Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#41

Post by hindsightbias » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

MyHypatia wrote: post #20

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

I see this too. One thing that has struck me lately, is the similarity between the addictive nature of gambling and video games. Going to a casino once in a while or playing some video games with friends is fine. But the amount of time some people spend on video games really mimics a gambling addiction, except it's less frowned upon because they're mostly losing time instead of money. But if you consider the opportun…

Have been going to conferences in Vegas for 30+ years. For a long time it was just incredibly depressing walking through the floors and seeing all the elder generation playing slots at all hours. Quite the motivator to never stop working, IMO.

Now that Vegas is more young-focused, it's all age groups on the slots. Then I think, multiply those giant floors by 1000X and that's the gaming population.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#42

Post by AlwaysRock » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

I've got a buddy in a similar situation. We all came from somewhat similar backgrounds and all majored in the same, useless, thing. We lived together and while we all played a lot of video games one of the three never really moved on from that. He's still working at a low wage job behind a counter and playing video games a lot.

I think it's less that he doesnt know different but more that he never got a break in the right direction. I stumbled into a career. Our other buddy stumbled into a career. He didn't. I'm not saying he never will but I can look back and point to a few key moments that led me to where I am today. Without those I'd probably be living in my parents house playing video games too.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#43

Post by usrusr » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #9

dijit wrote: post #2

If the goal is gender equality: what's wrong with this? The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years.

These men are not being supported by their wives, they just don't go and form a new family. Women in that age range are generally more educated than their male counterparts and they earn more, so this statistic makes sense. They also have trouble finding a male partner, especially because one of their requirements is that they should earn more than them. This sounds like an impending demographics / societal disaster.…

It sounds like a disaster for running pampered middle class retirements on what is effectively a pyramid scheme, but also like the closest thing we have to a chance for sustaining humanity.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#44

Post by olivierestsage » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #34

futureshock wrote: post #22

This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high c…

Until this year, I lived in the same place I grew up, one of the highest cost-of-living places on the planet: NYC. Until the pandemic, the goal of owning a home did seem totally out of reach for me, even with my remote SV tech job salary. Then I moved to an unincorporated community in TN, because NYC's lockdowns, mask mandates, and general cultural decay was too much for me to bear - financially, emotionally, and eve…

Unsure why you're getting downvoted for this -- it makes good sense, and many could benefit from this kind of thing. I have a friend who moved from NYC to Ohio recently. He was bellyaching about it a lot (the move was for work), since he thought he would be so sad to leave the cultural opportunities of NYC, etc. Instead he has found that a) Ohio wasn't so bad after all, b) his stress-related conditions have evaporated, and c) he has more time to pursue what he loves doing in that environment.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#45

Post by willcipriano » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #24

kogepathic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of e…

What does effort mean in this context? I recall friends of mine, young women, who were having the hardest time finding a significant other were just demanding things of men that would have them selecting from a socioeconomic pool of the top 20% of the population, when they themselves were in the bottom 20%. It was my experience that young women in general were asking for too much when I was in my early 20s. They want…

"Take me on an adventure" was always a instant no for me. In the modern world a spouse is supposed to be a equal partner, I'm glad I found my wife who feels the same way. I don't want someone I have to drag somewhere like a suitcase.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#46

Post by bobthechef » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

futureshock wrote: post #22

This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high c…

"If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family,"

This seems to be an issue across the board, at least in degrees, but that's because we live in an extractive oligarchy. This can't last forever. I just hope it doesn't lead to either revolution or socialism. We need to rethink our economic principles. Capitalism as state-sponsored usury or as consumerist decadence is not viable, just, or good.

Recall that in the 1950s, the single income of a working father sufficed to support a wife and their many children (since birth rates were much higher then). You can't do that anymore. That seems like a massive regression. We may have more flavors of ice cream, but who cares if that comes at the price of the important stuff. I say this without idealizing those decades. Those are the decades, after all, that led us to where we are today.

"then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense."

Well, it doesn't make sense from the perspective of human flourishing. There are other things that a person in that position can be doing rather than pissing his life away in masturbatory activities like video games. This speaks to a deeper demoralization in our society, and in this case, that of men, and not just those who are unemployed or living at home. Our culture sucks.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#47

Post by lelanthran » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #38

marcellus23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly believable that women don't enjoy dating apps, but I think it's difficult to make the case that it's equally hard for them (in terms of successfully getting a date) when they have thousands of matches and many men I know have none.

