritarian bonds and genuine warmth, material obligations, etc. I think we're still figuring out what its new form will be. It may be that in our neo-liberal hyper-capitalist present society that there are contradictions here we cannot resolve.
Marx/Engels thought so, anyways, check out this paragraph from the Communist Manifesto:
"On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. "
Yes. The past half century has been devoted to exploiting the working class breadwinner and family the benefit of the idle class. Now that the working class breadwinner and family has been improvished and ground down, what is the solution? For the upper classes to hold working class breadwinner and family to account, to become more judgemental of them etc.
Yep, but it's never not been like that. Go back and read what the Victorian aristocracy and bourgeoisie had to say about the English working classes. In general blaming their poverty on their moral failings, and going on about prostitution and sexual behaviours, etc.
Male culture in the West is certainly undergoing dissolution, but the moral of the story is not to go backwards; there were plenty of evils in that culture to want to aspire back to the patriarchical order. Instead, we need to find a new path forward to instill seriousness of purpose and will back into male culture who's drives for competition and sex are 90% satisfied by video games and porhub.
TL;DR: poor men will only do for women whatever is necessary to get laid, these days, almost nothing is necessary anymore so they do just that. Rich men need children who are aware of who they are and get decent upbringing, to pass down their wealth, so they care for their children a lot better. With poor men having nothing to pass on, and also realising their lives are a failure and it doesn't make their kids a good service to pass on their life habits to the kids, why would they bother?
> 3. The upper class, who wants to keep you mired in it
I cannot stress enough how much division and polarization is driven by the wealthy who have a vested interest in sowing discord among the lower classes.
The truth of the matter is that you, as a lower-income white person, have way more in common with a lower-income black person than a wealthy white person. Yet the amount of people who will vehemently oppose the very idea that the likes of Jezz Bezos and 8 other people pay slightly more taxes is mind-boggling.
Republican-controlled state legislatures are busy passing laws to create wedge issues against trans people, gay people, womens' reproductive rights and so on. And it's nothing more than a method of control, of whipping up the base with issues most of the country actually doesn't care about.
I really wish people were better at recognizing this manipulation as we've now progressed to the point where the #1 "news" show in the US is spreading straight up Nazi propaganda [1]. I don't mean that as a perjorative. It is quite literally Nazi propaganda.
> In 1960, across social classes, the vast majority of children were raised by both of their birth parents. By 2005, there was a massive divergence. What happened?
The 60's happened.
Social norms broke down all over the world.
- - - -
Yes, the rich by and large want the poor to be tractable docile workers. Look at history, the relatively recent mass colonization of half the world by a tiny island nation. Slavery. The wealthy and powerful always try to subjugate whoever they can. It's their golf.
- - - -
Yes, society keeps young men in line with the "carrot" of (culturally sanctioned) sex and the stick of ostracism/shunning/shame. This is one of the fundamental pillars of what we call culture.
(The other being death, but that's less popular than sex. With the recent and relative rarity of hairy jerks with swords showing up out of the blue one day to burn down the village and kill, maim, or kidnap everybody in the place, we now use hallucinatory bogeymen for the most part.)
- - - -
Technology has obsolesced a great deal of the work these young folk used to do. (Mostly farming and war.) They are "surplus to requirement" from the POV of the system. All that oxycontin abuse? The rash of suicides? Symptoms of the malaise.
- - - -
So yeah, it sucks to be a drone.
(Heck, if I wasn't good with computers I'd probably be homeless right now. And even that is getting squiffy these days.)
- - - -
On the flip side, there has never been a better time to do things. We have radio-networked pocket supercomputers that can access pretty much the entirety of human knowledge from all of history and all of the world, there are robots, and it's never been easier to get laid.
I threw that last one in as a joke, but it cuts back to the core of the article: once we relax that social control of access to sex, does society fall apart?
(And also the loss of the "common enemy". It's a truism in political science that a common enemy is very very helpful for establishing and maintaining social cohesion. But again we talking mostly about sex here.)
I think the answer to that is, "It depends."
It seems to me that with easy access to birth control we should be seeing the responsible parents having more kids and the promiscuous folks having fewer, eh? So over time society would get stronger, no?
Maybe most people fall into non-reproductive hedonism and the Amish inherit the Earth?
- - - -
I think the bottom line is that if you find yourself a poor male with few prospects you have to figure out a lifestyle that you can live with and get on with it. Society mostly doesn't give a shit about you and is unlikely to start. You can blame the elites, but I've met some and they are just as clueless as everybody else, they just have more money, so it's pretty pointless to blame them. And anyway if you try to do anything to them they can and will shoot you. The entire US Army is essentially there to protect the elites, so good luck with that, if you want to be a rebel.
