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

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

robkhenderson.com

234 pointsmooreds578 comments

This whole article is talking about absentee fathers, but every example is listing why the mother left or kicked out the father.

Nowhere in the article is mentioned the obvious common denominator - women are no longer utterly dependent on their husbands. People didn't stay together more often in the 50s because the couples were better, or because people were held to higher standards, it was because getting out of a terrible marriage was incredibly difficult if not impossible, and even if successful would cause immense hardship.

The article also simply takes for granted that it's a bad thing that these nuclear families do not stay together. While it's true that just directly comparing the children of single mothers to those raised by two parents the former tend to be worse off by a number of metrics, this disadvantage disappears once you normalize for the socioeconomic conditions of the mother, and indeed they are actually slightly better off.

People aren't irrationally making their lives harder, they take actions they feel will be beneficial, and it's unsurprising that they have a good idea of what would be personally beneficial. While the exact mechanism is up for debate, the leading theory is that in underprivileged communities where people tend to have children at a young age a heavy reliance on multi-generation family is more beneficial than the nuclear structure (or in other words, when you have a kid at 18, your 40 year old mother can probably provide a lot more resources and experience than a 19 year old guy).

You can't simply say that men aren't stepping up; the world has changed, mostly for the better, and as a consequence family structures are going to look different now from what they once did.

> this disadvantage disappears once you normalize for the socioeconomic conditions of the mother

Link?

https://theconversation.com/having-a-single-parent-doesnt-de...

I'm slightly cautious about that contribution. The author describes the focus of her work as being that of 'changing society', albeit largely on encouraging breastfeeding. If someone is a campaigner rather than a disinterested researcher then their words should be treated as such, especially outside of formal research pieces.

You don't need to take the author's word for it. The blue text are links to the formal research pieces being cited.

> This whole article is talking about absentee fathers, but every example is listing why the mother left or kicked out the father.

Because the article takes the very rational and supported by the article side that these mothers were actually founded in kicking them out.

> The article also simply takes for granted that it's a bad thing that these nuclear families do not stay together.

No, the article goes much further that that. It points out that upper-class and middle-class people like to pretend and promote that the nuclear family doesn't matter while themselves acting like it does.

The main thesis of the article is that modern culture is actually undermining the poor while being mostly posturing.

> You can't simply say that men aren't stepping up

It's a good thing that it's not what the article is saying then.

> It points out that upper-class and middle-class people like to pretend and promote that the nuclear family doesn't matter while themselves acting like it does.

Rich people say you don't need a yacht. Yet, rich people buy yachts. Clearly yachts are very important for becoming and staying rich, and the wealthy are undermining the poor with their "yachts are a luxury" posturing.

It is to be expected that people encountering different circumstances would adopt different behaviors. That well-off people are more likely to live in a nuclear family does not mean living in a nuclear family is the reason they are well-off, nor does it mean that people in worse circumstances would be better off if they made the same choices.

This is not what the parent wrote.

Not having a yacht is not like “having a worse yacht by xyz criteria”, hence that comparison just does not work. There is always a family.

I personally agree with the parent here, it might be helpful to read the article again.

Okay fine.

Rich people say your car doesn't need to be a Lamborghini, a Toyota Corolla is fine. Yet, rich people buy Lamborghinis. A Toyota Corolla is a worse car by xyz criteria. Clearly having a better car is very important for becoming and staying rich, and the wealthy are undermining the poor with their "you don't need a sports car" posturing.

I think it would be helpful for you to reread the article, specifically:

> Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.

> But nobody wants to admit it because it upsets people.

> Instead, we retreat to discussions of poverty and economics because talking about family and parenting makes people feel weird and judgmental.

> But young men will only do what’s expected of them.

> And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on.

> Today, these norms have largely dissolved.

> Young men have responded accordingly.

I think you misunderstood, or I’m a little male lost in what your point is: there is no causality between owning an expensive car and being rich. There is evidence pointing to otherwise for (whole) nuclear families and being rich(er).

Secondly, doing as is expected of them and “not stepping up” is not really the same thing, is it? Almost the opposite, actually, stepping up is doing what is expected of you, with some emphasis on this being hard.

> Yet, rich people buy Lamborghinis.

Do they really? Seems more like a case for wannabe rich people.

Im guessing you're one of these people described in the article that had a stable, family upbringing?

I would assume that to be true as well. As someone who had only one parent available, this is an annoyingly trite opinion. Of course socioeconomic effects contribute as well, this is again trivial.

You've misunderstood the claim, which is not that socioeconomic effects contribute, but that they dominate.

I understand the claim but I don't agree with it. I specifically don't believe the differences disappear if you correct for socioeconomic factors, however you would seriously accomplish that.

Money isn't the only stress factor, it is that a child suddenly can become the primary relation to their parent and they might even be alone with that in case of only child. Of course additional family and siblings and a bunch of other environmental factors would have an effect too.

I do think it has an influence, but it cannot be reduced to that. To state the opposite is probably just bad science like in so many cases. It is the hypothyroidism explanation of social sciences.

But that was your claim:

> this disadvantage disappears once you normalize for the socioeconomic conditions

And the tirade about families changing hints as the usual ideological slant. But for nobody under 50 divorces are anything new.

Your guess is incorrect, though I could be Mr. Roger's kid and that wouldn't change the data.

> the world has changed, mostly for the better

This remains to be seen, honestly

There are an awful lot of unhappy men out there and they are going to boil over eventually

It may be less boiling over, and more exiting. A major increase in suicides, increasingly fewer people willing to do jobs, and a ever aging demographic with increased pressure on social support and health care. Everyone looses with no clear path forward.

Well, mass shootings are increasing as well

That would seem to qualify as "boiling over" to a certain extent to me

That is a US centric issue. There are a lot of "unhappy men" in the rest of the western societies as well, and no atrocities like that. Thankfully.

Mass stabbings then

That sounds more covering the issue rather than addressing the root cause.

I've never heard of a treatment where the symptoms aren't treated while the root cause is sought and hopefully tackled.

Let's hope they learn to grow up before that.

> the mother left or kicked out the father

> the world has changed, mostly for the better

Yeah, maybe. There have been a few analyses on this topic, and depending on the source, the live-in boyfriend or stepdad is somewhere between 2 and 8 times more likely than the biodad to physically or sexually abuse the kids.

If you're going to divorce the father in order to "find yourself" or whatever contrived excuse you need, you should at least take a vow of celibacy or something.

Well the first part about who is likely to be an abuser I can see how one would argue that. But why focus on the mother about what she should be doing in a divorce? Responsibility for the children rests with both parents! Even if in the end it's often the mother actually stepping up.

