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Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

1843magazine.com

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Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#41

Post by peteretep »

ocschwar wrote: post #17
DougN7 wrote: post #5

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

That's what scares the shit of me regarding UBI. I don't mind paying for it even if it does keep young men immersed in a fantasy world. But I have a daughter. And she will be surrounded by men whose idea of women will be shaped by game characters that fail the Turing test but have big tits. I guess for her first birthday after puberty I'll have to get her a taser.

That's fine, the young men will much prefer sex robots anyway. Relationship dynamics, freed of men needing human women to fulfil their sexual urges, are gonna get weird.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#42

Post by pbkhrv »

firstpost1234 wrote: post #26

Hard to blame anyone for spending their time doing things where success is quantifiable and quickly displayed. This is the Western countries' version of hikkikomori and there will only be more of it as education and good opportunities become out of reach for more people. Men seem more likely to do this than women because of the societal pressures on them to get a job and run the rat race of dating and climbing a none…

> and starting your career in your 20s without an inherently marketable skill is terrifying for most people

Not as terrifying as starting your career in your 40s without an inherently marketable skill because 20s and 30s were spent playing video games...

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#43

Post by peteretep »

peterwwillis wrote: post #6

My friends were getting addicted to "Evercrack" 15 years ago, playing for days on end, affecting school, work, and social life. Other games had similar effects (usually mmorpgs). Nothing new here

I think if it wasn't possible to easy and irreversably delete FreeCiv savegames I'd be homeless.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#44

Post by xor1 »

firstpost1234 wrote: post #26

Hard to blame anyone for spending their time doing things where success is quantifiable and quickly displayed. This is the Western countries' version of hikkikomori and there will only be more of it as education and good opportunities become out of reach for more people. Men seem more likely to do this than women because of the societal pressures on them to get a job and run the rat race of dating and climbing a none…

>Men seem more likely to do this than women because of the societal pressures on them to get a job and run the rat race of dating and climbing a nonexistent corporate ladder.

Women also have more options.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#45

Post by findateamfirst »

throwaway420 wrote: post #30

* Disappointing that the false meme about some gaming communities being hostile to women because they're women was promoted in this article. Some gaming communities are very hostile to newcomers: but it's not because you're a woman, it's because you're a noob or just suck. Welcome to one of the last remaining meritocracies. * The article makes a correct observation insofar as more men (not just an occasional sad soci…

You're horribly mistaken, likely because you haven't spent time in communities that aren't hostile to women. It's really hard to know whether your community is hostile to women unless you're a woman. A lot of guys just don't understand how much harassment a typical woman experiences, and when they hear it criticized basically fall back on "well I don't see it" and conclude it must not be happening rather than trying to collect more information.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#46

Post by yummyfajitas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #29
DougN7 wrote: post #5

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

This is the thing UBI prevents. A large benefit of a UBI compared to the status quo is that it reduces marginal tax rates on low income people. Right now you can get a lot of assistance if you have little to no income, but if you make a dollar you lose 90 cents in benefits. Who wants to work for 10 cents on the dollar? With a UBI you make a dollar and you keep most of it, so there is more incentive to work.

How does a UBI prevent this? The people described in the article don't seem to want more money. They want to play video games. Giving them enough money to live off of would allow them to do exactly that while producing nothing of benefit to society. Right now, at least, some of them seem marginally productive (contractors, the cashier, etc).

Utility, as a function of money, generally has a negative second derivative - think Utility(income)=log(income) rather than Utility(income) = income. Utility'(0) > Utility'(UBI), so the UBI is still a massive work disincentive regardless of marginal tax rates.

A better solution is work incentives - EITC, Basic Job (UBI but only if you do government work), that kind of thing.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#47

Post by ocschwar »

TOMDM wrote: post #21
ocschwar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what scares the shit of me regarding UBI. I don't mind paying for it even if it does keep young men immersed in a fantasy world. But I have a daughter. And she will be surrounded by men whose idea of women will be shaped by game characters that fail the Turing test but have big tits. I guess for her first birthday after puberty I'll have to get her a taser.

Interesting conclusion you have come to. Is this because you believe people playing these games are not able to separate the fantasy of the game from real life? If so, what differentiates them from pornography?

6 hours of running around a fantasy world, rescuing damsels in distress who fall out of their dresses and embrace you.

Or 10 minutes watching real people having sex, knowing those people use aliases so that after the camera shuts down and the paper towels come out, they can go and live their own real lives.

That's the difference I see.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#48

Post by graeme »

wallace_f wrote: post #14
DougN7 wrote: post #5

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

It's a real possibility, but consider thinking about it this way: Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility. Everything from utility companies to the financial sector to government to even academia has a heck of a lot of perverse incentives and corruption. Over half a century ago John Maynard Keynes--one of the most influential intellectuals to sh…

> Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility.

What are some examples of this? Why are people paying those workers?

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#50

Post by sandworm101 »

65827 wrote: post #19

I really like this read, something just smells off about blaming young people for "wasting years" on video games. We've got a horribly stacked real life "game" where the boomers and elites have horded everything and fucked future generations, blaming an individual for dropping out and not wanting to really participate in that trainwreck is being dishonest at best.

And how many of those boomers have themselves slipped into the alternate realities of drugs and alcohol? If you are going to distract yourself, videogames are better than drinking. The remark in the OP about the father having to change a baby while playing a game is telling. That father could put his gaming on pause. A generation ago, how many fathers in similar situations were catatonic with a bottle in one hand? Rather than being down at the local watering hole, the traditional place for forgetting life problems, this father was at home. That's progress.
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