No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing • Hacker News Board

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#891

Post by the_only_law » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 3:07 AM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #188

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working." Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all. It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.

And it’s a particularly bad short slogan because it says something a) no one really believes and b) something that is particularly unpopular. Defund the police sets back the very things it’s trying to address. Contrast that to “Black Lives Matter” or “We are the 99%” which are also short slogans that encapsulate the broad and varied beliefs of the respective movements without being off putting to even the people who…

> Contrast that to “Black Lives Matter” or “We are the 99%” which are also short slogans that encapsulate the broad and varied beliefs of the respective movements without being off putting to even the people who agree.

Err, the former had people shitting themselves over it online for years.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#892

Post by the_only_law » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #129

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working." Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all. It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.

This is the flip side of the “take trump seriously, not literally” argument that went around trying to normalize him in the last election. There are people who absolutely Believe that any police force is a slave enforcement force (or derived from one) and a tool of white tool to subjugate others. To them it must be eradicated.

> “take trump seriously, not literally”

That’s actually a good take though and probably would have highlighted some of the issues with him better instead of boring “orange man bad” jokes and other things that got boring after two times.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#893

Post by purplerabbit » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 3:33 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #796

rayiner wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a “flat lining” of wages of cause family stability to go down ? And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?

The issue isn't with the absolute level of wages but with increasing income inequality (Gini coefficient) and the resulting loss of social status for young men on the lower end of that scale.

Correct. The hierarchy is getting steeper and harder to climb.

Men who don’t feel connected to a clear path of ascension become desperate and often either dangerous or losers.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the increasing number of men who feel they have “fallen off the path”. Could be scary

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#894

Post by id02009 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

> Absent fathers and broken family units are major factors for many social ills. It’s obvious but no one wants to talk about it.

This is just not true. It's almost constantly talked about, it's even a trope in movies, jokes, singers saying about it.

What is really not discussed is the other side of the equation. Who chooses those men?

Are women equally capable to make moral choices (I believe they are). Or are they just kind-of-sentient robots that are programmed to have kids, will grab any man that will make them pregnant and deserve only compassion when that "random choice" does not turn out to be a good dad?

I think (in terms of culture) this is closer (than what the author claims) to the truth: Complain about men not pulling their weight. Never mention women responsibility. It's taboo to discuss it openly in a good faith. So now we have a fringe claiming men are only victims of women evil, which is another side of this stupid-coin. We can't meet in the middle anymore.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#895

Post by etherael » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #439

etherael wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's admitting the truth, then it should be at risk. Anything else is just delaying the inevitable and not planning adequately for its arrival in the meantime.

We’re starting to see the seeds of this in various ways - an example is realizing that laws and penalties against speeding don’t really do anything, but changing the design of the road can do everything. There are many, many more examples for us to find.

If the point is to reduce speed or accidents and their externalities, sure.

If the point is to raise revenue from those penalties, not so much.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#896

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #154

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate, I'm gonna call bullshit on this. Even if you assume all demographics are snorting coke and beating their wives equally there are so, so, so many laws you can just trivially comply with by expending a little bit more money and there is so much less incentive for petty crime when you are in a career track where misdemeanors matter.

Tax evasion, child abuse, embezzlement, drug abuse/dealing, drunk driving ... all crimes that can easily go unreported and if are reported result in reduced punishments for those who can afford good lawyers. Look at Rush Limbaugh. Plenty of drug-related criminality there but zero convictions. Will smith just attacked someone on camera but just walked away without even an interview by police. It isn't just the ultra-f…

Re Will Smith - He slapped, once, for insulting his wife. That's not what I would call 'attacking' unless you're trying to sensationalize it.

And this in response to an article on men not standing up for their wives in life!!

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#897

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:29 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #812

> "Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the commu…

That's wrong.

Women's attractiveness to men (and vice versa) is based strongly on societal expectations. Those societal expectations have been getting programmed by hollywood and media for so many decades that a massive amount or even majority has very unrealistic expectations.

The ones that seem free of this were lucky to have a really good role model of more healthy realistic relationships in their family.

In summary if we stopped programming people to have unrealistic expectations, they just might, maybe, don't you think .. form relationships more.

I think though I'm not as sure that this applies to women more then men, based on the stats showing that most women will reject most men but not the other way around (1).

1) Reference for this is the OkCupid blog which has been deleted but would still be available with searching.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#898

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #635

My purpose is to make money for a woman and children, thats it? I might as well be a cow providing milk. Wow no shit, that doesn’t sound attractive to me.

Well in the old model of marriage, the woman also did things for her man in exchange, looked after him and the house, respected him, showed him appreciation.

That's out of fashion now, attacked by the caustic branches of feminism.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#899

Post by zmgsabst » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

libraryatnight wrote: post #883

zmgsabst wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re calling it “irrational” to give yourself an excuse to engage in bad faith — such as using demeaning language towards a large group of people. That gives you an “out” from having to understand something that might conflict with a belief you hold or make you uncomfortable.

Or maybe it's just irrational. Not saying the feelings expressed here don't point to a very real issue, but there's no chance in any meaningful engagement with the vast majority of the comments in this thread. You have a bunch of scared men making emotional arguments that somehow their entire self worth and sense of direction relies on society demanding something of them. The something in most cases being rooted in n…

> By all means let's talk about what men are going through and feeling, let's treat it seriously

Your post comes across as you strawmanning and demeaning men doing just that — to justify your own irrational dismissal of what they’re actually saying.

Your entire post is a mocking strawman.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#900

Post by etchalon » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:21 AM UTC

paradox242 wrote: post #701

fwip wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely wild to me that Rob quotes: > Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die. Without seeming to make any s…

Did you grow poor or have friends from poor backgrounds? I saw lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence, and little if any of it had to do with their trying to survive in a material sense. There are different norms around which behaviors grant status, and this is the primary driver behind this kind of behavior in my experience.

I grew up poor, but was lucky enough to go to a fairly 'rich' school district amongst fairly rich people (upper middle class more than "rich" I guess).

You know what I saw in rich kids?

Lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence.

I just rarely saw them suffer any consequences for it.