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Men Without Work (2016)

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Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#191

Post by LewisVerstappen »

scottLobster wrote: post #69
ianai wrote: post #2

In lieu of any particular review I’m submitting the Wikipedia page. I was unemployed for most of the Great Recession and can empathize with much of this book. I also just remember the “tragedy of my twenties” realizing society had basically no interest in me. Despite a math degree and IT/programming experience. Then the myriad people I’ve interacted with in the last decade plus who are in this situation. Luckily I no…

Yeah it seems like there used to be a cultural value of putting people to work. Generally speaking you had to be a real fuck-up to not get a job. Maybe the jobs available weren't the best, but you could get something to pay for basic food/housing with little effort or credentialing. The attitude was, if you were a decent person and willing to work, "come by and we'll find something for you to do". Now the zeitgeist i…

That’s the case for the standard jobs that people with a business/english/history degree compete for. There’s so much supply of college grads.

But, if you look at trade jobs (plumber, electrician, etc.) then there’s still tons of demand and they pay well.

But no one wants to do that.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#192

Post by whatshisface »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #77
adversaryIdiot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man I am so happy i heard someone else say it too. I seriously felt like "society had no interest in me". Not being able to find a job and getting no matches on things like tinder left me devastated. I am on anti depressants and fear that time to this day.

> I seriously felt like "society had no interest in me". I'm pretty sure society is not obligated to have an interest in you (I'm not trying to put words in your mouth however). I think you become truly actualized only when you decide what it is you want, what you imagine for yourself. If what you want is in conflict with what society wants of you, you have to decide then whether it is important enough to you to take…

There's a basic human need to be valued by others and to be part of a community, and the system we have now grades people according to traits that are mainly genetic and casts them aside if they aren't seen as desirable enough. As for what the cut is, well, it's many-faceted, but the waterline is rising and as you age all of your desirable traits are fading. If you have real personal relationships (either career or friendship-related) you've escaped it for now, but if anything ever happens to reset your network and cast you back into the default pot, you might get a chance to experience it.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#193

Post by thesuitonym »

jimmaswell wrote: post #98
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…

> Their problem is that they refuse to put together a well formatted resume, apply to jobs, and accept that they may have to start at the bottom of the career ladder. I see this a lot. Younger people who have been led to believe by incendiary reddit and twitter rants that everyone lived like some Leave it to Beaver sitcom in the near past and they should be able to own a house and support a family at 19 on a McDonald…

Except that there really was a time when a person was able to graduate high school, go down to the local factory, and get a job that would buy a house and support a family with nothing other than a firm handshake. They didn't do it on a McDonalds salary, but that's because this all happened before McDonalds were around, and the cafes and restaurants that McD's later replaced all paid living wages.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#194

Post by unholythree »

watwut wrote: post #156
chasd00 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i know exactly what you mean. I remember an early doc appointment with my wife she was pregnant with our first child, the doctor was going over things with my wife like what she should be doing and what she should not be doing etc. I asked the doctor what i should be doing and what i should look out for, she just glared at me and said "you've done enough." implying i was only there to get my wife pregnant. That was 1…

I mean, what you think doctor should tell you about what you should be doing while wife is pregnant? If the wife wants your support, I would expect the wife to tell you what kind of support she needs. She does not need doctor to be her speaker, presumably. And doctor giving you instructions on what she should be doing in pregnancy would be patronizing toward wife.

If we take the poster with good faith we can assume he genuinely thought the doctor might know some useful ways he could be of help that neither he nor his wife knew. Even if there wasn't (which seems unlikely to me) I feel like good bedside manner should extend to a patient's loved ones when possible. Simply addressing him politely to say "Just be available and help as you can." would have be a far kinder way to blow off an anxious person.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#195

Post by Mezzie »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #189
Mezzie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also just remember the “tragedy of my twenties” realizing society had basically no interest in me. Female, but same hat and I empathize. In my case, I'm a lesbian who ended up with MS, so like with your average straight guy, my worth in society is pretty much based on my work life/career. I also share the jealousy a lot of straight men have for straight/bi women being more able to 'opt out'. It's not a rational f…

What is MS? Masters degree? Microsoft?

