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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

#401

Post by ue_ »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #291
dragonwriter wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Leninism is Marxism, you are a dupe of Leninist propaganda.

Ah, yes. "No true Scotsman". Nope, not going to play that. Edit: At this stage, enough so-called "Marxist" governments have descended into slavery, starvation, and mass murder that the burden of proof should lie on those who advocate such governments, and that burden should be heavy indeed. But nope, it's always "but that wasn't REAL Marxism". After a century of trying, with dozens of attempts, it is quite clear that…

> Ah, yes. "No true Scotsman".

Refusing to back up certain or all interpretations of an idea by no means amounts to NTS.

You're making a fallacy by saying that these problems you mention are core to Marxist thought. Modern Marxist philosophers are almost dedicated to finding flaws in 20th century Marxist implementations, and doing research on other models such as anarchism, post-left anarchism and technocracy.

Dismissing this research as "lol no true scotsman, not playing that" is incredibly ignorant and facile.

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

#402

Post by ue_ »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #247
Endy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxism should never be "easily dismissed". It should be respected and fought for. The problem is that we're afraid to go out and actually fight the Permanent Revolution; because we've been cowed by those who currently hold the power.

You're right, we've never had Real Marxism (TM) , we just have to try a little harder next time. > Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer sustain the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing military aggression. The socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production t…

>Do they mean that same capitalism that brings >1,000,000 Chinese people out poverty every month?

The idea that by pointing to some successes, it justifies the whole system of appropriating labour for profit is utterly falacious and false. I hope you can see that it's not sound reasoning.

A system can have merits; Marx was very clear that Capitalism has various merits, especially over its predecessors. His idea was that there is a further reachable goal. You have made no effort to dismiss this other than by saying "what we have now is pretty ok".

>Try talking to someone who lived through one of them.

Why would their experience be relevant to reformulations in theory? To be clear, I'm not advocating for Soviet-style Communism.

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

#403

Post by pjc50 »

fmihaila wrote: post #285
narrator wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. This has been changing for the worse with all the pay to win stuff, but there's still a fair amount of cheap gaming out there. With a gaming addiction, never leaving the house and a minimal food budget I wonder how much the average gamer subsists on each month. I had a friend whose brother would go to work and come home and play video games e…

> One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. It can be extremely expensive in opportunity costs, unfortunately.

That assumes that the person has opportunities they're giving up. If they don't have them, or can't see that they have them, it's not nearly so expensive to them.

(Belief that you have opportunities, and motivation to take them, is very valuable. You can't just tell people this though, humans don't work like that)

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

#404

Post by ue_ »

p1esk wrote: post #324
dragonwriter wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they mean that same capitalism that brings >1,000,000 Chinese people out poverty every month? No, they mean the dominant economic system of the developed West in the mid-19th through early-20th century (since replaced in the developed west by the modern mixed economy which is an unstable form with a danger of reverting back to capitalism because it retains central features of capitalism.) What China has is a tra…

A word of advice: avoid the word "Marxism" like a plague. If you believe there are some good ideas hidden in it, present those ideas directly, without assigning historical credit to anyone.

Why? Marxism refers to the work of Marx and Engels, who are forefathers of the criticism of capitalism (along with other 18th century anarchists and socialists). I see no reason to get rid of the term or use other terms; I base my reasoning of Marx's work and Engels's formulations and I'll be sure to give the great men their credit.

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

#405

Post by chongli »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #336
Turing_Machine wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the presumed scenario here is that all but the 1% are starving in the streets (including the friends and relatives of said cops). Why wouldn't they side with them? Just to be clear here, I think the outcome of such a revolution scenario would almost certainly lead to even more suffering. But it would happen nonetheless. It behooves us to not allow things to get that bad.

Why is this the presumed scenario? That is not the scenario here in India, where the lower class does in fact work as domestic labor for the middle class. Starvation only seems to happen nowadays in war zones and communist countries.

(Replying again because it's too late to edit).

If you want some numbers to back up the intuitive argument I made in the other comment, take a look at this article by Branko Milanovic[0]. It shows in explicit detail where all this resentment is coming from. Juxtapose this chart against your suggestion (as presumably a member of the 95th percentile) that these global upper-middle-class people (between 78th and 90th percentiles) be reduced to the level of Indian domestic servants and you get a good sense that might hate the idea.

[0] http://voxeu.org/article/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incom...

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

#406

Post by Wildgoose »

lkrubner wrote: post #239
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "horribly stacked life" card is, in my experience, most often played by people trying to get by in the overly competitive environments of large cities. I know a lot of people don't like to hear it, but I'll let you in on a little secret: if you don't feel like you're getting anywhere trying to work and live in a major city, do yourself a favor and move to a less-populated area. Many cities have become extremely c…

If you go to rural Kentucky, you will see how wrong you are. Likewise, if you go to rural West Virginia, you will see that you are wrong. Visit the farms in rural Arkansas, spend a few days, engage some farmhands in conversation. If you talk to at least 4 such people, then at least 1 of them will be addicted to meth. You can often detect this simply by looking at them. Often their teeth give them away. Spend some tim…

Thank you for this reply. I especially appreciated the quote "The civil rights movement is in a race with the tractors." which seems extremely apposite given the pace of general automation.

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

#407

Post by [deleted] »

petre wrote: post #240
glangdale wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I have seen this in Australian academia: Boomer academics who were permitted to publish a paper every 2-3 years during the first 10+ years of their academic life, and/or defer getting a PhD to ludicrously late in their careers, are now elevated to senior positions supervising students and junior faculty who will not have reasonable careers unless they publish a paper every 2-3 months or better.

Well, the world just got a lot more competitive and there are a lot more people trying to get a PhD.

[deleted]

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

#408

Post by kerbalspacepro »

hbosch wrote: post #152
peckrob wrote: post #72

I've watched this happen to my friends. One that I graduated high school with in particular comes to mind. We all played video games back then. Half Life, Goldeneye, Starcraft, Everquest, etc. He was a smart guy, driven, usually made better grades than me (I was lazy in high school). Took a job at an medical supply company after graduating from high school intending to work for a few months before starting college. W…

Saw this happen with some of my old friends, years ago. Not with WoW, but Final Fantasy XI... it was insane and scary, for sure.

Final Fantasy XI isn't even that good.

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

#409

Post by xor1 »

09bjb wrote: post #267
xor1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Like marry into money? If that's your point, it's not going to be valid much longer the way things are going, with women dominating more and more of the middle- and upper-middle-class jobs (glass ceiling problem notwithstanding).

I love how the first conclusion you jump to is "marrying into money". Really? You know that there are plenty of single-earner households outside of SF/SV, NYC, and the other tech hubs, right? (That aren't rich, if that needs to be stressed).

>If that's your point, it's not going to be valid much longer the way things are going, with women dominating more and more of the middle- and upper-middle-class jobs (glass ceiling problem notwithstanding).

White and Asian women*

Step out of your HN bubble for a moment, and try to think about the existence of groups that you don't normally acknowledge. It's "not going to be valid much longer" just because things are changing in the immediate regions that you typically spend time reading about. There's the rest of the country and even the world to take into consideration too.

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

#410

Post by fdupoo »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #349
SticksAndBreaks wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a addict really that much worser off? At the end, all that remains of life, is sugar encoded eletricity in a jelly-fish on a walking sausage. They dont make copies of themselves though. My grandfather had a collague, who build a fast-breeder reactor in germany. Then the political climate changed and the reactor- brand new was deconstructed, and the whole thing reverted to a grass-farmland. Noting but memorys to sh…

all these moments will be lost in time.

Like tears In the rain
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