I find that's a central part of the article, that societal pressire for men to look after their children is lacking. And they don't on their own measure up. There's no easy answer, and telling the mothers they are responsible for absentee fathers is too easy a take.

> often the mother actually stepping up

I don't think the evidence bears this out. It's often the mother's lawyer optimizing her post-divorce income (via child support) by agitating for as much of the custody split as possible, in a family court system that is systemically biased against fathers being awarded custody. I will edit this with citations if I find time later.

Of course the courts are biased against males! Males are much less eager to take on custody. And I claim that without even checking, because it's in plain sight and also a main thread of the article we comment under. I'd be very surprised if you would show otherwise. That to me explains but of course does not excuse the bias in courts.

Plenty of men get joint custody, and in many jurisdictions, this is the default.

The law cannot help it that there are so many bum men. This article is about that. Whether or not low expectations are the reason remains to be seen, but there is an epidemic of worthless bum men.

Men are discriminated against in the form of affirmative action and other programs now that explicitly take resources from them and give them to others. Many men now expect the government to take care of women in the form of food stamps, Medicare, social security, welfare type programs and thus do not contribute or participate. This leads to more children being raised without fathers, which has been proven time and again in studies to harm them greatly.

It's time for us to trust the science again and do what we can to keep families together so that children gain all the advantages of having an involved father.

Something that intend to write on someday that I'll excerpt here: the phenomenon of "young men with nothing to do" is driven by a society-wide misallocation of capital that is itself driven by wealth inequality - specifically, old people and elites who command too large a proportion of wealth. This concentration of wealth in the hands of a cohort that is less diverse, and has less diverse interests, than the general public concentrates investment and bids up the prices of common necessities while leaving nascent demand for other goods and services to languish, often unborn. This diverse set of would-be goods and services are the ones that would have employed many of the "shiftless" young men described (myself included). Instead, there are no ventures available with which to employ our skills, or the things we could have become skillful in; we're forced to compete with elite practitioners in the fields rich old people care to invest in or purchase from.

As TFA details, this is actually to the advantage of the aforementioned cohort - whatever particular shape a family takes (and it can be successful with queer parents, or one parent, or grandparents), its instability is useful when fighting advocacy for labor, community investment, and such. The energy expended in keeping things together at home can't be redirected against elite interests. That's why they take exception, not because one-dad-one-mom-one-boy-one-girl is the only way to successfully do-the-family.

This isn't much of a new phenomenon. There are many examples in European history at least where a monarch puts all of his time and energy into patronizing the arts, causing his kingdom to fall into ruin. Charles V's reign of Spain was plagued with uprisings of disgruntled peasants. Certainly worth looking into for your full write-up. "There is nothing new under the sun" is a great idiom to call upon to back up an argument.

In the olden days people died much younger. If you were middle/upper class you could expect your inheritance right as you were raising your kids.

Also a lot more was expected of grandparents. They did a lot more childcare.

I'm curious if you could expand—what exactly are these fields that rich old people only care about?

Looking at a broad picture of the economy, I'm really not sure this tracks. Lots of capital is being invested into software and AI, for example, which doesn't seem like something "old people" necessarily care about or even understand. In addition, the marijuana industry is now larger than the airline industry.

It's not what they "only" care about, when it comes to investment; it's what they can make money on. Or, rather, what their investment advisers or fund managers think money can be made on, and all the more so if younger investors are shut out.

In software, anyone younger than their mid-30s is late (too young to invest in Apple when it was at lows, Facebook IPO, etc.). AI is just the latest rolling of the software hype trade, with cloud and mobile and crypto and SaaS and more before it. And investors don't have to understand marijuana to know that being at the ground floor of an industry that's high-demand, low-supply-by-regulatory-capture would be incresibly lucrative; they piled into ownership (not stock, which was a pump-and-dump for suckers) while indie growers were shut out.

But the crux of the issue isn't simply that they like these investments. It's that they'll cannibalize everything else to prop up their chosen champions. Ironically, the mass tech layoffs of the past couple years are an example, with hundreds of thousands of workers sacrificed to keep companies not just solvent, but "growing" on paper. The post-COVID "boom" that funded their positions was misallocated capital that could have gone towards jobs that were actually sustainable; those people would still be gainfully employed, rather than unemployed or underemployed as they are now.

Finally, some material analysis.

Man I hate when people use the phrase “broken home” unironically. My parents divorced when I was young and I can assure the writer that both of my homes were always whole. Do you know what breaks a home? Two people who no longer want to live together being forced to cohabitate because of regressive notions of the what makes an effective family. Definitely preferred swapping weekends with each parent to having to listen to them fight while they thought I was asleep. Overall this article felt quite broad, moralizing, and assertive with very little actually substantive evidence.

Fellow kiddo of divorce here. One of my homes was whole. The other was an absolute shit-show from age 5 to 19, when I stopped talking to them. Bio-dad was useless. In fact, I felt quite represented overall by the article, what with it discussing how poor women will choose no man over a shit man. My mom definitely chose that, and I'm immensely better for it. I'm just disappointed I had to do mandatory visitations.

Luckily I got a step dad later on who stepped right up. I wouldn't be who I am today without him, he's awesome.

same here. although my parents lived so far apart that regular visits with the other parent were not possible, i actually felt that them being separated so far was a good thing considering how the two of them just could not get along. the distance did not hurt my own relationship with my absent parent, nor have i ever felt guilty for their separation. neither parent felt the need to talk bad about the other.

that said, living with a single parent did plenty of damage to us children, so in that sense we most certainly had a broken home. but the cure for that would probably have been for our parent to find a new partner (which they tried but didn't succeed in because any potential candidates were not interested in children), but most certainly not for my parents to get back together (and i know they tried. from first separation to final divorce it took more than half a decade, and that's probably the time where we kids suffered the most).

every experience is unique. It's simply that, as a statistic, a non-nuclear home setup is one disproportionately rife with instability, chaos, and sometimes abuse. My single parent did the best for me, but it'd be hard to convince there's a "whole" home, when there were some days where I had to fend for myself with rice and beans a 12 years old, or when rent gets too high and we ended up rooming together with a 2nd single parent family just to stay afloat.

You are comparing apples with oranges. Life in a stable family is not like life in a parental war zone. Separated or not, the latter is worse off.

> Amy, a white thirty-year-old mother of three, ages six, five, and three, had a boyfriend who worked steadily but insisted on spending on selfish pursuits. This is what eventually broke the young couple up. ‘He wouldn’t spend money for the kids’ food. I had to send my kids across the street to my mom’s to feed them and stuff. That’s what I got fed up with. I shouldn’t have to live like that…I said it’s time for him to support these kids instead of [me] being on [assistance], and he didn’t like it.’”

Translation: “I was impregnated by 3 other guys, and they all left me, and now I finally found a boyfriend but it turns out he doesn’t want to spend his money to feed my kids.”