Thousands of matches isn’t a good thing. If you ever have the opportunity ask a female friend to show you the kind of messages they get on dating apps. They’re pretty appalling. It genuinely worries me that there are so many creeps out there. The men you know may not be getting many matches but at least the ones they get are more than likely from relatively normal people. If I had to sort through the garbage women do…

> Thousands of matches isn’t a good thing.

He didn't say it was, he said it was preferable to having no matches.

I recall seeing the OkCupid stats once (okstats?). The numbers pretty much said that although women were getting most of the messages, they were all only responding to the same 10% of males, while most men were sending messages to almost all the women.

You've pretty much got 80% of the women competing for the top 10% of the males.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#48

Post by kypro » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

We seem to live in an age of such abundance and freedom that it's now possible to live in all manner of ways which seems to exacerbate these extremes.

In the past if you were a man and wanted to eat and have a home you had to work. We also relied far more on children to look after us in our old age than we do today.

Today welfare and the affordability of essentials like food make it possible for people not to work and not worry about the implications of growing old without family.

I agree it's cultural, but it's a cultural trend being fuelled by the abundance of modern day living. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. I guess it's nice people can choose to play video games all day and not worry about working or having a family, but I worry about the impact this will have on our mental health. I also wonder what this means for economic inequality and the stability of society in general. I'm a big believer that people only care to preserve societies they have a stake in and if a large enough percentage of the population own nothing and offer no value it's very easy to see this causing a division. Should I as someone who works, pays tax, pays for his own home and pays for his own food be happy with someone who chooses not to work and have everything paid for them by people who work like me? And if you don't work and don't pay tax wouldn't you naturally want to see higher taxes and more government welfare?

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#49

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

kogepathic wrote: post #17

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of e…

I have an idea I've been toying with for a dating tool (I refuse to call it an app) based on the premise that all dating "apps" and "sites" are horrible because their incentives are aligned toward wanting people to actually use them. You pretty much have ad-driven and subscription models and both have perverse incentives. Further, the whole "wink", "like" and "swipe" nonsense increases the "meat market" commoditization and dehumanization of the whole thing.

So my idea is to put all the incentives the other way. The tool is designed to operate on a budget of ~$0. I would accept donations, but otherwise have no monetization and therefore no desire to increase "engagement" of any kind. My incentive is such that I actually don't want you to interact with the tool, because that will cost me bandwidth and processing time. I will allow you to have a profile of text and one single image of restricted size, because I don't want to have to host anything else. You will fill out a multiple choice questionnaire with as few questions as I feel I can get away with to ensure at least some level of basic compatibility, and then you do nothing.

Periodically, a cron job will run and see if anyone matches, then it will send you both each others profiles (through good old-fashion email) and ask if you'd like to go on a date. If you've both agreed, there will be a sequence of messages from the system proposing date ideas, locations, and times until consensus is reached. Then it's all up to you. This is designed to ensure that you make a real human connection to the person in a real life interaction before any contact information is ever exchanged.

It probably sounds as though this sort of thing would have a hard time attracting users. I consider that a feature, because it means it'll cost less to run and it will avoid attracting ego-inflation seekers, low effort numbers gamers, and other ungenuine people.

As envisioned, I would expect this sort of thing could cover a moderately sized state on a raspberry pi.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#50

Post by wolfretcrap » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

futureshock wrote: post #22

This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high c…

It's less about not having good jobs more about:

1. Most want to start business and become rich, not work for someone else. Starting business is difficult, needs lots of work, even if you are smart and hardworking, have capital to start, still you need social skills which present generation didn't develop, so getting along with others and leading others is still difficult which limits the success.

2. Anything you'll come up, there are guys who are already doing it better.

3. Work hard for what!? Beyond basic needs, even in dating women demand millionaires, average Joes are treated like disposable good for nothing who women say are creeps because they don't have money to build their IG brand and devour women with lavish gifts.

At the end of day, most people simply will not be motivated to take part in such system now that internet makes it possible for you to remotely live any life you dream of living even if it's only through some YouTube. A lot of things now seem less enticing.

Even guys who society might say are successful can't afford real estate at today's price, only way to afford considerable land is to move away from cities but moving away from cities also takes away your income source.

All these reasons are why I don't hustle hard anymore. I just try to make enough to coast in life and explore my hobbies, not working hard to get rich or any such goal. Because I don't really see how more money will change my life.