So where does that leave you?
Make some money. Find some good, solid folks and family up with them. Start a commune in the woods. Live happily ever after. I'm not joking: I've met people that have done this. They are very happy. And there is no (NO!) information about their "thing" on the Internet whatsoever. Think about that: these smurfy people totally exist but you cannot learn of them via the Internet. Most of the really happy settled folks out there DO NOT advertise. They keep quiet. They do not do SEO. You won't see them on television or youtube.
No one is making money from telling you about them so you won't hear about them unless you go looking.
There's a whole world of happy "alternate" lifestyles but "the system" won't tell you about them because it's against the system's interests! That's why hippies are always portrayed as dipshits on TV: if you saw for yourselves the lives of the non-dipshit hippies you would "quit your job, repent, and slack off."
Really it goes back to European vs. Native lifestyles and colonization. The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.
People who could get away from the towns and join Native American societies didn't want to go back. Whereas Natives had to be forced (typically with savage brutality) to adopt European culture.
"Going native" was perceived as a serious problem, because it was: if you didn't like society, or your actual literal "master" (a person under the psychotic delusion that he or she actually literally owned you) you could try to escape to, say, the Sioux nation.
We mostly exterminated or marginalized these societies, and filled and/or enclosed most of the open land, so it seems like options are fewer.
And today we have "the homeless" to act as a goad: if you don't work you will starve in the street. There's not supposed to be a way out.
This in a land (I'm continuing being provincial here and talking about North America) where the herds of buffalo were so large they could take more than a day to pass by, where the rivers were so thick with salmon during spawning season that it's said you could walk across them, where flocks of passenger pigeons were so thick and numerous that they could eclipse the sun and turn day into night.
We destroyed it, farmed ourselves into the "Dust Bowl", etc...
It doesn't have to be this way, there's a better life out there, but the system won't help you reach it.
"I write and read about the culture and habits of elites"
He actually writes about the culture and habits of rich kids. They're not elites in any practical sense. That word does not mean "inheritor." The sycophancy of the rich, the presumption that they should be expected to be somehow better than the hoi polloi, is really getting tedious.
Someone is elite because they've accomplished something, not because they've been handed something. Attempting to apply that word to the wallet is common, and remains incorrect and gross. Yes, I know the reader can very easily Google up examples. The reader should also be able to name cases where Googling up examples gives hilariously wrong information.
Rich kids have always been slackers, in every society in human history. The real change here is that we've stopped taxing them, so "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in two generations" doesn't apply anymore.
Ayn Rand was wrong. Stop expecting wealth from parents to create high quality people.
Every study ever done on the matter has shown what common sense and literature have said all along: rich people are just lazy. It is almost certainly the clearer version "everyone who can be lazy is, but many cannot afford to be."
Hell, I would be.
We've forgotten that because we now believe that they're earning their mega-wealth by giving it to bankers to be grown for them. We pretend to ourselves that because they can pay people to produce profits from money they weren't involved in earning, they're somehow doing something. Then, we point out extremely rare individual counterexamples and say "see? See? Elon exists."
The idea that their "doing nothing" is a result of lack of social pressure is disastrously undermined by that they've also done nothing when there was social pressure, throughout all of history; even to the point that several royalties fell because nobody in the royalty could be bothered to stop looking at art and having sex long enough to keep the lights on.
We should want evidence of claims like this.
Even despite the education and resource gap, even scaled to the popular bin sizes, in all of history, the vast majority of invention and business success has come from the unwashed masses.
The null hypothesis supports this as entirely expected, unrelated to what society requests. No society in history has achieved otherwise.
Elites are people who are at the top of societal hierarchy, in terms of their wealth, influence, status etc. Multimilionaires are part of the elite, regardless of whether they made their money or inherited it.
"We have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more."
I wonder did the destruction of unions and the export of jobs have anything to do with it? Also the destruction of mom ‘n pop retail. What about TV and the internet, destroying in person social interaction? What about the large scale jailing of black youth, for non violent crimes, three strikes and all that? I dunno about any of this, but the article is just recycling old right wing tropes.
IMVHO there are various variables the article do not take into account: we are in a decadent society, decadent enough that most cohorts/social classes see it, but in a too early stage to see something new to start structuring enough to know what we can do to pass the mess.
