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

#421

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #272

noasaservice wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "dont give a fuck". This is about intergenerational poverty, and the costs that we all will have to pay because the elites decided to destroy social mobility for the poverty-stricken classes. When you are born and live in poverty, hold jobs that amount to minimum wage or tiny bits above it, have no way to *see* a future of any sort of success; happiness, alcohol, drugs, and sex are the primary forms of…

Do the elites really get to choose the degree of social mobility in their societies? Do you have any comparative figures to back this up or further data? All I have is anecdote having grown up in poverty in what would likely be considered a relatively left wing first world economic environment, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the kids I grew up with except me ever escaped poverty. Maybe it's wrong and I'd lo…

The elites in the US lowered the top tax brackets considerably, and intentionally moved education funding from grants to loans in previous decades. Both of these moves feel like they have lowered social mobility, but I haven’t seen studies.

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

#422

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #329

giantg2 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men." Those only really work if the opportunities are there for the person to succeed. If you have no hope of success, then people just give up.

>If you have no hope of success, then people just give up. Success doesn't come from hope. It comes from hard work and fighting every day for something better. Luck might help, but is neither required nor enough for success. I was from a poor background and fighting for a better future was the only thing that brought me some kind of success.

You can work hard and still lose hope. Just look at the suicide rates in the farming community. You'd be hard pressed to find a group that works harder than that. Hope is a huge factor. Hard work can only do so much if the system is failing and there's no hope.

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

#423

Post by alsetmusic » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #326

lkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that. Tons of people dispute this. The thinking is that people staying married when they don’t want to stay married is worse for kids than people getting divorced and creating two separate households the kids float between. I don’t agree with this thinking, mostly because I’m the product of divorce that saw the a…

> Divorce is rarely the answer and does terrible things to children.

My mother was shocked that I supported my parents' divorce. She couldn't imagine how I wasn't devastated. They screamed at each other frequently. They'd stayed together "for the kids," and that was a nightmare.

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

#424

Post by sunjester » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

Giving birth to a baby without being married is a religious point-of-view.

I am supposed to believe that a "sociology professor at Princeton, and Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University" can somehow convince me that he knows what a "low-income woman" thinks or does in her life. I've lived around "low-income women" my whole life and I haven't figured it out.

"The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births."

Whose conventional view? This is not the view of poor people.

"Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men.", the book this came from was written by a conservative scientist from Iowa. I tried to check some of the stats and every one of them seem to be wrong.

This link outright proves there are not 10 million men unemployed in America. https://www.statista.com/statistics/193244/unemployment-leve... So who's statistics are right?

This is a horrible article that seems to do nothing by try and place blame rather than provide a solution to a problem that does not exist. I will go as far as to say this article is quite racist. The article says "American" men but then only targets white American men in their statistics. Which is it, American men or white American men?

This is a poorly written article based on personal views and statistics that don't even target the proper demographics of the content of the article. Unbelievable.

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

#425

Post by m0llusk » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:05 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.”…

This seems like a lot of misplaced and irrelevant moralizing. Even in this article it is reported that men find little opportunity in labor markets that leave them with low pay and low respect. If low end jobs paid enough to support a family and might lead to higher pay over time then the situation would be different. Blaming this situation on expectations doesn't make sense when the labor market is clearly both critical and broken. Working class pay has steadily fallen for decades and economic mobility is near zero. In such an environment expectations and the attitudes of the upper classes have no bearing.

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

#426

Post by azornathogron » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #44

Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing? I’d find this statement equally compelling (which is to say, not at all): > Since we stopped using horses as a primary means of transportation, men’s sense of self worth has diminished. Riding a horse carried a lot of high status connotations: drive, masculinity, towering above the land, and man’s dominati…

> Do people find this stuff compelling?

Sure, I mean, it's something to think about. Something I can read and consider which parts I agree with or disagree with and why that is. It's not a topic I know anything about really, beyond my general experience of life, so I don't need to be annoyed at things that an expert might recognise as being factually incorrect (unlike if I read, eg, a journalist talking about software where I'm likely to be frustrated at how many things they've got wrong)

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

#427

Post by zozbot234 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #324

lkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So much of the elite wealthy class and their media sock puppets on both sides of the traditional left/right political divide are dedicated to pushing the identitarian culture war theme - because what they don't want to deal with is something like this: "Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."

> "Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."

Whether hard-working folks can attain dignity and social respect is a factor of society itself, not merely a side-effect of material circumstances. The poorest countries in the underdeveloped Third World have far more recognition and respect for those who work hard and provide for their households (and the happiness/life satisfaction indicators to go along with it) than much of the rich West.

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

#428

Post by danaris » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #389

lkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 It's six of one, half a dozen of another. As the Chinese philosopher Confucious was already well aware of, a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures. > Finally, historically speaking,…

> a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures.

But you're missing an important part there: the "tight-knit" part doesn't just mean "stays together no matter what". It means "genuinely care about each other and work well together."

Yes, a close, loving, supportive family is hugely important, for everyone in it. But a) the nuclear family you're almost certainly thinking about (a married couple and their children) has not been the norm for the vast majority of human history (and certainly wasn't when Confucius was writing), and b) whether you have a nuclear family or not, when one or more of the relationships at the core of your family is dysfunctional and causing significant stress, breaking that relationship apart can be a big improvement for the family as a whole. (In fact, when you don't have a nuclear family, it's much easier and safer to do that, because you're much less likely to be losing half the income in the household, or the only stable adult-to-adult relationship in the household.)

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

#429

Post by kenneth » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

OminousWeapons wrote: post #153

PaulHoule wrote: post #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 di…

> A counter is that other countries (Japan, Korea, Italy, ...) that enforce traditional values have had a collapse in the birth rate. Yes, but the value systems (at least in Asia) are quite different than even conservative ones in the US so I don't think that's a fair comparison. In Asia there is an expectation that relationships will lead to marriage, that you will marry well before thirty, that women will exit the…

I mean, sure, among the parents. Plenty of people in Asia love relationships for the same reasons young people do in the West: sex, money, status, comfort, etc. -- without needing an end goal of launching families.

The main difference is a lot of people here feel pressured by their families into a path to starting a family they don't want. Some balance those opposite forces, some just give in and have unwanted families while cheating to get what they really want.

Anecdotally, I've noticed a clear contrast since moving from the USA to Asia. Cheating is far more common here. I've dated a number of "taken" women here, and the common thread always seemed to be that they kept their unwanted partner around for appearances to placate family pressure.

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

#430

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #284

giantg2 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men." Those only really work if the opportunities are there for the person to succeed. If you have no hope of success, then people just give up.

I think it actually means redefining success. Today, success means having disposable income, but that's not the success that children need. They need stable households, and that can be obtained even with low paying jobs, though obviously it's easier with high paying jobs. But it's impossible if the will to work isn't there, and the only way to get that will is to instill a good work ethic and proper, family-oriented…

If both parents are spending all their time at work just to make ends meet (or workaholic executives), how can that be stable? When will they have time to guide and develop the child?