Sweetie, we’re not married, so there’s no reason for you to expect I feed your children. My earnings are my earnings just like your earnings are your earnings in this feminist culture of independence.

> Sweetie, we’re not married, so there’s no reason for you to expect I feed your children.

Dating a single parent isn't a strictly transactional affair. And it may be financially beneficial (for everyone) to not marry yet still cohabitate and pick up the slack in childrearing. YMMV.

It may indeed be financially beneficial, but that is an arrangement they must both agree to.

Agreed. Afraid a lot of threads here are talking about different things. Casually dating for a while shouldn't carry a lot of responsibilities from either party. Yet as things deepen or carry on for extended periods, it's reasonable to expect a more equal division of labor.

these he-said she-said problems are hard to resolve with one party (and that is part of why those relationship forums have the worst advice ever). The issue here can lie anywhere from "they weren't aligned on how far they are in the relationship" to "she did not take into account the expenses he did pay but only remembered the refusals". The tone of the article makes the reader want to think the boyfriend was a selfish step parent who can't budget, but who knows the real truth?

Your translation is dishonest and dumb. Having three kids doesn't mean they were from three different guys.

It was uncharitable to illustrate each child being from a different guy but the way the article worded it, it definitely seems like they are not the boyfriend's kids, so it isn't necessarily dumb to assert that the article has an uncharitable take on the boyfriend

Whether the boyfriend in question was the father was not explicitly stated. Further, I'd argue that if you want to date a lady, her kids come with that as a complete package. My two cents.

No, dating a lady does not obligate you to support her children from other men. What a ridiculous take. Accepting their presence and being good to them, sure, but those aren't the same as being made to support them. If I started dating a woman and quickly asked her to fork over money to support my aging parents or my own family responsibilities, it would be rightly viewed as an unfair and manipulative emotional/financial hijack of responsibility. The opposite doesn't hold true?

that's the kind of attitude that forces women to reject her own children just so that she can find a new partner. sure, as long as dating only involves paying for the shared dinner whenever you spend time together, that doesn't create an obligation to do more, but as soon as you start supporting your partner beyond that, you have to accept that some of that support goes to the children.

What you're saying is absurd. Millions of women manage to take on an active dating and relationship life, without rejecting their children or piling unreasonable obligations onto their partner. Yet somehow you seem to imply that men are at fault if they don't rapidly open their arms to responsibilities that they never created.

It's called being and adult and regardless of sex/gender it means taking ownership of what's your responsibility. Yes, there is a point at which, in this case, a man will take on certain financial and care responsibilities over children that aren't his if he's with a woman who has them but the "when" of that is a subjective line that comes from mutual agreement, not some automatic social debt.

ok, i was exaggerating, but this has happened, maybe less in western cultures but in places where women are more dependent on having a husband that supports them.

when someone with children tries to find a new partner, that partner needs to be clear from the first day that if this relationship is going to go forward, the children are part of the deal. if the potential partner is not willing to accept that, then that is a non-starter for any long term relationship.

a single parent should not have to spend a year dating someone before it is clear whether their partner is willing to contribute to parenting the children if that is what they are looking for.

if a person is misleading their partner about their intentions then yes, they are absolutely at fault. do not date someone with children if that is not the route you want to go.

in any relationship it is the responsibility of each person to support their partner with all their personal issues. that is the purpose of a relationship. unless we are talking about a casual relationship, like being friends.

>that's the kind of attitude that forces women to reject her own children just so that she can find a new partner.

It's a harsh reality, but reality nonetheless. kids are already on the decline. Many men may literally be unable to help support a family of 5, especially with all 3 kids being so young. You gotta swing for the fences with someone who can do that support, or otherwise try to align with someone ready to bear that responsibility of a family they did not help birth.

Men are already absolutely worthless per unit on dating sites, so there won't be much sympathy on a male-oriented forum about dating troubles.

>as you start supporting your partner beyond that, you have to accept that some of that support goes to the children.

I suppose that's why many partners pass on a potential partner with children. May as well not pretend it's not a roadblock.

> Translation: “I was impregnated by 3 other guys, and they all left me, and now I finally found a boyfriend but it turns out he doesn’t want to spend his money to feed my kids.”

This just in, when you date a single mother, you will probably end up being involved in her children's lives and supporting them. Didn't think we needed to spell that out but here we are.

You simply dating her and naturally being involved in her childrens' lives doesn't make you responsible for financially supporting and raising them. This is a ridiculous viewpoint and one that implicitly places men who date a woman with children as automatic cash cows out of some grossly twisted notion of patriarchy.

I wouldn't think something so bloody obvious would need to be spelled out but here we are.

nor does dating make you responsible for financially supporting your partner. but if you do financially support her, then you have to consider that her financial needs include supporting her children. if your goal is to meet her needs then you must cover that, or change the goal and agree to only cover part of her needs.

You're essentially stating the obvious of informal adult relationships: Communicate what each is offering or can offer and see if it works for both for the sake of an agreement. The previous comment I replied to bothered me specifically because it seemed to take the position that by dating a woman, a man is automatically obligated into supporting her children and childcare needs, which is... plainly ridiculous.

how is that ridiculous? if you intend to enter into a long term stable relationship, then that is effectively starting a new family. and if one partner in that new family already has children, then they are part of it and you are on the way to becoming a step parent. do not date someone with children if that is not what you want.

this is different if it is a casual relationship, then whatever. but then at least be clear from the start that this relationship will not be more than that.

there seems to be a disconnect of expectations here.

how is a relationship supposed to work if the parent has to take care of the children all the time? you'll be lucky if you get to see each other even once a week. and what are the children going to feel if they see their parent with someone who does not care about them at all? they are going to think that this person is just as bad as the other one that left them, or worse they are going to steal the other parent away from them too.

it's not rational, but children who lost one of their parents are not rational. they have experienced trauma and have anxieties. you are going to have to work with that. children need all the love they can get.

it is asking a lot. i grant you that. and it is certainly not for everyone. but it is what the children and that parent need. so it's not ridiculous at all.

When dating someone with children, but you don’t want to go all-in with that person, please just leave: you’re not only making the life of your partner miserable, but also destroy their child’s or children’s. You will invariably end up walking away at some point, and the children will witness all of the ensuing mess.

If, however, you have an intention to stay, there is no reason to make a distinction between their money and yours, and you will come off bigoted and thrifty.

And of course you can also choose to be a sexist like the parent commenter, but that only makes you look like a fool.

He's made his expectations in the relationship clear. It's entirely up to her whether she accepts that or leaves.

There's nothing "sexist" about that. The only sexism here is expecting a man to pay for dating by supporting her kids.