Middle class is deeply demolished, pushed to far lower level of wealth, high, but not so high class start seeing a possible escape toward a new neofeudal class but present situation is too liquid to been able to spot a right place and development plan, the only reasonable target is being flexible and diverse as much as possible, and that for young of the first cohort means the certainty of a future worse than that of their parents, witch fuel unrest and abandonment not taking careers since so far no one taught as you want seems to appear. For the second cohort that means try avoiding a career at all to avoid being trapped preferring gambling on family money waiting for the appearance of a more defined future. Both those cohort are acculturated enough to know that in anything the first pioneers who arrive, the frontier/first line will suffer and die quickly, the seconds, thanks to the knowledge of the pioneers prosper and the third will arrive late to prosper.
Poor know that they will be poorer but that is sold as not a such bad thing, they say society keep going in the end, humans are there for millennia and while there was good and bad moments for the real poor situations have mostly improved a bit, having seen a potential "in 2030 you'll own nothing and be happy" many of that cohort trust or at least desperately hope that that's will be the case.
So IMO essentially all "social classes" except for a very thin and more and more thinner élite see a bad future and no interest to do anything positive, some because there is no logic possible plan to go through the storm some because they think the storm is already around them and they can just hope not knowing because of lack of culture the classic una salus victis nullam sperare salutem.
Honestly, myself, coming from a wealthy family who can afford essentially anything we might reasonably want having a good personal social position, I have many ideas but still deeply hesitate because so far I can't see anything defined enough in the medium-long term. Schools was a deep delusion, at first I study at home with family selected teachers and with wonderful results confronted with my friends. At high school I decide to go to a school and the result was shockingly bad, I literally lived on income for almost all the time, having already more knowledge than the demand. At uni another delusion, programs seems to be designed to form Ford-model stereotypical workers just at an a bit formally higher level. That's was extremely demotivating and I do not know how can be for those who haven't even see something else.
Long story short it's more than mere no expectation: the modern society being way too elitist have deprived of any expectation anyone, promoting and rewarding mediocrity, crushing those who have personal expectations and desire with the clear aim of creating a society of useful idiots in the classic Greek sense, human-robots to be bolted is a pre-defined system. In that environment young can choose between:
- being criminals;
- being terrorists, as a sub-type of criminals whose target is more political and long term than for short-term profit;
- being nihilists abandoned on the screen to just see the world run as a spectacle.
I fear that there is no non-destructive ways out of such impasse. We are so folded in such a crappy social model that a war, a full-scale tragedy seems to be the least devastating option to change. History however tell that such movements never goes as planned, so plans are deeply needed and incredibly hard, while we all know that nothing will go according to the plan anyway, the needed plan is just a pre-digested guide to hope being successfully counter possible development in shorter times... That's stressful enough to made most just hopeless and a few minority neurotic and angry enough to being unable to do much more than quick shots guided by anger and emotions in general.
As a middle-aged man who's been studying this stuff for a while, I'd like to throw in my observations.
We are in a Masculine Crisis, and both men and women are suffering, because gender isn't zero-sum, and a society that damages men is just as harmful to heterosexual women, who struggle to find men. Late-stage capitalism's breakdown of the family (which it molded into a bourgeois form, then let rot) happened in black communities about 40 years before it started to hit rural whites. This makes it hard to sympathize with the so-called "white working class", who clutched their pearls and moralized and showed no sympathy at all when this dysfunction was hitting blacks in Detroit, half a century ago.
What is a Masculine Crisis? Well, I think this sentence hits it straight on:
Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.
When you tell men that the only way to be masculine is to "provide", and then deprive them of all means to provide except to subject oneself to the whims of a high-status person--a person given that status not on merit but simple random accidents of heredity--you leave them without a decent choice at all. Not playing is no option (a man must "provide") but every play is a losing one (the requisite self-emasculation of subordination). Whether this is a condition of low expectations (society has given up on men) or high ones (as workplace pressures mount, due to the erosion of worker's rights and dignity) is irrelevant; either way, it shuts people down.
Of course, the experience is pretty awful for women, too. Work, for 95% of people in this society, is just horrid. No one should have to do stupid shit to survive--I hope we can agree on that. I just don't think this particular social ill is as gutting for women as it is for men.
When it comes to the Masculine Crisis, we on the left are really missing the opportunity. Ex falso quodlibet; principle of (possibly literal) explosion. When no options exist for someone, he tends to make one. I'm not an accelerationist of any kind (leftist or rightist) but acceleration is happening. Alas, the left is so deep in the cul-de-sac of gender being entirely socially constructed (which is not true) and therefore meaningless (which it's not) that they can't figure out how to operate in this environment. So, instead, the Masculine Crisis is left to be exploited by the center-right (Jordan Peterson) or worse, the actual fascists.