Yeah, Multiple Sclerosis. Though I do have a master's degree, but it's not an MS funnily enough.

It matters because if we're talking biology, there aren't many people who are like 'yeah, I'm going to have the cripple carry my child!' and dating as a female with a progressive disease is not great. So from a social standpoint, I am also an 'extra' 'useless' body, like how these men tend to feel.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#196

Post by notwokeno »

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…

/g/ is full of intelligent people who could easily do what I do every day at work and are still unemployed.

It's not a lack of skills. Getting a job (especially your first) is a lot of work. In some ways IMO it's more work than what you would be payed to do. Once you get payed what do you do with the money? You spend it to participate in society.

Except most of our social institutions are gone anyway. Marriage (the larger motivator) is practically symbolic at this point. All that's left are the hard economic ideas, so they can spend it to live in their own place and not deal with their mom. Even those aren't doing so well, look at home ownership or even renting. Is it worth it? Some say yes and get jobs, plenty say no.

We've restructured society so there's no place for these men even if they did find jobs, then on top of that we've brought in millions more men to ensure if that any niche that developed would be immediately filled. This is what people really mean when they complain about low wages or high inflation and it's not something that can be fixed by fiddling with the money supply.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#197

Post by thesuitonym »

friedman23 wrote: post #102
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.

When the whole world is run by capital, your contributions are only measured by how they help capital. There are ways to contribute to society that don't pay the bills.

And in any case, socialist countries don't outsource labor.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#198

Post by Ancalagon »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #127
chasd00 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's literally insane that people would consider working at a company to be more important than someone raising their own children instead of paying someone else to raise them for most of the day. I'm thankful the mother of my children could stay at home with them while I worked.

In the US I think, for me personally, its less about the work/career itself being more important than raising the kids (because it's definitely not, don't get me wrong). Moreso is the issue of financial opportunity and stability. Much of society and decent living standards today _demands_ dual income households. Permantently risking half of that dual income is terrifying.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#199

Post by adolph »

jnmandal wrote: post #22
adolph wrote: post #12

In the transition to a post-scarcity world it may be that this crisis represents a transition in which people's mental wellbeing is less moored to earnings and oriented more toward value.

Are you implying we are approaching a post-scarcity world now?

As the sibling comments' note, post-scarcity is the direction of progress even if not yet the position. Scarcity's object is a moving target, of course. For example, instead of abject starvation, the primary focus becomes food security. This is progress to be celebrated.

At the same time as things like basic foodstuffs are becoming ubiquitously available, there is also a dematerialization of humanity. A prime example are household goods, like phone book, encyclopedia, cookbooks, typewriter, checkbook, phone and answering machine, etc that are made redundant by inexpensive compute and connectivity. In addition to the basics being non-scarce the highest intellectual achievements of the world are simultaneously delivered in better quality for less than ever.

Are we approaching a post-scarcity world now? Yes and, as always, the future isn't evenly distributed. A society that can afford to hold labor pools un-utilized indicates one that is rich in basic needs. For it to be a crisis that their labor is not required indicates a society poor in imagination.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#200

Post by at_a_remove »

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…

I will disagree with the "reasonableness" with the Suffragettes. They weren't perfect. Two instances seemed unreasonable. First, the bombings. If you don't know about the bombings associated with the Suffragettes well ...

The second being the involvement with that White Feather movement. As much as people say "You don't have to put men down to elevate women," that was a prime case of it.

And after that we've still got the "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" T-shirts, the "male tears" cups, the "#killallmen" hashtag, and so on.

Maybe all of this just escaped you, I dunno, but now that you have it in front of you, please don't ignore it.

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