> He's made his expectations in the relationship clear. It's entirely up to her whether she accepts that or leaves.

Pretty sure she did that.

First, let's make a distinction between TFA and the comment I was replying to, which implied that dating a woman with children did not imply any responsibility towards her children.

And this is what I'm objecting: Dating someone with children does, in fact, imply that responsibility, because the children aren't involved in the decision of you dating their parent, yet are immediately affected by it. The children evidently have previously experienced a separation of their biological parents, and I have yet to meet someone that wasn't traumatised in one way or another by this. So if you enter a relationship with their parent without the honest intention to stay, you wilfully cause pain to children for your personal pleasure. Think about this for a moment, it isn't hyperbole.

On the other hand, if you actually mean it, love your partner, and want to build a shared future, there's no reason to draw this weird line between their money and yours; you're a family now after all. Obviously that doesn't mean you need to let someone take advantage of you! But that isn't what I'd call family either.

As I said: Dating someone with children has far more implications than sleeping around in your twenties. It requires commitment and readiness to build a stable, lasting relationship. It's absolutely okay to not be at this point (or never getting there), but please: Keep away from single parents, then. The consequences of your actions have long-lasting effects on their children.

Edit: Oh, and this:

> There's nothing "sexist" about that. The only sexism here is expecting a man to pay for dating by supporting her kids.

Nah, sorry. A comment that starts off by calling a grown up woman "Sweetie" and then proceeds to assume she must have been "impregnated" by three different men without any reason to think so, is just some misogynistic bullshit.

>Dating someone with children does, in fact, imply that responsibility, because they children aren't involved in the decision of you dating their parent, yet are immediately affected by it.

really depends on too many factors to make a judgement call. Are they living together? Are the kids still in contact with their previous father? Have they discussed the kids to begin with and established barriers? is the relationship purely physical or are there emotional stakes?

It's a complex topic, and I wouldn't distill it down to "you inherit all the duties of your date".

>Think about this for a moment, it isn't hyperbole.

Situations in which this is justified:

- the mother hides the kids from you

- you establish barriers from the beginning and agree... until you don't

- You think you can handle the kids and it turns out you can't. Be it financially, emotionally, or otherwise. People can change their minds

- No matter your attempts, the kids simply never warm up to you. As you said, they are involved and a kids' opinion on a potential father will impact what may otherwise be a compatible couple.

The mother isn't necessarily a perfect actor. The kids certainly aren't. And you probably don't know your limits until you get some field training. I think a lot of your arguments hinge on this assumption that the default these days is a deep connection instead of casual dating with messy communication, and that the kids will fall in love with the potential father 100% of the time if the mother does.

> Dating someone with children has far more implications than sleeping around in your twenties

Ehh. There have been broken up relationships that were non-eventual for a child, and messy 20's relationships that haunt you and your partner for decades to come. Again, the situation is too complex to distill into "one is better/worse than the other".

I don't know why you assumed they weren't his kids. The article implied they were. It is unclear, but there is no evidence that they aren't his and certainly no evidence that her kids all have different fathers. This is incel talk.

Your comment would have been so much more effective without the last sentence.

We expect young men to grow up and become "husband material". Due to various changes (standards for husbands rising, economic opportunity diminishing), this goal has become clearly unreachable for many.

I would opt out if I was a poor young man today, and focus on enjoying the small pleasures (drinking with my buddies, playing PS5). The hill they are expected to climb is ludicrous, and I am not surprised they respond by walking away.

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.

Pretending there is no difference between men and women is a total dead end.

Emotions and social games are a lot trickier to navigate for men, who didn't have umpteen years of evolution to practice.

In a lot of ways, we're expecting men to be more like women, and women more like men, while hating each other for it. Divide and conquer, the oldest game in the book.

> In a lot of ways, we're expecting men to be more like women, and women more like men, while hating each other for it.

Can you provide some specifics?

Men being expected to be in tune with their emotions to the same level, and women expected to be has ruthless and dominant as any male in business; just to pick two.

The sad part is that most men "need" feminine energy to complement their own, and vice versa.

But there is a difference between seeing a highly publicized and pervasive media push that there is a huge list of things you must already be good at... vs casually starting a relationship and learning along the way you must do all these things for long term success.

Not to mention there is no indication from women that they will tolerate the few things you need to learn about and improve.

This is why more just give up prematurely.

> Being emotionally available

My dad taught me boys do the opposite. My schoolmates told me that emotions were not for boys. I'm pretty sure I'm not a unique snowflake.

> participating in chores

Dad said that boys don't do domestic chores. If a couple lives inside an apartment, all chores are domestic.

> providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time

Jesus, this is not exactly trivial for most of us.

> being reasonably well-read

Very few of my friends, family and acquaintances are well-read. I'm pretty sure they don't even know what table stakes are. But it's not a hard requirement, they have kids anyway.

> good conversationalist

Not a trivial thing either. Incidentally, being well-read doesn't help if your partner is not, or if your partner is onto serious books and you like to read horny gay romps.

Well, I guess don’t move to the big city and try to settle down with an IG baddie?

I appreciate the fact that people like this exist, everywhere, in large quantities. But that means that the dating market, in some places, have decided there is no product market fit. Very HN statement.

Now, the options are - rebrand, or move to new market, or government regulation to provide ‘protectionist’ tariffs and trade barriers to promote ‘homegrown industries’.

I prefer the free market, but I can understand why the West Virginia coal miners want the government to bail them out. I’m not sure what to do about this state of events at all.

You nailed that metaphor. To the very end.

Are you saying we used to always expect men to do all of the above, or do you agree with me that we ask more from men than we used to?

Being the perfect adult is table stakes? This description is the ideal middle class man. If that's table stakes to you, either you've got one hell of a catch or you've got a few more years left before you settle. Most adults, full grown adults, men and women, don't meet all those requirements. I do, most don't.

There's actually plenty of people like that out there, but probably not where you live.

Oh there are plenty of people like that, yes. Well, minus the "makes good money but doesnt work a lot". But that's not table stakes.

Agreed, that's the one part that's not table stakes as not anyone can count on it. That's a nice to have and an aspiration. I almost called that out as a minor exception, but didn't because there's still something there in spirit, namely values even if not execution:

For, it is table stakes to be generally decent at having a work ethic at all, and to also value family time (within the reasonable constraints of work), and thus to do your reasonable best within your means even if that means a pretty meager, but passable material lifestyle, and/or there's an attempt to consistently make time for family regularly every week, even if it's a little limited by work schedule.

It only takes 10 minutes to tuck your child in and chat with them a little and if that's all you have most days because you're busy buying food and rent for them, that's OK. You have to eat and they have to eat, so it takes no extra time to eat together, even if it's a McDonald's or a can of beans and a loaf of bread, even if it doesn't work out every day.

