No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#221

Post by greenchair » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:41 PM UTC

eadmund wrote: post #167

lenerdenator wrote: post #2

We didn't want young men to do anything. We wanted ever-increasing returns for shareholders, and that meant moving factories (where these young men's grandfathers were working 60 years ago) overseas while doing nothing on the whole to retrain the workforce. We got the shareholder returns. Too bad that can't buy a functional society for people born after 1980.

> We wanted ever-increasing returns for shareholders And ever-decreasing prices for consumers. Don’t forget that! Free trade results in more goods for everyone, by enabling different places to focus on what they do best. > while doing nothing on the whole to retrain the workforce. I completely agree that some more attention needs to be paid to retraining. The answer to disappearing jobs is to prepare folks for new on…

free trade sounds great in theory. unfortunately what we see are imbalances for a myriad of reasons for example one of the largest economies government owns or heavily subsidizes companies or entire industries in order to maintain control.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#222

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

binary132 wrote: post #213

inglor_cz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBY seems to be one of the intrinsic faults of democracy. Some people really don't like any change happening around them, and, once empowered, will go to great lengths to stop anything from happening. This is probably something that democratic states need to address by reducing such empowerment. Much like your neighbor cannot tell you what to cook for dinner - even if he is a vegetarian and hates the smell of meat…

can you tell your neighbor not to have a loud party, burn garbage, or release toxic chemicals into the air?

That should be open to a tort, but the mere fact that someone wants to live next to you should be considered "fundamentally fine".

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#223

Post by pwthornton » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #157

welshwelsh wrote: post #148

What I took away from this article is that many low-income men have no real interest in being fathers or raising children. Yet, they tend to produce children anyway. We should focus on making birth control more accessible, instead of trying to make people take responsibility for raising children they obviously don't want. That guy who spends all his money on weed and booze while his kids go hungry? He should have got…

Most doctors refuse to perform sterilization procedures on young people, at least until after they have had children. After all, what if they change their minds? My girlfriend couldn’t get hers done until she was over 30.

I got mine done at 37, after having two kids, and they still asked me if I was sure.

I can see why you'd be hesitant to do it on a 22-year-old. If you asked me at 22, I'd probably say I don't want kids. But I completely changed my mind as I approached 30.'

Also, vasectomies are less reversible than people think.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#224

Post by c22 » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:43 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #178

toomuchtodo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple solution is to remove the local district's ability to veto local development. At least, as long as city-level/state-level planners don't have an agenda that favors certain districts over others. That is what state level YIMBY policy is intended to do, to override the free rider problem of existing property owners in the local domain. If the human can say no to any new housing, and it costs be nothing to…

NIMBY seems to be one of the intrinsic faults of democracy. Some people really don't like any change happening around them, and, once empowered, will go to great lengths to stop anything from happening. This is probably something that democratic states need to address by reducing such empowerment. Much like your neighbor cannot tell you what to cook for dinner - even if he is a vegetarian and hates the smell of meat…

Wtf? If all of your neighbors don't like the smell of meat they absolutely can tell you not to cook it. That's what democracy is. Don't like it? Be a king.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#225

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:43 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #197

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most doctors refuse to perform sterilization procedures on young people, at least until after they have had children. After all, what if they change their minds? My girlfriend couldn’t get hers done until she was over 30.

This decision really needs to be removed from the hands of doctors, as long as there is no physical risk to the patient.

[deleted]

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#226

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:44 PM UTC

lenerdenator wrote: post #2

We didn't want young men to do anything. We wanted ever-increasing returns for shareholders, and that meant moving factories (where these young men's grandfathers were working 60 years ago) overseas while doing nothing on the whole to retrain the workforce. We got the shareholder returns. Too bad that can't buy a functional society for people born after 1980.

