Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Men Without Work (2016)

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 471 posts

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#101

Post by rapind »

chasd00 wrote: post #47
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this exact experience as well. Returning to my career was strange. People were half glad to hear that I prioritized my family, and half disconcerted that I’d set my career aside. Our culture wants men to be extremely productive and committed to wealth generation. Women are increasingly treated this way too though. Women were shunned for choosing their career. Now if they choose family, their career still suffer…

> Women were shunned for choosing their career in my experience raising two kids women are much more looked down on for choosing family over career. My wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom but many of her friends, and especially online, thought she was "too good for that" with some even being hostile to the very concept. If a woman has an established career and then chooses to be a stay-at-home mom she's likely to pa…

Similar experience for us. Wife was basically surrounded by nannies and there wasn’t a ton of community support, at least not nearly as much as there used to be for my mother. I assume this varies based on location (not all communities can afford nannies).

It’s just economics IMO. It’s mostly double income now.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#102

Post by friedman23 »

cs702 wrote: post #3

Many men who would have done well as labor or middle management in, say, 20th century factories, now find themselves the victims of a rapidly changing, ever-more-concentrated, ever-more-automated global capitalist economy that has less and less need for them. And to them it feels as if no one cares about them. To riff on Churchill[a]: Capitalism is the worst economic system ever invented... except for all others that…

How is capitalism the issue here? Under what system can people without ability to contribute magically gain the ability to contribute?

Capitalism means literally everything to everyone, it's absurd at this point.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#103

Post by mschuster91 »

ponow wrote: post #54
mschuster91 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Bull.

Do you have factual information backing your statement? I have, to take the two dominant Christian fundamentalist interpretations:

- for Mormonism: "Numerous Prophets have instructed that a Mormon woman’s place is in the home. Only Federal anti-discrimination laws, which the Church vigorously opposed, and the threat of Federal prosecution, forced the Church in 1970s to stop terminating female employment upon the birth of her first child. While no longer as clearly directed from the pulpit, a women’s place in Mormonism remains very different than that of a man. Even into the 1980s, President Kimball reiterated that “…a mother’s place is in the home!” The idea of complementary spheres for men and women rules Mormon doctrine and is the answer to almost every question about the lack of power for women in the church." [1]

- for the Southern Baptists: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation." [2]

This is what these religions teach about women, there is no denying or whitewashing that.

[1] https://www.mormonstories.org/truth-claims/mormon-culture/wo...

[2] https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/report-of-the-baptist-faith-and-...

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#104

Post by afavour »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #61
afavour wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feminists spend much more time lying about men's issues Not sure if there’s a name for this fallacy but you see it all the time: attributing the opinions/actions of an extreme minority to a whole group. No denying there are some feminists about there spending all their time lying about men’s issues but feminists as a whole don’t. Same applies almost every time someone says “leftists”, “the right wing” etc etc etc

To be clear, you believe the Global Boyhood Initiative, who published that report, are an extreme minority, and are accusing me of a fallacy because of that? Fascinating. This is exactly the sort of half-baked lie I was talking about. Edit: At some point, rubber has to meet road. Either you accept that boys falling behind in education is an issue, or you don't. If you don't accept it as an issue, then you cannot simu…

You added that after I replied.

To be honest your entire tone here is an example of really unproductive online conversation, I don't have any interest in participating in it (this whole thread is dead because the "purple haired feminist" parent comment was flagged anyway)

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#105

Post by chowells »

Clent wrote: post #56
afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

There are some men's right subreddits that do not have allow the self-pity but they do not make it to the front page. I will not share specific subreddits for the sanity of the moderators but they are out there that focus on men's mental health specifically. Toxic Masculinity is men on men hate.

"Toxic Masculinity" is an idea created by men's groups [1] to describe the stresses on them that make them unhealthy and come from some cultural ideal of manhood. It was literally created by men as language to separate discussion the good parts of societal expectations from the damaging parts. A large number of people (that is, everyone who wants to talk about it sincerely) still use precisely that meaning. It's only those people who look for every reason to get upset who willfully misinterpret it as an insult on the concept of masculinity.