But it's generally seen as not very good to go too extreme in one direction or the other (borderline homeless / broken home due to not working at all or habitually quitting jobs rashly without better lined up isn't OK, and "working rich" dad who never sees the kids ever and seems disinterested the one time he has an hour once week also isn't OK)

A similar example of values being more important than execution, is that nothing stops a very uneducated parent from highly valuing education (and in America, this is a lot more common in Hispanic, Jewish[1], and Asian cultures, for example) and pushing their child to exceed their own meager achievement. The fact that the parent may never be able to cogently discuss the things the kid is learning once they get past elementary school doesn't really stop a darned thing. The palpable incredible pride says it all.

Contrast this to the cultures where kids who try to achieve are seen as traitors and getting too big for their britches. I was very sad to know some young men in Arkansas when I went to college there who struggled with these mixed expectations, coming from a community where they felt that they would be borderline ostracized for rising "so much higher" than they started. This was one of the things in Hillbilly Elegy, which I recently read, that really rang true, even if some others seemed questionable or played up for bestseller appeal (the violent criminal uncle tall tales come to mind -- nugget of truth in them or not, they were obviously selected from the available universe of lore to paint a certain engaging picture-story)

Values matter, even when they can't be realized. Rules matter, even when you're getting away with breaking them. Hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, contrary to popular belief. Even an ill-observed rule imposes clear costs on its avoidance, etc.

[1] Who can forget the line in Fiddler on the Roof, where the poor working father protagonist is fantasizing about being rich, but after singing about big houses and fancy clothes, settles on time to get educated as the greatest luxury he pines for?

> "If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack

> To sit in the synagogue and pray

> Maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall

> And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day

> That would be the sweetest thing of all"

My dude, if you think that's the 'perfect adult', whew... That is, absolutely, the bare minimum for an adult friend, let alone a romantic partner.

Let's just break this down to be clear as to what you think the 'perfect adult' is:

- Being emotionally available

- participating in chores

- providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time

- being reasonably well-read

- good conversationalist

I don't know why youre quoting "perfect adult", I didn't use that term once.

I said "ideal middle class man." And it is. Every reasonable woman wants that, every man wants to be at least that, yet most men don't check every one of those boxes, particularly being able to provide a comfortable lifestyle without working all the time, that one is maybe 10% of men. A good starting goal? Sure. Table stakes? Good luck.

You literally did.

> Being the perfect adult is table stakes? This description is the ideal middle class man. If that's table stakes to you, either you've got one hell of a catch or you've got a few more years left before you settle. Most adults, full grown adults, men and women, don't meet all those requirements. I do, most don't.

Alright, so you win that one lol. I glossed over my own comment. Still, I was using the term very obviously hyperbolically, and still referred explicitly to the "ideal middle class man."

So let's do something. What is the perfect adult? how does the perfect adult, not billionaire level or something like that but perfect middle class man, differ from your table stakes? I can guess tall and incredibly handsome, but beyond that, how is he better than your bare minimum requirements?

Have you considered that maybe there isn't a "perfect" or "ideal" person, of either sex? Other than "providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time" (which is arguable even what that means), the things listed above are literally just being an adult in a mature relationship. Helping with chores? Being emotionally available? Knowing how to hold a conversation? How are these qualities that you think are so difficult to attain that only the "ideal" man has them?

Most people don't have all of this traits. Most people have childhoods with abuse, or neglect, or bad parenting, or accidents, and young adults make mistakes and have hard times. Lots of people don't have resources. Being well read requires a lot of free time, being a good conversationalist requires experiences and perspective. Being emotionally available either requires having never been screwed over by someone you trusted or years of intense inner work. Becoming a well rounded person is very difficult to attain, hence why most people fall short on at least one of those qualities.

You won't accept less. That's great, I won't either. But it's not table stakes, youre demanding someone above average, it took me a decade of wandering through the desert and real inner work and self betterment to become and then find an above average partner, and I'm lucky. I have no problem with your standards, you should have them, but calling them table stakes is unreasonable, you should understand that what you want, and I don't know you so it may be warranted, is absolutely above average and not the base model man. I wish they were bare minimum qualities of most people, the world would be a much better place.

Welllll, women are saying a lot of men don't do this. They are basically bums.

Our great crisis is the growing number of bum men. And rather than work on being not bums, they sit around and complain online and stew.

Hm yeah do some chores for sure. Being emotionally available and verbal is an evolution in society, but it doesn’t cost much, assuming you were already willing to spend some time with your partner?

I don’t think being well read is a demand for most of America.

Yeah wow that seems tough /eyeroll

> Have you not noticed how much more we expect from men as partners?

What, basically what we've expected of women for many years?

The problem is two wrongs is worse than one; you're never going to solve discrimination against one group by discriminating against another, for example.

What discrimination of which groups are we talking about?

I believe the discussion was about men and women.

I guess I'm still unclear about the first part of my question then.

What discrimination of men and women?

I think we have to backtrack a bit here, what planet?

Are you being intentionally difficult? What discrimination is this comment thread referring to?

I just find your approach to "discussion" uninteresting, because it's all about you.

Presumably it's a postulate, and applies in all reasonable cases. The generalization was given as an example of a larger truism.

To give a specific example: Solving discrimination against Maronites by instituting a system of power sharing which discriminated against Shiites and Druze set Lebanon up for failure. Can you think of an instance where reactionary counter-discrimination solved an issue long-term? Why be skeptical of the assertion of "two wrongs don't make a right"? It's generally observable in all cases that retributive "justice" simply creates resentment, deepens issues and erodes belief and trust in social institutions.

>What are the rising standards though?

If you're on a dating app, that's one impression of the dating pool, so it's no wonder some dudes take the 6'0"+, $100k+, abs or gtfo lists seriously

And if you are wondering why they are being heavily influenced by that, gestures to article

Its not wrong the 80/20 rule applies to the dating apps in a real way, a small minority of males on them sweep the majority of matches and anyone not it the upper quartile may as well not even apply. When your part of the 80% of males in compilation against eachother for the lower 20% of matches it can be daunting. You can choose free porn, play games, drink, and hang with friends or fight the constant rejection, and pay for dating app middlemen to show you to more women and if you finally score date you still have to pay for both of you and have no guarantee that it will go any where. (Its not unheard of for women to use dating apps as a source of free meals.) So why not opt out.

To what you said, I will add this is not only about guys. I've female friends who are in the same situation (bottom 80%) and who have opted out. And if you are gay...

I think we should subsidize weight-loss medications.

Oh gtfo. No woman is desperate enough for food to put up with shitty dates. They have shelters for those cases.