[deleted]

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#227

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #177

> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant. The author unironically writes this after pointing out that research shows that affluent families the share of families with biological parents has only dropped to 85% from 95% while the share for poor families has dropped to 30% from 95%. The idea that the social ape…

Not only is it a completely conspiratorial claim, the much stronger argument against it is simply looking at a region of the world where elites still heavily advocate family centered norms, i.e East Asia.

In those countries the other social strata don't happily follow suit, young women do something else, they opt out of family formation altogether. If you go to South Korea and ask pretty much any young educated woman why she doesn't want kids or even a relationship, the answer is that she'd risk being trapped in it and disadvantaged at work. The same is true in Iran or Turkey which now have lower birth rates than France.

This stuff has nothing to do with "elite values" or "luxury beliefs", I'd say it barely has a cultural component. As education levels and absolute incomes rise virtually everywhere people change their values.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#228

Post by beaglesss » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #178

toomuchtodo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple solution is to remove the local district's ability to veto local development. At least, as long as city-level/state-level planners don't have an agenda that favors certain districts over others. That is what state level YIMBY policy is intended to do, to override the free rider problem of existing property owners in the local domain. If the human can say no to any new housing, and it costs be nothing to…

NIMBY seems to be one of the intrinsic faults of democracy. Some people really don't like any change happening around them, and, once empowered, will go to great lengths to stop anything from happening. This is probably something that democratic states need to address by reducing such empowerment. Much like your neighbor cannot tell you what to cook for dinner - even if he is a vegetarian and hates the smell of meat…

Yep.

My county deregulated housing. Literally no code checks. A permit was me drawing a square on a map, paying a few hundred bucks and it was rubber stamped in a few days.

It was an absolute godsend. I built the house myself for 1/3 the price of even a clapped out trailer.

Sure I could have built a firetrap but I have to live in the fucking house, so I did the best with what I can afford. We all have to live somehow, asking people to do their best they can with what little they have to protect themselves and neighbors should really be the most we can ask. I could never afford a 'real' developer built house anywhere near jobs.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#229

Post by Doches » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:46 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #200

relaxing wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. This is the first I’m hearing I wasn’t allowed to have a job AND play PS5. I’ll have to rectify this at once. What are the rising standards though? Not beating your wife?

Being emotionally available, participating in chores, providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time, being reasonably well-read and good conversationalist, etc. Have you not noticed how much more we expect from men as partners? NB I’m not saying we shouldn’t expect more from them. I’m saying many are seeing the list of demands, and opting out of even trying

> Being emotionally available, participating in chores, providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time, being reasonably well-read and good conversationalist, etc.

I...honestly cannot tell if this is meant ironically. Those things seem like table stakes for being an adult. It's not "expecting more of them" to simply expect people to...grow up, and help care for the other people in their lives. You write "participating in chores" as if that's one of a list of demands!

That's not a demand; that's just...life.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#230

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #206

addicted wrote: post #177

> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant. The author unironically writes this after pointing out that research shows that affluent families the share of families with biological parents has only dropped to 85% from 95% while the share for poor families has dropped to 30% from 95%. The idea that the social ape…

I think they're making the argument that the upper classes make the argument that family stability is unimportant and should be de-prioritized in favor of "doing what makes you happy", but they don't actually believe that when it comes to their own families. The effect (according to OP) is that the upper classes are destabilizing the lower classes by advertising norms they don't actually believe in. > The people with…

Yea, this is what I got out of it too: The "elite" (whoever they are) are deliberately changing cultural norms to promote single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, family instability, and so on, but they hypocritically forbidding these things in their own families, and will only admit it in private.

Two questions he doesn't seem to answer:

1. How are The Elite™ actually doing this? Cultural norms are set by culture itself, not some "cultural lawmakers" holed up in an ivory tower somewhere. By what mechanism are these upper class mustache-twirlers "setting cultural norms" for the rest of us? I think this needed more discussion.

2. Why are they doing it? How do they benefit from growing dysfunction and deprivation and society in general going down the drain? How are they benefiting from unmoored non-productive men sitting around all over the place? What is the end game?