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

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

#171

Post by flukus »

1123581321 wrote: post #96
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you're describing (low taxes as an incentive to work) is a libertarian argument for small government. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's the opposite of UBI which requires a per capita tax equal to the per capita basic income.

No, it's very different. Let's say I'm getting $100 worth of benefits a day (makes the math easier) And let's say I could do a days work and make $100, but I'd lose $90 worth of benefits. That extra $10 may not be worth a days work.

With UBI you'd get that same $100, but if you took that days work you'd get an extra $100 (minus tax, let's say 20%). Now you're reward for that days work is $80.

The UBI system taxes higher but also provides more incentive to the worker. Welfare cliffs are an awful demotivator.

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

#172

Post by itchyjunk »

Games, to a degree is escapism of course. When I dropped out of college and sat at the back of a public library, I saw all types of values as I spent so many hours in so many different games. Learnt about communicating only the important details in first person shooters (FPS) and learnt about sacrificing my character to save my carry in MOBA [2] games like leauge of legends and dota 2. Though no one outside gaming communities generally care about such things. I get called lazy and get told that I am wasting my life away fairly often.

A game like dota 2 has roughly 500k player playing at any given time. about 3x more for leauge. Thats 500k * 24 hours a day spent collectively as humans on a game on any given day. So billions of hours a week is not a bad estimation. There is a tedtalk video that talks about the hours as well.[1] I often this about this in the back of my mind when people talk about universal basic income (UBI) and unemployment. I think the future generation will find it natural to put in large hours into games and it won't be seen as negative.

Games are also asylum for some though, i've met some really awesome people but people who were clearly in very bad places mentally. Some have spent years in game collecting and achieving stuff that will have no meaning to anyone outside of the game but means the world to them. (Sadly one killed himself after his account got hacked and all this stuff was gone). Therefore, I wish people approaching from the outside of specific communities trying to talk to these people and talk about issues would sometimes take a little time to look at the culture before going off on stuff like "bikini armor" [3] (female character with `impractical` armor) or video game violence or toxicity[4] in gaming community. Yes these all might be problems and we'd all like to address it, but trying to confront a population who's already withdrawn from reality to varying degree is not the best approach from my point of view.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_aren...

[3] https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSrC_DI... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2v9zqf/top_10_most_...

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

#173

Post by robertfw »

marknutter wrote: post #158
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.

So why did the generations before the Baby Boomers do so well despite having a much worse game stacked against them? I think the crisis that Millenials are facing are a case of over-parenting/over-protection, increased secularization, the rise of feminism and demonization of masculinity, and a failed higher education system.

How exactly does increased secularization and "the rise of feminism and demonization of masculinity" contribute to a crisis for this generation?

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

#174

Post by flashman »

ganfortran wrote: post #57

That is how you got alt-right. Bad job market and on the other hand portrayed as oppressor and reminded to check your own privilege. Video game is just the surface of the underlying illness. It is cheap(per hour), and accessible source of pleasure.

I think I see what you're saying here: This story is about young unemployed people who have many hours to spare and use them gaming. There are similar young people who use those hours on the alt-right parts of 4chan, Reddit or other online communities.

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

#175

Post by edblarney »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #66

Every job I've worked in my adult life has involved being judged by standards the boomers doing the judging could never live up to, and then covering for their incompetence with technical skills(because I'm young, so I can just do that stuff). It would be such a sad joke if it weren't for the fact that they squat in every opportunity young people have for their futures (real estate, higher positions, etc) while the y…

Utter and complete rubbish.

The 'boomers' invented most of the 'computer stuff' you use, most 'developers' today are hacks (granted, some are amazing).

Boomers had difficult upbringing, brought real social change, lived through - and ended the Cold War.

Female boomers were expected to be secretaries - and had to fight for the right just to do normal jobs in the workplace.

Even the boys - were expected to do the same jobs their fathers did, mostly boring labour - and only a fraction of them got to go to University.

There was no such thing as 'startups' back in the day - there were zero opportunities for middle class young people to generate wealth or do globally impactful things.