That’s pretty naive. My mother and her friends love recounting stories about doing exactly that in the 1980s while travelling. Probably just a date at a restaurant but certainly it’s not unheard of. A glamorous date at a nice restaurant vs a soup kitchen? Come on.

Yikes, you're pretty sheltered.

I have many female friends. I hear a lot of worry about avoiding bad dates, not only for their sanity but also for their physical safety. I don’t hear them bragging about free meals.

> What are the rising standards though? Not beating your wife?

Unironically yes. It is much easier for women to leave their marriage than it has historically been. This has lead to rising standards for how husbands need to behave.

I'm gay and probably slightly autustic so for me the very natural goal of having a partner is indeed unreachable. The society doesn't give me any other goal to pursue, so I'm stuck just smoking weed and watching YouTube, which is depressing.

Society gives you plenty of goals to achieve. Do you really believe pursuing a relationship is the only real goal you can work toward?

It's a horrible goal, too. Programming is way better than (and mututally exclusive with) being in a relationship!

You can do both!

> Do you really believe pursuing a relationship is the only real goal you can work toward?

Yes, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. I'm sorry I'm a human, not some higher being that exists above natural constraints of biological brain that spent millions of years evolving around the concepts of "be a member of a tribe" and "have a family".

My tribe will fire me the second I stop being useful to them by the way, so yeah.

Hmm. Well, this might be the first time I've been described as "some higher being", so... thanks for that.

You're welcome

I know plenty of gay people and autistic people in relationships. Get off the internet and touch grass.

Ah yes. Whenever someone asks me what can we do about poverty I'll just reply "I know plenty of people with lucrative jobs, get off the internet and touch grass".

We've been telling people for years already that them being lonely is their personal failure, not some systematic problem, yet people, on average, keep getting even more lonely. What makes you think that continuing to present loneliness as a personal failure will eventually solve the problem?

> We've been telling people for years already that them being lonely is their personal failure, not some systematic problem, yet people, on average, keep getting even more lonely. What makes you think that continuing to present loneliness as a personal failure will eventually solve the problem?

Your logic here seems to be that, over time, telling people it's a personal failure (which I don't agree has been the rhetoric, but for the sake of conversation...) will lead them to fix that failure - which isn't at all my experience. There's plenty of issues one can point to that, just because we've been informing people of for many years, doesn't mean any progress has been made.

> Ah yes. Whenever someone asks me what can we do about poverty I'll just reply "I know plenty of people with lucrative jobs, get off the internet and touch grass".

If someone said, "I'm in a wheelchair, so having a job is unreachable" then I might respond in a similar way as GP (though perhaps a bit nicer)... because you can have a job while in a wheelchair, and have a relationship while gay and autistic.

Hahaha IKR I keep hearing that advice and like has it EVER worked for ANYONE? If someone doesn't believe things can get better, then you can't make a depressed horse drink or however it goes. The thing that needs to be learned CANNOT be communicated.

I discovered it for myself after like 6 months of therapy. Give it a shot if you can. Trust me, being smug about it to people online is so worth it.

And on a societal level it's an interesting philosophical question, but waiting around and hoping that something external comes along to magically fix the problem that you're experiencing personally isn't a plan for success. That feeling of loneliness isn't going to go away sitting at home, playing another single player video game by yourself, it's going to go away by socializing with people, in some sort of fashion.

It's gonna be cringe. it's gonna be awkward. it'll be fine, you'll survive.

Poverty is a wholly different problem, with different solutions, and comparing poverty to loneliness isn't doing you any favors. If we're gonna play that game, how about comparing it to obesity? society bears some responsibility for McDonald's, and for not giving good education on nutrition, but the reality there is that there are some wonderful new drugs to help with that problem. even with the new drugs and before them, at the end of the day, it still is a personal decision on whether or not to do something about the problem.

so the government isn't going to come in and start forcing people to attend friendship-making ceremonies. the solution to your loneliness is pushing yourself to go out and find people. don't go off trying to fix the systemic societal level problem for everybody, just solve for one. fortunately you don't have to wait around for a magic anti-lonliness drug to be research and formulated and then undergo trials before approval by the FDA. the drug for loneliness is alcohol. go do a lubricating amount of it around other people.

> And on a societal level it's an interesting philosophical question, but waiting around and hoping that something external comes along to magically fix the problem that you're experiencing personally isn't a plan for success.

Yeah, I suppose the only reason to point out that a problem is systemic and therefore requires a systemic solution is if you're part of a group or movement that is proposing a systemic solution. Otherwise, there's no point, because the only other solution is to solve the problem for yourself at the individual level anyway.

> the very natural goal of having a partner is indeed unreachable

It is not. Plenty of gay men in the world. About one in ten, last time I checked the statistics. But I'll admit it's real tough for most of us out there, not because we are few, but due to all the other reasons. You don't need no goals given by society; make some of your own.

Boys today are being left behind because they're not given attention by the school system. That's what I take away from not having any expectations of them.

This article spells out the incentive structure that leads to low-status men underperforming.

> Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.

> The educated class decides cohabiting partnerships are just as valid and important as marriage. And they also believe it’s okay to walk away at a moment’s notice from a cohabiting relationship… Poor and working-class people follow suit.

Tightening constraints from the employer class around employment, and loosening constraints from middle class individuals on cultural expectations leads to low status men abandoning their partners.

Same as it always was.

Or perhaps moving a factory workforce into the service industry has been degrading? (Since of course we shipped the factories overseas.)

Having done both I vastly preferred the service industry. Factory job had more unpleasant coworkers and boss (thanks to grueling physical labor) plus a submissive attitude towards unpleasant machinery.

The factory money was better though.

> a submissive attitude towards unpleasant machinery.

Are you referring to litteral or methaphorical machinery here? Actual machinery can be a pain.

Your 'a submissive' attidude is a good wording for the 'are you a fag or what' mindset many seem to have to work conditions that suck.

I worked a summer mounting rear axis on trucks, so my experience is kinda limited. But it was really bad and the clock was ticking for each axis in a way that made you hate your job in a week. The first day was fun...

you mean rear axles, no? Not rear axis, which isn't a named thing.

Oh ye 'axle' I thought is was the same word as axis.

> Same as it always was.

I feel like it's an industrialization thing. Before industrialization people would farm their own land, set up their own shops etc. Sure there would be people above you, but they wouldn't and couldn't micromanage you.

The peasant surely didn't have morning standups with their lord.

> farm their own land

Peasants didn't have "their own land". All land belonged to the aristocracy, and you would farm the their land.

Look no further than the native land of JD Vance and you can find sharecroppers. However, these days no self-respecting man would sharecrop. "I'll just sit at the house."

Even the official end of feudalism, at least in the UK, was at least a century before the Industrial Revolution.

