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

robkhenderson.com

261–270 of 600 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard refrain is that the housing market is over-regulated, NIMBY's have made it too hard to build. Adding more regulation discouraging instutitions from building sounds like making the problem worse rather than better.

There are both bad and good regulations. Acting like all regulation is bad (say restrictive zoning or allowing people to block density) allows people to target the good (building codes, not building of garbage dumps or toxic materials) to get rid of Regulations are not inherently good nor bad so please say what regulations are bad and what regulations should be changed because “less regulation” doesn’t mean things ge…

This is not a "prevent asbestos in housing" type of regulation.

The OP wants to reduce the amount of institutional ownership of housing. This will reduce supply of rental units, increasing the cost of rental units.

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

#262

> 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…

For ease of reference the author cites the following studies in his article in support of his argument that elites shape political views, culture and norms:

1. "Elite Influence on General Political Preferences"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266731932...

2. "Exploring the direct and indirect effects of elite influence on public opinion"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

3. "Trickle-Down Preferences: Preferential Conformity to High Status Peers in Fashion Choices"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if the elite might be trapped by the culture. (Hear me out, here...)

I don't think the elite actually control the culture. To a large degree, the culture controls the (external behavior of) the elite. They have to appear to be everything they're supposed to be. So they give verbal agreement to single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, and so on, so that the culture doesn't condemn them. But for themselves, they know that those things cause damage to the next generation, and they avoid it like the plague.

Note that this may be true even if "culture" means elite culture. I could see the culture among elites being that 1) you would be condemned if you were not sufficiently verbally supportive of single motherhood and related shibboleths, and 2) you would be condemned if any such thing happened in your family. (I don't actually know; I don't hang out in those circles, and I don't have a good handle on actual elite culture.)

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

#264

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.

Or we still have physicians with the mindset of "What does your husband say?"

And then more and more schools, not less and less, are teaching abstinence-only sex ed.

And politicians pushing it. Including Lauren Boebert, 4th generation teen mom, who has a son who got his girlfriend pregnant at a ... questionable ... age. And Sarah Palin, who works with her daughter while her daughter has had two kids out of marriage.

(To be clear, my perspective on sex ed and morality is not saying there's issue with sex and children out of marriage, quite the opposite. But you have people who are being held up as rolemodels doing ... not what they preach.)

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

#265
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe by total wealth. >I think wealth should be measured by how many hours at the median wage do you need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living. That's a weird definition of "wealth". Wealth is generally understood to mean how much assets you have accumulated, not your free cash flow. What you're describing is properly referred to as discretionary income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_incom…

If that's the case, everyone in postwar Germany or modern Zimbabwe should be the wealthiest people to ever exist and therefore have the highest quality of life. There's a lot more to it than how many beans you have in the bank.

>If that's the case, everyone in postwar Germany or modern Zimbabwe should be the wealthiest people to ever exist and therefore have the highest quality of life.

If you're trying to imply that wealth = number in your bank account and 10x inflation makes you 10x wealthier, that's a massive misunderstanding of what "how much assets you have accumulated". Even though it wasn't explicitly stated, it's generally understood that the assets are valued in some meaningful way (eg. CPI or GDP deflator), rather than just looking at the raw numbers in your bank account.

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

#266

simply, when a boy is dependent on his mother's approval for a sense of self it's all the justification he needs, and there is almost no increasingly-terrible situation in which a mother will not love her son. the worse his life, the more he depends on her, the less abandoned she is. it's the definition of a co-dependent cycle. Maybe he replaces her or shares that role with other women, but he ends up in the same cyc…

Is there any problem caused or experienced by men that you don't blame women for?

none of them, actually. it's on young men to set boundaries for themselves. other men either teach them that, or not. since they are human, there are limits to what mothers can do for their sons, being a father is one of them. kids are poorer without them.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire culture war is between people who resent their dads for being absent or weak, and those who don't. Are you saying that having an absent father or not determines your views on trans people, abortion, saying Merry Christmas vs happy holidays, DEI, etc?

> Are you saying that having an absent father or not determines your views on trans people, abortion, saying Merry Christmas vs happy holidays, DEI, etc? What on earth does any of that have to do with the GP post? I'm also quite curious - you think all of those things listed above are generally seen as positive (or negative) by the same group of people? That's a bundle of different issues that most people either won'…

>That's a bundle of different issues that most people either won't support all of, or won't oppose all of.

And yet that's the state of the US political feud, a.k.a. "culture war".

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

#268

I think I see where he's coming from, and it makes sense to me. But where is the evidence that expectations have changed for young men? A paragraph or two with examples would be useful. It is of course a bit nebulous to try to define "expectations on young men" so I'm willing to go with some sort of essay that presents the evidence.

The author talks a ton about expectations and “expected from” but is very careful to never phrase it all together in active voice because the central claim “harvard elites in conference rooms expect young poor men to abandon their partners and children, therefore harvard elites cause young poor men to abandon their partners and children” is on the face of it absurd.

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

#269

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…

A lot of men, particularly less educated men, have bizarre beliefs that vasectomies harm sexual performance or make them less of men. I saw the other day a person asking on the biohacking Reddit if a vasectomy would harm testosterone levels. Asking poorly educated, poorly read, and low-skilled men to make highly informed decisions is going to be a losing battle.

I'm willing to bet the rates of vasectomy are highly correlated with education levels.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not adopt? There are plenty of kids already who need a parent or two.

I already have two kids.
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