They lived during the draft, and 50 000 of them died in Vietnam.

Millenials are born into massive entitlement, wealth , privilege and opportunity.

You get bored easily, and don't want to do the same job for more than a year - but expect loyalty and long term employment? Yes - boomers had steadier work - but it was also incredibly boring, stagnant - and in real wages, pay was crap.

Boomers could own a small, shoddy home in the suburbs, and were able to have 'a fridge' and 'an oven' and 'a car' - even though they were all crap by today's standards - that was 'The American Dream' and they were generally happy.

If you are born past the fall of the Berlin wall in America - unless you are from a ghetto - you do not know hardship.

As for real estate: the average home price in the US is about $200K. You can afford a home. You just can't be 'Instagram baller'.

As for 'higher positions' - do you think the 'Greatest Generation' just handed over their choice positions to the 'Boomers'? Or do you think it took mostly a lifetime of work and loyalty? If you don't like your job make yourself CEO of your own company. What's stopping you?

American Millenials have more opportunity than any group of people in the entirety of history - enough with your complaining.

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

#176

Post by laughfactory »

sheepmullet wrote: post #63
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.

I think you might be worrying about the wrong thing. Young men have much healthier views on gender equality than when I was young. The trend I see is young men not putting in the effort to form romantic relationships and young women, rather than adjust their standards or put more effort in, trying to compete for the few guys who do measure up. I would be much more worried that my daughter was going to end up very lon…

I think you're right. Already we have a world in which we may be married, and yet lonely because our spouses are absorbed in their phones. Young people are more and more incapable of even achieving that because they don't know how to communicate in real life. Via text, Snapchat, Instagram, or whatever they're comfortable, but in person?

I think you're right: the society of tomorrow will be lonely indeed.

Wouldn't it be ironic if it's not nuclear war, or environmental catastrophe, which leads to the extinction of the human race, but social media, Netflix, games, and VR?

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

#177

Post by yummyfajitas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #92
yummyfajitas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If all you want is to live in a low rent area and play video games then you can already do it with existing government assistance. The change is that you don't lose the assistance by getting a job. Work incentives for low-utility jobs are highly inefficient when people choose the makework jobs over real jobs, and work incentives for arbitrary real jobs are just a UBI with unnecessary paperwork, since you can just "wo…

The IRS is reasonably good at cracking down on the fraud you suggest.

Existing welfare/disability fraud/etc does allow one to exploit the taxpayer as you suggest, but it requires active work to do so. That too is a disincentive, and to an extent a social stigma. UBI has no such mitigating factors.

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

#178

Post by flukus »

graeme wrote: post #48
wallace_f wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Why are people paying those workers?

Because in any large organisation they are indistinguishable from the productive ones. Sometimes even in your own team there might be someone that appears very productive but creates long term maintenance costs.

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

#179

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

wallace_f wrote: post #81
graeme wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

>Why are people paying those workers? In short, in modern, mainstream economic theory the ideas that explain this are what's called Market Failures . In 2001, the Nobel Prize in economics went to people who studied information asymmetries, which lead to market failures. A concrete and classic example is the Tragedy of the Commons. My earlier example of the financial sector, which in 2008 showed everyone how private g…

> In 2001, the Nobel Prize in economics went to people who studied information asymmetries, which lead to market failures.

People might know part of this work better by the paper title / catchphrase "market for lemons" [1]. This inspired "lemon laws" in several countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

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

#180

Post by eropple »

throwaway420 wrote: post #126
findateamfirst wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

a) Where did I say that women aren't experiencing harassment on some gaming communities? In fact, I explicitly acknowledged it. Your post is kind of pointless virtue signaling or something. b) I just pointed out that it's just generally not about your gender. It doesn't matter if you're a man or woman: every newcomer gets harassed in really rough ways using the most biting insults available. A fat guy will get the ob…

Fat guys get called fat. Women are threatened with rape and murder.

"Equality." "Political incorrectness." Sure.

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