But the aristocracy didn't micromanage that, is my point. Unless you were a slave I guess?

>> Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss. Same as it always was.

> Or perhaps moving a factory workforce into the service industry has been degrading? (Since of course we shipped the factories overseas.)

The sentences literally following this quote have an idea on the question:

"It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore.

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."

As a meta aside, not specifically reacting to you, the amount of people commenting on article they haven't read at all is bothering me more and more.

Yes, some people have to be hands-on building the physical world or they will not be happy. And by unhappy, I mean constant nagging doubts of inferiority and uselessness. Eventually you are going to check out under those circumstances.

I have felt guilty my whole life working white collar, but I'm useful and people need and want me, so I get by.

Well fortunately for those people it's easy to find construction jobs now, as long as they're willing to relocate.

I would correct the quote as such:

>Don't pay enough to live in a way that his family and community respects his contributions and sacrifices, if such pay even gives him room to contribute at all.

>Require him to get along with customers and coworkers that may be abusive and prejudiced, for no other reason than that the position is "supposed" to be servile and manned by a lesser person.

>[Require him] to maintain a complete physical and psychological affect of arbitrary "professionalism", servility, and agreeability, even while dealing with higher-status individuals who are not only allowed to be emotional, aggressive, and competitive, but who actually benefit from it in their career.

TFA spends a moment on what I think might be the crux: that the elite set rules they don't have to abide by. This is unfair, and poor young men recognize that it's unfair, and they're punished when they point out that things are unfair, because breaking the masquerade makes people uncomfortable, and nothing is more important than the comfort of high-status individuals.

As much stability in the family structure of poor folk may be breathing its last breath, noblesse oblige is long dead.

but this is the nature of all employed work: "submissive attitude toward the boss." Even if you're the CEO of a major corporation, you still have a submissive attitude towards shareholders.

It's rare but some people work in co-ops. Though I guess you could say they are not doing "employed work"?

In any case, there's forms of labour out there that can be more empowering to the worker.

>It's rare but some people work in co-ops. Though I guess you could say they are not doing "employed work"?

Aren't you still beholden to the board (which theoretically is elected by you, but still)?

Subordination does not equate to submission, it's not really the same thing

Fine nuance of exactly the type that's hard for folks to get behind today. If we could get people to consider nuanced positions, many of our problems would already be solved. Even in engineering orgs I've been a part of, navigating the challenges of seniority, hierarchy, and status has been really challenging.

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.

You can poll young women for what they require of young men to date them. Plenty of content of that on YouTube.

It's not nebulous.

Maybe YT compilations of what "young women want" is not a good source of cultural information.

Right. I rarely trust what people state publicly. It's all idealized and confirmed to the expectations of the audience.

What's your source of truth other than polling women and watching their actual choices?

We're not talking about "polling", which is an actual process that needs to be done properly for the results to be worth considering. YT videos that women upload - or even worse, compilations of TikTok videos and whatnot - don't follow that process.

You didn't answer the question.

Yes, I did, it just wasn't explicit - my 'source of truth' is actual polls.

https://www.tiktok.com/@girl_on_couch/video/7363742421588512...

a grain of truth in every joke

A lot of this is only applicable to Western Societies. IMO this is entirely due to the breakdown of Family and Social structures in the name of so-called Freedom/Progress. When you have no Structure/Discipline imposed on you by Society/Culture your Freedom of Choices become too much to handle and you simply give up and choose nothing.

I see more single mothers here in Africa than i have ever come across in western countries. Lack of work leaves men unable to care for their family causing them to simply give up and walk away, leaving the mothers to fend for themselves. I see no supportive structures, discipline or culture to counteract that.

I haven't been here long, so my impressions are not founded on a lot of experience, but it looks like what is happening is that the villages are unable to sustain themselves forcing people to leave the village and seek their fortune elsewhere, which causes just as much of a breakdown of family and social structures as it does in the west.

I would wager that in terms of percentage of population the situation in Africa is not that bad as in Western countries. Some very poor countries may suffer to a larger degree but not Africa as a whole.

To give a counter example, take a look at India and China, the two most populous nations. In both cases there is a huge migration from rural to urban centers but Social expectations, Cultural norms, Family structure and Economic necessities give youngsters something to strive for. In China in particular; you have entire villages populated only by Grand parents and Grand children because the Parents are away working in the City. And yet the situation is not dire like what is being painted in the article in spite of many problems. In India the rural to urban migration is not that vast compared to China so the effects of Family/Social/Cultural structures are even more stronger.

Freedom/Progress needs to be balanced against Structure/Discipline for any Society to thrive. This is the reason all societies from ancient times always put Family/Clans at the center and enforced Discipline via Religious diktats/Cultural norms/Social mores etc. While many of these should be revised in the modern context their complete dismantling has left many adrift and in a existential crisis.

> In China in particular; you have entire villages populated only by Grand parents and Grand children because the Parents are away working in the City. And yet the situation is not dire like what is being painted in the article in spite of many problems.

This sounds like its own kind of dire.

Absolutely. But what is interesting is that the family structure doesn't breakdown. The Parents work themselves to the bone and send money back to help their Parents and Children in the village. The Grand Parents take care of the Grand Children. When the children grow up, depending upon the Parent's situation in the City, they move to the city to live with their parents and study/grow up there or if they are already at the employable age join the workforce in the city. And through it all they hang together.

But that's just an Industrial-stage family structure. Loosely speaking. It's not that interesting and not fair to compare that with post-industrial neoliberal societies in the West.

(I'm East Asian American.)

I am not quite sure whether your comment is sarcasm or not.

But assuming it is not, this is exactly what i wanted to point out. Societies have changed but the fundamental Human values have not and so that should have been maintained in some form during the process of change. We are Biological organisms with the same desires/fears/emotions/feelings as our forefathers but only the societal context has changed. While we don't have to go full retrograde nor should we go to the other extreme of negating all structures which have brought us to this point. It is in this light that one should look at all current-day "social progress" issues.

It's your opinion what changes are too much, but your metaargument cannot answer that question which makes it sophistry to use the metaargument to argue for political moderation. Also, find a scientist who agrees with you that human values are historically invariant. It's just not true.

What's more likely is you are conservative and misusing logical arguments to rationalize your actual political opinion. It's ignorant at best, disingenuous at worst.

First off, do not insinuate motivations to my comments by using phrases like "you are conservative", "your actual political opinion" etc. (loaded terms in the US and i am not even American) and go off on tangential "strawman" arguments. Also if you don't (or want to) understand something don't use phrases like "metaargument", "sophistry" etc. since they mean nothing. It is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Finally, do not make inflammatory statements hiding behind anonymity since that is the very definition of a "Troll".

