No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by igetspam » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

dnndev wrote: post #145

AvocadoPanic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We rearranged our life from DINK to SIWK for this reason. If I'm paying for childcare the expenses often increase linearly with the number of children, with my wife caring for our children we were able to double the number of children while substantially reducing costs. We are no longer jetting to Alps for skiing, and we've not had a night out without the kids in 9 years but we've different priorities now.

That is great. I am glad that you were able to make this change! It was not until we had our own children that I truly understood (or maybe appreciated) when my mom would say "After all I have done for you" OR "Thats why we can never have anything nice"... HAHAH. I love it. totally relate now. On a serious side note. I think many (including us) highly underestimate how much time children require.

Having come from a large family, I never realized that people didn't understand just how much work kids are. It's relentless. My wife is regularly astonished. I'm lucky to have been able to stop at one. I would have preferred married but childless but I'll take married to her over any other option, so I compromised. At with just one, we aren't spread so thin.

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

#312

Post by Ensorceled » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #193

nottorp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US thinkers have no idea what a social safety net is so they draw their conclusions without taking that option into account.

It’s also fun seeing US thinkers explain what life is like in Europe but clearly never lived there and are actually wrong about a lot of it.

I've always found it interesting that Americans who could literally see Canadian flags across the St. Lawrence River or live in border states such as Minnesota or Michigan, have such bizarre views on the quality of Canadian health care and other social services.

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

#313

Post by lettergram » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #249

lettergram wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. I think that’s an interesting point. The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. The fact is he’s not the head of the conservative moment, he’s the head of the Republican Party. There are differing factions and he promised something most in the party could support. For ex…

> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. I feel you are using a very "tru…

> "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed.

The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds”

After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening...

Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actually a great point about how far the political window has moved. A large segment of the population believes we shouldn’t be discussing anything related to sex, religion or politics in the classroom at any age.

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

#314

Post by captainredbeard » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

lkey wrote: post #277

rayiner wrote: 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.”…

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

> but female suicide rates dropped by 20%

...hmm, male suicide rates are going up...

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

#315

Post by Longlius » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: 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.”…

It's not merely expectations but intergenerational poverty. I get that you think that you came from a less privileged background than your in-laws and in some respects that's true, but even being able to immigrate to the US indicates a degree of social mobility that simply isn't available to the intergenerationally poor in rural America. These are people who grew up in places without anything to do, no training for higher-paid professions available, and who pay first-world expenses simply to exist.

How does one get ahead with 4 children and maybe $2000 of household income per month when rents eat half of that.

This isn't simply a problem of moral failing on the individual level but of failings at the societal level to provide a means for these people to escape poverty.

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

#316

Post by SnowHill9902 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

mkl95 wrote: post #289

In my relatively wealthy EU country there are two types of non upper class young men: those who are set to receive a relatively large inheritance and those who don't. People in the second group have to work much harder than those in the first group to achieve well-being, even if they are professionally successful. People in the first group can afford to underachieve, since they will progressively become richer than t…

So what’s your point?

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

#317

Post by gumby » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #222

karpierz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to be "successful, controlling for socioeconomic status"? Their success is defined by their peoples' socioeconomic status.

If that's the case then the USA is superior to all but a few European democracies per capita and all of them nominally? Even Massachusetts would be superior than every European country per capita.

I don’t understand: are you talking about PPP GDP per capita? I agree that the US optimizes for that, but it doesn’t translate into higher quality of life by metrics like life expectancy, literacy, leisure time, malnutrition, proportion of “precariat” etc.

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

#318

Post by notpachet » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

hardrcafe wrote: post #65

what-the-grump wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay the patriarchy! :)

At least it has a track record of creating coherent, functioning civilization the world over since time immemorial. Can’t say whatever we have today looks all that compelling, and I say this as a “winner” with a high salary, owned home, wife, and children. I think of a future beyond my ability to retire to Margaritaville. What future lies for my daughters and sons? A hedonist utopia that denigrates and denies the mos…

I think too much attachment to humanity, in its historical incarnation, is misplaced. Those periods of coherent, functioning civilization may end up just being the gentler slope of the asymptote before things started going nuclear. The same underlying tendencies have always been present in us, they just weren't manifesting at the same scale.

"Coherent and functioning" sounds great, but in practice that coherence was usually bought on credit, by pushing negative social externalities somewhere out of sight. Those externalities are more easily ignorable when the boundaries of the world are smaller. Just push the trash into the river; just tie the witch up in the forest. Just shut up and marry, girl.

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

#319

Post by UncleMeat » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: 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.”…

Pros and cons.

A big challenge with rigid social expectations is identifying the beneficial ones and removing the harmful ones. In practice, there tends to be little introspection about which traditional expectations help and which ones hurt. Instead, people appeal to tradition itself as evidence that an expectation is helpful. If we could more effectively iterate on these social expectations then we'd be able to more effectively optimize. But efforts to do this (e.g., discussion of topics like "toxic masculinity") are by-and-large rejected out of hand by traditionalists.

Another challenge is that social expectations may help on average but they may completely fail in individual cases. For example, having both parents raise a child will, on average, lead to improved outcomes. But if we codify this as a rigid rule, then people are unable to escape abusive relationships where the presence of both parents is a negative. Social expectations are necessarily generalizations and people need the freedom to identify when they are not helpful for their particular situation and adjust accordingly.

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

#320

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

mediumiqsad wrote: post #106

poszlem wrote: post #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-...

Rob went to Yale. He's literally a luxury columnist.

[deleted]