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

#761

Post by rayiner » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #457

photochemsyn wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in, "In the past young men could look to the example of their fathers, who had well-paid automotive manufacturing / steel mill / electronics assembly jobs that allowed them to care for their families and even put a downpayment on a small home, but now they have no such examples and no such expectations of moving into that kind of position at adulthood." Okay, that's an expectation issue. Why is the author ignoring…

From what I've seen, there's an entire industry of conservative economists Like Arthur Laffer and Larry Kudlow (to name a mere two, there are entire billionaire funded thinktanks like AEI dedicated to this) to deny the reality of the issues you mention, not unlike scientists paid to deny Climate Change or Tobacco's cancer links. And because of this, conservatives don't even believe that such issues exist.

There’s also a couple of billion people in Asia who think the exact same way as the author about families and culture. I’ve never read Laffer or Kudlow. I’m interpreting society through the values of my Bangladeshi parents. And they lead me to the same conclusion.

And given the remarkably higher income mobility of Asian kids raised in the bottom income compared to white kids, I think social liberals are sticking their heads in the sand by trying to hand wave away these social trends and blaming conservative think tanks.

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

#762

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #751

the_solenoid wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period. Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise hone…

Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970-_Relative_incom... You can make a fair argument that the bottom 50% haven’t gotten their share of productivity growth, but that doesn’t explain why social indicators among the bottom quantile have gotten so much worse.

> Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970

It's grown for every group used in that breakout, but while it breaks out the upper income groups on relatively fine categories, it groups the bottom half as one category.

(It's useful for the graph's original purpose of discussing top-weighted inequality, it's not useful for the argument you are trying to make with it.)

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

#763

Post by jpeloquin » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:37 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…

It's a personal statement from someone with relevant lived experience. Exploring others' viewpoints is interesting, if only to find out that they exist. The article touches on questions that do not currently have an objective answer: Why do people do the things they do? Should they be doing something different? Science may someday provide an objective ("substantive") answer to the first, but it can't choose our goals (make value judgments) for us, so articles like this are valuable. And social media works a lot better for opinion-based than objective discourse because everyone can participate on equal footing.

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

#764

Post by jacobolus » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #744

rayiner wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a “flat lining” of wages of cause family stability to go down ? And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?

> And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer? Less individual freedom, greater direct economic dependency on others in your group, and also the threat of ostracization, excommunication, and destitution if you go against its rules. Basically, there are extremely high cost/stakes associated with going it on your own. But on the other side there are also good things that com…

In some places people have centuries of social-structure adaptation to deal with the stress of being systematically oppressed (by local elites, colonial overlords, ...).

E.g. money gets shielded by community institutions (such as local religious organizations) that are harder for elites to steal from than individual peasants, and then those act as a kind of social safety net in hard times. Extended families/clans build social bonds through e.g. marriage and baptism, and help each-other.

Often there are severe social problems in rural peasant societies: alcoholism, domestic violence, seasonal migrant labor keeping people away from home much of the year, corruption, ..., but people have also learned to be tough vs. some kinds of outside threats. But large waves in the world economy (or a large natural disaster or the like) also can overwhelm those defenses.

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

#765

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #752

s1artibartfast wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we can do more to have a robust economic ladder, but I dont think it is nearly as bleak and binary as people make it out to be. If you look at the actual data, there is still a lot up upward mobility. 60% of people who grow up in the bottom economic quintile improve their situation. [1] When thinking about the 40% that dont, there are a few notable facts: 20% of children in the bottom quintile dont graduate…

I disagree with the headline in that chart. What I see is 60% chance (i.e. more likely than not) of mobility up or down Edit: you edited your post to be more than just a link

I added a lot of text to get my point across more clearly

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

#766

Post by ss108 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #754

ss108 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit/concede I may have inferred a stronger and more specific conclusion than the one the author actually meant to make. "It's not that the elites are saying, "Start a family and stick with it," and therefor everyone else is acting out in protest; it's that the elites are not saying it." I'm not sure what you mean here, though--like, my point is that elite rungs of society saying "Start a family and stick with…

> my point is that elite rungs of society saying "Start a family and stick with it" is simply going to be irrelevant to a lot of the people the author is talking about. Would you disagree? No, I don't really disagree with that. If it were just elites shouting down, then you're right. It was the manner in which it used to be conveyed that matters. The mass media is no longer propagating that messaging in the way it ha…

Hmm yes, I can see what you're saying, and I do agree with you quite a bit.

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

#767

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #436

I doubt the upper class consciously tries to keep the lower classes stuck in poverty. There are so many factors here the article doesn't touch on. Such as men's biological desire to maximize sexual partners, women's biological desire to maximize quality of and support for offspring, and cultural variation of expectations among all classes. In my circle most of us were raised by parents in unhappy marriages. (Often fo…

> I doubt the upper class consciously tries to keep the lower classes stuck in poverty.

When I look at single family zoning I don't believe what you said one bit. A lot of people think it is their right to keep people out of locations where "all the jobs" are.

The fact that jobs concentrate in the bay area is just as much part of urban planning as preventing people from moving there. If people truly wanted to stop people from moving to their location all they would have to do is say no to commercial real estate but that is not what they do.

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

#768

Post by ithkuil » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #119

rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a matter of luck—men in my dad’s village in Bangladesh start families, have kids, and live relatively happy lives in poverty even most poor Americans could not comprehend. I don’t think it’s fair to call all these guys incels. As the article observes, most just have no expectations placed on them, and also have no way of attaining dignity and social worth through the avenues in life reasonably available to t…

It is sunday morning. I'm at work (military). Part of that job is checking in with people at a half-dozen other locations who are also at work on a sunday morning. they just happen to all be hetero guys, which is not unusual in the military no matter the day. So I asked in our chat whether they had wives/girlfriends at home today. "No." "Nope." "My car is my GF" and "Rocking a peppi shirt under my uniform". These are…

Could it be selection bias?

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

#769

Post by UncleMeat » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

dc-programmer wrote: post #716

UncleMeat wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil rights for gay people and black people were criticized "artificially engineering society". As were voting rights for women or access to birth control. Subservient roles for women and labor roles for black people were seen as "natural." I think you'd be absolutely crazy to consider rights for these populations to have led to a "less just and less fair society." There is no such thing as natural society. Society…

I think the crux of the current debate is the tension between cultural liberalism and cultural socialism. The philosophy of the cultural liberals is to remove restrictions that inhibit people from living the social lives they want. The cultural socialists want to use the power of institutions to distribute a culture across the population. They believe their culture is societally optimal so reducing liberties to propa…

We've already seen Thiel float the "the world would be better if women couldn't vote" thing. Far right communities online already express sanitized versions of this belief system. You can see it when far right women end up in discussion spaces. Their participation is ultimately contingent on the approval of the men they are around, with sexist rejections of their contributions showing up frequently.

We are already at the "ironic" jokes and "rational" thinking phase. Terrifying.

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

#770

Post by jollybean » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:47 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…

Honestly, that kind of makes sense. Riding horses is a bit of a masculine thing. I wonder if there's a 'tiny bit' to that. That said, I wonder if most men ever even really rode horses very often.