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Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

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Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#761

Post by shkkmo »

atweiden wrote: post #318
supertrope wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without economic growth we’d still be hunter gatherers. Growing crops allowed people to have excess food and support classes of people whose occupation was non-food related. The industrial revolution not only allowed for mass production but the Haber process by which fossil fuels are turned into fertilizer. Without it we would only be able to feed half the world.

Technological advancement and human overpopulation are orthogonal concepts. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe the planet is heavily overpopulated with humans and also that technological advancement is desireable. There is very much not a direct relationship between absolute number of humans, and technological advancement. This is increasingly true as we inch closer to AGI.

> There is very much not a direct relationship between absolute number of humans, and technological advancement.

There very much absolutely is a direct and bidirectional link between the two. Technological advancement (esp fetilizers) has been crucial to the increase in the absolute number of humans to its current level.

There is also good reason to think that there are direct effects in the opposite direction. There seems likely to be a minimum population that can support the degree of specialization needed for a given level of technological advancement.

But while there absolutely is a direct relationship, I don't think that your core point is necessarily wrong. The minimum population required to maintain our current level of technology might well be one or more magnitudes less than our current population. Our current population may well be sufficient to achieve the level of technology required to become a space habitating species.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#762

Post by acituan »

dragonwriter wrote: post #751
acituan wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men are not doing as well as women in school. Schools are not performing as well for men as they do for women. I'm not just playing with words; it is really important to frame the share of responsibility correctly. It is the school's job to educate the kid, not kid's job to compensate for the dysfunctions of an education system. I'll generalize because I don't have any detailed data; anyone from the front-line educ…

> > Men are not doing as well as women in school. > Schools are not performing as well for men as they do for women. Maybe men are just not inherently less suited to academic success, which is being made more clear now that systematic discrimination in their favor isn’t preventing equal-terms comparisons with women in that domain. Equality of opportunity doesn't mean equality of outcomes, after all.

> Maybe men are just not inherently less suited to academic success

Maybe. A strong essentialist proposition requires an equally strong evidence, though. Have you got any?

> systematic discrimination in their favor isn’t preventing equal-terms comparisons with women in that domain

What positive systemic discrimination do boys receive in education? Since we are not observing a sudden drop after K-12 but a longitudinal effect, please explain starting from K, if any.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#763

Post by random314 »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #725
acituan wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men are not doing as well as women in school. Schools are not performing as well for men as they do for women. I'm not just playing with words; it is really important to frame the share of responsibility correctly. It is the school's job to educate the kid, not kid's job to compensate for the dysfunctions of an education system. I'll generalize because I don't have any detailed data; anyone from the front-line educ…

Men run most governments. Men own most companies. Men dominate the higher levels of corporations. Most engineers, doctors, lawyers, investors, and other highly paid professionals are men. Men simply own more capital than women, by a huge margin. It looks like schools are performing better for men than women.

Men are subject to more natural selection pressure than women. There is genetic evidence for this.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#764

Post by nullifidian »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #510
88840-8855 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a good friend who is working in HR. She used to be in hiring, now she is in the talent and development stream. We are not in the same company. A few weeks ago I was speaking about my impression that my company is forcing women into promotions and positions just for the sake of reaching targets. I said that it felt unfair towards male colleagues. Her reply was something like this: Men had the advantage for thou…

In theory such companies should end up imploding from valuing genital configuration over talent which is why there's so much pressure on the various levels of government to enshrine this type of behavior into law so all competitors will likewise be as hobbled by it.

Competitors can already be sued into oblivion with the help of the disparate impact (quota) jurisprudence. That ship has sailed.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#765

Post by shrimp_emoji »

wayoutthere wrote: post #28
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. Tinder is a waste of time for women too; if you’re at all attractive you get dozens of messages a day and half of them are scams. The best I’ve ever gotten out of Tinder has been mediocre, meaningless sex; it’s far too much work if you’re looking fo…

>If that’s just your daily life, you’ll meet people who enjoy the same things you do and you can potentially date them (or their friends).

I enjoy reading and occasionally posting comments on Hacker News. u up?

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#766

Post by throoooway »

username90 wrote: post #587
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of validity to the social struggles of men in a lot of online discourse, but to say “society“ punishes us for not being women flies in the face of almost every useful metric of socioeconomic success. Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically. Buying into that victim complex is a distraction from your own self-development and healing.

