Live data from Hacker News

No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

robkhenderson.substack.com

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#11
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.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

Some of them call themselves that.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#14

> 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…

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).

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#15
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.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#16
post #7
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > 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.”…

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 cu…

> How do they undermine the norm?

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.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#17
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-...

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#19
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).
Post reply on HN