Conditions like this produce war. Why? Because five thousand years of human history have produced exactly one situation in which a man can be subordinate and still accept himself as a man--to pick up a weapon and join an army of some kind. Mind you, I don't want war; I'm staunchly against it except as a last resort. However, conditions like those in the modern workplace (except for those born into hereditary wealth) are at such a level as to throw young men into hopelessness... and they will often do anything for those who promise any kind of hope, no matter false.
I never bought the argument that men are struggling with their masculinity. I was surprised that this even became a topic in tech where programming nerds already have written off being masculine, as classically associated with shooting guns instead of pointers. Basically doing the opposite than pondering in your faculty in your jesus slippers. But I never had the impression anyone took that to heart seriously.
Income is very relevant though and the most honest appreciation of your work and there is a development in a negative direction. This does hit women even worse from my experience though.
But your point still holds truth, instead of lamenting masculinity (very few people care) perhaps "the left" should reorient itself to actually improve working conditions and most importantly wages. I think Jordan Petersen can improve himself even more if he would clean my room too, but I believe many people do like him because it signals rejection of detached gender topics in general and there just so many venues for that. Because people don't care about it just as they don't care about their masculinity. Their pay check however is another matter.
Furthermore the problems in the workplace are not just monetary. Work is more compacted, surveillance is increasing, stress is increasing because of 24/7 connectivity... and now they have to put their pronouns in their signatures? You might get a wave of rejection for that after some point.
But your point still holds truth, instead of lamenting masculinity (very few people care) perhaps "the left" should reorient itself to actually improve working conditions and most importantly wages.
I largely agree. The left's real mission is unifying, not divisive. (The corporate "woke" left is a ruse designed to divide people against each other by emphasizing identity politics and de-emphasizing class, money, and systemic effects.)
I only point out (or, at least, purport) the existence of a Masculine Crisis because I think it is real enough for people like Peterson and Carlson to capitalize on. Society still tells men they have to "provide" and heterosexual women still expect them to, and if the only way to do so is to humiliate themselves, that's a historically dangerous situation.
Your comment implies that you categorically deny correlations between social security and psychological development and well-being. Intellectually, I find this provoking, see maslows pyramid. Would you please give your audience and your comment the slightly more nuanced elaboration they deserve?
Have you reviewed the HN guidelines recently? As I understand it, there is no need to comment on being banned or downvoted. Just say what you think is worth saying, being mindful of the guidelines.
Holy crap I never imagined so much weird Ward Cleaver ideology from HN. This thread is insane to read. I expected this article to be universally eviscerated, since it's tons of conjecture and bad data badly interpreted, but there's a ton of people who apparently feel like their male identity is attached to some bizarre archetype. Some sort of fucked up Form for men floating out in the ether that looks like a cross between Archie Bunker and John Wayne.
That's the trouble, they don't know what they're trying to explain. This thread is a reverberation chamber for irrational masculine fear. A bunch of people trying to pinpoint something that may not even exist, and choosing to look backward for familiarity. You can't engage with that. Not online.
Sometimes the healthy response is "This shit is nuts, I'm going to go talk to people in person and touch some grass."
I think you’re calling it “irrational” to give yourself an excuse to engage in bad faith — such as using demeaning language towards a large group of people.
That gives you an “out” from having to understand something that might conflict with a belief you hold or make you uncomfortable.
Or maybe it's just irrational. Not saying the feelings expressed here don't point to a very real issue, but there's no chance in any meaningful engagement with the vast majority of the comments in this thread. You have a bunch of scared men making emotional arguments that somehow their entire self worth and sense of direction relies on society demanding something of them. The something in most cases being rooted in nostalgia, either for times when men rode horses, or when it was more acceptable to slap a woman around - but don't worry, that didn't happen much, because it was also a time of tighter extended family and thus other men around to protect and avenge her. Boyish fantasies of cowboys, knights, and getting to beat up your brother-in-law if he hit your sister and left a mark. It doesn't get less insane as you continue reading.
By all means let's talk about what men are going through and feeling, let's treat it seriously, but let's not scramble in terror backwards.
> By all means let's talk about what men are going through and feeling, let's treat it seriously
Your post comes across as you strawmanning and demeaning men doing just that — to justify your own irrational dismissal of what they’re actually saying.
Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection centered around the question the author hasn’t asked himself yet: who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.
But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself.
I found that if I find myself projecting onto social norms, society, or some other loose definition of “they”, what I’m really doing is projecting a part of myself that I haven’t been honest about yet.