Most kids spends their first 15 years mostly surrounded by women. Their doctors, their kinder garden teachers, their school teachers etc. Almost every authority figure is a woman there. If those boys have problem I feel it is ok to say that it is mostly those grownups fault, and they happen to be mostly women.

Male teachers who are not retirees have been removed from the teaching pool. Why? Schools do not pay enough to build a career or family. You cannot afford to have male teachers who are not retired and doing it for fun.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#767

Post by cjohnson318 »

mdorazio wrote: post #743
cjohnson318 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional... What do you mean? Of course those are optional. If you don't want a career, you're not going to have one. If you don't want to get married and support a family, then you don't have to. I mean, "saddle up to a breadwinner" is an extremely demeaning thing to say about a who…

Did you really just call out the parent comment for being demeaning when you yourself are sitting here saying that women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions? Please stop.

I did not say that "women, as a group, choose undesirable and unsuccessful professions". I would say that as a group, women are doing the best they can, it is just that men tend to have greater opportunities than women, even though the capabilities of women and men are comparable. I believe that women have a harder, longer road to professional success in our society, and that this is plainly evident.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#768

Post by qq4 »

rasen58 wrote: post #720
belorn wrote: post #269

What are the things that motivates them, and what do they themselves want to do in life? I ask this because much of the undertone in the article and in this thread is about the failure of meeting the gender role expectations that are put on young men. Do they have a job and a car? Have they studied hard so they can get a good job in order to support a wife and kid? Culture in the last several decades have hammered do…

I don't think a lot of people know what motivates them or what they want to do in life. If you could play video games all day and have fun or force yourself to study or work at a hard job all day, what would you choose? Wouldn't most people prefer the easier and fun option? Do you have a solution to this? (I've been thinking about it for a while and I don't know)

I don't think many people are motivated to do much of anything, and so by consequence they prefer the easier, "fun" option of wasting their time. A motivated person doesn't have to force themselves to work hard, it's the default. That's how I see it.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#769

Post by wwweston »

grammarnazzzi wrote: post #624
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of validity to the social struggles of men in a lot of online discourse, but to say “society“ punishes us for not being women flies in the face of almost every useful metric of socioeconomic success. Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically. Buying into that victim complex is a distraction from your own self-development and healing.

> Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically The extreme elements of 3rd wave feminism has influcenced society in ways that unfairly and negatively impact boys. Specifically the concept of "toxic masculinity". Toxic people are toxic. Toxic behaviors are toxic. Toxic people should be shamed and toxic behaviors should be discouraged. Boys should not be shamed for being masculine,…

> Toxic people are toxic.

Yes, and generally when the term "toxic people" is used, few assume that the speaker is saying that "people are toxic" and "people should be shamed for being people."

And yet... you've done pretty much that with the term "toxic masculinity." It's almost as if someone has persuaded you that adjectives are actually appositives.

The phrase "toxic masculinity" no more implies that masculinity itself should be discouraged or shamed than the phrase "toxic food" implies the entire world should fast forever.

And like "toxic food" would suggest there's some subset of foodstuffs one should avoid, it does suggest that there's some subset of masculine-identified behavior that are unhealthy for either those acting those behaviors out, or those on the receiving end of them.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#770

Post by developer93 »

grammarnazzzi wrote: post #624
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of validity to the social struggles of men in a lot of online discourse, but to say “society“ punishes us for not being women flies in the face of almost every useful metric of socioeconomic success. Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically. Buying into that victim complex is a distraction from your own self-development and healing.

> Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically The extreme elements of 3rd wave feminism has influcenced society in ways that unfairly and negatively impact boys. Specifically the concept of "toxic masculinity". Toxic people are toxic. Toxic behaviors are toxic. Toxic people should be shamed and toxic behaviors should be discouraged. Boys should not be shamed for being masculine,…

This is not what toxic masculinity means. It's not saying masculinity is toxic, toxic is a qualifier not a description. It's used to talk about those attitudes which are ascribed by some people to be super masculine, but actually are just unhealthy (like hyper aggression, or the idea, ironically, that men shouldn't ask for help or complain about anything)
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