"Toxic masculinity" is men examining themselves and seeking to reject the parts they don't like. There's no hate involved at all. The whole thing is an exercise in self-expression and self-determination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoetic_men%27s_movement

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#106

Post by kneebonian »

afavour wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, in reality it's a pit of toxicity. Indeed, but so is the equivalent feminism subreddit (try "r/askafeminist" for example). And yet "women's rights" don't have the same stigma as "men's rights". What explains this asymmetry? Why is it some movements get defined by their extremists, and others don't? >: a lot of this societal pressure against men bein…

I’d argue that women’s rights, from Suffragettes on, has a widely documented history of… reasonableness, for want of a better term. Men’s Rights doesn’t yet. It’s a much newer movement, things may change. But right now I’m struggling to think of the sane, sensible organisations out there promoting men’s rights. I’d also question whether /r/askfeminists is “the equivalent”. It has 100k followers, /r/twoxchromosomes ha…

part of the problem with '/r/twoxchromosomes' is that no moderator of the sub actually has two x chromosomes, which introduces a new and separate dynamic.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#107

Post by tolciho »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #10
oneoff786 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That framing seems poorly equipped to handle things like feudalism.

Hm. I've always thought of feudalism as a form of state ownership wrt to property/means of production, though there are definitely additional considerations re: other rights; the state in that case being the feudal estate.

Charles Boix in "Political Order and Inequality" posits that feudalism is a particular form of "the looters are in charge, because they can be" as contrasted with the more rare republic where there is more equality among the power-sharing producers. Republics can involve various shades of "republic at home, looters abroad" e.g. the Athens of Perilces. Republics are not very common nor large nor long-lived, at least up until the 18th century or so. Military technology and who can afford it is a big factor.

More to the original topic, republics per Boix must prevent looting from the producers; this includes both external agents--"special military operations", barbarians on the frontier, foreign commercial agents who banana your republic, etc--and internal agents, who could be those welfare queens, men out of a job and certainly not looking (I mean why would you??), or plutocrats making out like bandits.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#108

Post by friedman23 »

dbingham wrote: post #11
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty useless quote. It entirely ignores the fact the economic systems all exist on a spectrum from extreme libertarianism to complete state ownership. The question has never been capitalism versus socialism, it's always been "how much regulation do we want as a society in exchange for a higher floor in our quality of life?" (and its follow up, did that regulation actually achieve its goals?)

It's not just a spectrum from Libertarian Free Market to State Socialism. There are many other forms of economic system. Capitalism isn't even synonymous with free markets. Capitalism just speaks to who gets to own the businesses (those with the capital). There are alternatives other than "the state". Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful. Which means one economic system that isn't oft…

> Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful

Ha sure. Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? Socialism is a sad joke, socialists group under a banner that does not even exist in reality.

Socialism: social control of the means of production

What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other.

//

//

//

edit: because I'm getting rate limited because socialists like to flag posts they disagree with, my response to the post below:

> Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known

Small private corporations that are worker run under capitalism is a very unique definition of socialism. Socialism under the silly wikipedia definition you provided mandates social ownership of the means of production. For something to be considered socialist, property rights need to be abolished and "control" needs to be redistributed in some manner. Of course "control" is in quotes because under socialism nobody owns anything, "society" owns it. Workers don't really have control either because they can't choose to sell their control, that would obviously just be capitalism with extra steps.

Nobody ever actually explains the details of any of this. The communist manifesto gets close because Marx clearly understood that to steal from people you need to kill them but he never actually prescribes the details of running the damn thing after killing all the property owners.

> In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others

In other words you did not contradict anything I said.

> Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe.

Perfectly successful under what definition? Neither the US or Europe have complete social control of the means of production and the little control they do exert is widely known to be extremely wasteful and inefficient.

> Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure

The roads are terrible and filled with pot holes in San Francisco. The sidewalks are covered in shit. The storm drains did not function when a small storm passed the city. Please don't tell me they need more money to fix those problems.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#109

Post by honkycat »

Damogran6 wrote: post #57
blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

Unspecified in all of this is: Society at large needs less labor to function. What happens when all of the production is automated to the point we don't NEED 'Men to work'? What do we do with them? What mischief do they get into when they have idle hands?

there is a huge opportunity for environmental conservation and clean-up, and care-giving for the sick / elderly / mentally ill.

unfortunately there isn't a profit motive for those things, so the work in those industries tends to be low paying and requiring a high level of education.

there is definitely still a ton of work to do in the world, we just don't have anyone willing to pay for it.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#110

Post by robotburrito »

Damogran6 wrote: post #57
blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

Unspecified in all of this is: Society at large needs less labor to function. What happens when all of the production is automated to the point we don't NEED 'Men to work'? What do we do with them? What mischief do they get into when they have idle hands?

The question that must be asked is instead, "What will they do with us?"
Post reply on HN