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

robkhenderson.substack.com

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

#781

Post by imtringued »

Applejinx wrote: post #581
e2le wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing to me that it's socially acceptable these days to bully those who lack a sexual partner.

Not that confusing, really. I've spent decades unable to find a sexual partner. I'd also make a concerted effort not to fall into the conclusions and habits of thought found in those getting bullied as 'incels', and in fact hooked up on Reddit of all places and am in the home of my lady friend now, working with her on various stuff and steadily building lovemaking skills (we're on the older side and there's a lot goi…

That sounds like a recipe for people becoming violent and agressive to avoid the stigma of being seen as weak. You know, like the taliban.

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

#782

Post by engineeringwoke »

the_only_law wrote: post #587
karpierz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very compelling when it lines up with my worldview in a way that makes me feel validated. Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions. Unfortunately, I'm not a WASP so your 'horse theory' doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

> Then I can absorb it uncritically and regurgitate the conclusions to people without thinking about the evidence that lead me to the conclusions You forgot the part where I then accuse you of being the one blinded by ideology and bias.

As stated elsewhere in the thread, northern Europe bucks this "trend" that the author sees. The nuclear family is as weak as it has ever been, christianity and its ideals are an afterthought, and people have never been happier.

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

#783

Post by gumby »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #568
gumby wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless they accept 30% immigration over the next 50 years, the system will be extremely stressed and may fracture. There’s no reason to expect that not to happen. Countries like Germany already been have a higher immigration rate than the US, and once had a much higher rate when they needed workers post war. European political decision making is primarily bullshit muddle and and absurd “compromise” yet in the end i…

About 19% of the US is immigrant compared to like 17% in Germany, so they are fairly similar. Can they bring the rest of Europe along though? It’s a huge challenge…

According to the UN, in 2019 Germany had 15.7% foreign born and USA 15.4%.

And the AfD notwithstanding, Germany has the pragmatic Gastarbeiter precedent.

The larger precedent, for all cultures, is that idealistic views (immigrants good! Immigrants bad!) fade dramatically and rapidly when pragmatic issues emerge.

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

#784

Post by tristor »

127 wrote: post #380
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.”…

We have been riding four positive tidal waves in the west: (momentary) end of war, positive population pyramid, rapidly improving technology, extremely cheap resources. Now that all of those trends are reversing or at least stagnating, we are in for a really rough landing, as our values and systems have eroded as a consequence of those easy times.

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

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

#785

Post by gumby »

dasudasu wrote: post #604
nottorp wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans in general have no idea how "humble" life can be for the European lower classes. Don't think said lower classes live in fear of a "major health event".

My understanding is that the poorest people are covered by medicare or get their fees waved (hospitals won't refuse to treat someone needing critical care). That is not "zero social net". Nobody is in fact jealous of the American healthcare system though. Meanwhile, in most countries in Europe, people live in fear of having to be put on wait lists that extend from months to years, or just plain being unable to access…

Waitlists can be visibly bad in the UK but if you read German or French papers you’ll see complaints about “wait lists” that seem laughable by US standards.

I live in SV so can afford a level of health care well above the usual middle class. Yet I have a literal A/B test: my kid broke his arm in Germany and also in the US and the ordinary treatment he got In Germany was significantly superior to that at Stanford Hospital — ant at a fraction of the cost.

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

#786

Post by throwaway0a5e »

noasaservice wrote: post #168
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large supply of men who DGAF and don't have much holding them down is how you get really serious social instability. They might not be beating their wives but let it roll unchecked for 20yr and it gets bad.

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…

>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.

I'm sorry but that is just an asinine thing to say and a textbook case of solving "my pet issue will fix the world" thinking.

Inter-generational poverty was the norm until the industrial revolution. While it certainly sucked for the people living it and we should definitively be taking steps to reduce it it is demonstrably tangential to societal stability.

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

#787

Post by jdrc »

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…

This is probably closer to the truth. Some 'traditional' countries have the lowest birth rates in the EU and highest marraige rates, in contrast france has the most children outside marriage. It doesn't mean france is a ruined society, people live together, have kids, buy a house together, in fact france is healthier demographically than most EU.

https://preview.redd.it/andluv2z50f11.png?auto=webp&s=3516c6...

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

#788

Post by rayiner »

coldtea wrote: post #775
rayiner wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 And education, housing, and health costs has sky-rocketed, number of "essential services" to pay for (mobile phone, internet, severan "rentier" subscriptions) has increased, while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted... But yes, the top 10%, the types to usually post at HN, never had it better.

But a lot of those requirements are manufactured. Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?

I agree the top 10% have poor insight into what life is like for everyone else, but that cuts both ways. I think there’s a real misperception of what income is necessary to maintain a similar quality of life to the past.

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

#789

Post by rayiner »

jcstk wrote: post #132

I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was a beautiful shitshow. For me, this perspective was a good story to tell myself - it justified why I was only investing my time in “work”, and validated me for having “come so far”. Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection cent…

In Tokyo, nobody jay walks. In New York City, everyone jay walks. Do you think there’s (1) not the product of cultural norms; and (2) no way for someone embedded in that culture to be able to observe those cultural norms and comment on them?

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

#790

Post by dc-programmer »

UncleMeat wrote: post #769
dc-programmer wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There’s a whole online subculture of women adopting traditional aesthetics and dressing like pilgrims. It’s hard to gauge their sincerity, but they are “converting” to Catholicism and fundamentalist Islam.

Being transgressive is definitely cool for disaffected trust fund kids who didn’t get into Deloitte, but I think there are darker undercurrents like you are implying.

The real irony in all of this is the post-modern and Marxist influences of the movement. Which is hilarious due to the Red Scare level of hysteria reactionaries have about those ideologies.

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