Human Values/Ethics/Morals are the subject pf Philosophy from time immemorial and in the modern world also of Psychology/Sociology/etc. Their manifestation, and variations over time, modulated in a socio-cultural context is what has-been/is-being studied/researched by philosophers/sociologists/ethnographers/anthropologists/etc. For your edification, the following are some introductions which are recommended for study;

1) Ethics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

2) Universal Values - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_value

3) Theory of Basic Human Values - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_basic_human_values

4) Moral Foundations Theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

You're just doing what conservatives do, act obnoxious when criticized and maximally deny the accusations.

I said you were employing sophistry in your argument and gave a simple explanation why.

I "insinuated" nothing, because I explicitly called you a conservative because the amount of ignorance and sophistry in your position forces me to conclude you must be one, not the other way around.

If you had paid attention and had basic reading comprehension skills (since, like a troll you don't know the difference between "insinuate" and the overt explicit statement about your political biases) , I had originally separated my comment into arguments, separated by paragraph spacing. My second argument (BELOW the blank space) was the conclusion that you must be an ignorant conservative. My first argument (ABOVE the blank space) was simply applying basic critical thinking skills about previous claims. You should focus on that, the substance of criticism, but instead you employ deflection tactics and whine about my deciding that you are a conservative.

Again, all you're preaching with those Wikipedia links is reducible to naive cultural relativism. It is a gross political ideology, employed by the worst: neoliberals. And you don't have to be an American to be one. Clearly your background in philosophy and social studies is in dire need of an update patch, since you are not even aware of this.

And, speaking as an overeducated Asian American with a busy life, I find ignorant discussions about social issues quite tiresome so if you have nothing new beyond your last comment about how much you buy into cultural relativism, please leave me be.

> speaking as an overeducated Asian American

It is only people who are not educated enough that feel the need to call themselves "overeducated". That single phrase tells me all that everybody needs to know about you i.e. a self-aggrandizing "troll" hiding behind anonymity on the Internet.

Given your ignorance (both of the domain knowledge and basic communication etiquette) I had tried to educate you by pointing to actual resources but of course you are incapable to studying/debating them. To say that all are "reducible to naive cultural relativism" is the height of ignorance. Nowhere in any of your comments has there been even a indication of coherent thought and ideas but merely empty verbiage and needless vitriol. You would do well to follow this age-old advice - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/

> you have entire villages populated only by Grand parents and Grand children because the Parents are away working in the City

Sounds lovely!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41042330

Mate, China's demographic situation is extremely worse than any western country.

If anything, cultural shift has been way more extreme and fast in China than in the west.

These are some of the opening remarks of this article:

> 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.”

> Over the past half-century, the number of men per capita behind bars has more than quadrupled.

and this is the conclusion:

> Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.

Is it just me, or is there a massive disconnect here? The rising prison population was not caused by a loosening of the norm that one should not go to prison; that's absurd on the face of it. Intimate violence and alcohol abuse have not somehow become de rigueur over the last few decades because of the luxury beliefs of the middle class.

There is a massive disconnect there. I've met plenty of divorced people and lone-parents which are neither of those. And of course, my own experience is no data of any sort, but I've felt that having an unlimited amount of patience for any partner, or they having it for me, it's not assured on either part. In fact, I've the deepest admiration and respect for people who do manage to live with the same partner for more than a few years. How do you do it, guys?

> ...people who do manage to live with the same partner for more than a few years. How do you do it, guys?

There are probably as many answers as there are couples. One idea is just don't have (or look for) any better options. If the only realistic alternative seems to be solitude then the threshold to leave is higher.

This discusses what "elites" think a lot, but does not discuss why that matters

From 1950 to 1979, times we think of more stable families, the Gini index in the US never went above 39. From 1993 to 2019 it never went below 40. There has been a shift where working class men were more on par with the heirs of the USA, but things have shifted so this is less so. The shift in power to what elites think is more important coincides with a shift of income and wealth to these heirs.

Another problem cited is a lack of "a submissive attitude toward the boss". From the 1930s to the 1970s, US workers had larger union representation, and engaged in sit-down strikes and wildcat strikes. This does not sound like a submissive attitude toward the boss. As the heirs have successfully cracked down on worker organization, this becomes individualized, with submissive workers getting low pay (according to this) getting work, and those not "submissive" as this says, who seek higher pay not being connected to production, leading to instability outside of the workplace.

There has been a conscious shift by the mentioned elite to remove workers representation, power, organization, pay and stability. These are seen as less of a problem than some supposed lack of a paternal attitude from the elite to lecture the working class about their lack of a "submissive" attitude as this says.

It's the same nonsense we've heard since 1980, from funded think tanks and various establishment institutions, it goes hand in hand with the policies and shift in income and wealth disparity which led to this.

I see this as the victory sign of feminism. Women doesn't need men anymore so men are left on their own. Nothing wrong with that.

But the article talks about how the men are basically doing whatever they want and women are left as single mothers with multiple kids...

Financial independence for the feminist movement was always about divesting from a husband, not relying on a husband.

Independence achieved at last, for men and women.

That implies equal choice / responsibility for the kids. If men aren't required to contribute half the work -- or at least some financial equivalent -- then it's not really independence for women at all.

And if the man discourages the woman from developing her own career, then leaves, she's been denied twice.

And so atomized and isolated, we become easier pickings for big capital

What kind of bum doesn't take care of your kids? That's no independence. That's a dereliction of duty.

Pure incel talk. Pure loser talk.

Who wants to go through life being a loser?

Incels with kids? Get your narrative straight before you blow a gasket.

There's a biological reality. Which btw, has been greatly tamed with contraceptives and what not, so the only thing left is individual failure.

This is the kind of article you get when you abandon materialism or, worse, never heard of it. It's an attempt to locate all cause of social form in the ideological superstructure. Deeply incoherent and irrelevant.

The article seems to contain a lot of hand-wringing about upper class' beliefs allegedly harming lower class families, but I don't see any mention about the main change in the labor force since 1960 - namely the participation rate of women. Men probably work less nowadays simply because it's easier to do in a two-income household vs a one-income household.

So your hypothesis is that factory jobs have not indeed dried up, and it's just all the women taking up those factory jobs instead?

> So your hypothesis is that factory jobs have not indeed dried up, and it's just all the women taking up those factory jobs instead?

No, the hypothesis is that men don't have as much responsibility. If they fail to provide women cover it.

The destruction of the traditional structures has its effects, good and bad. I dont' believe that women participating is a bad thing, on the contrary but new challenges come and taking an absolutist freedom stance without fixing the bugs that arise is a bad outcome.

It seems to me that nowadays social structure and norms are all in the ideal or virtual world, but the world is still physical and does not really care for ideals. As it never did.

The article also said "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."

Who is at the apex of the social ladder? Am I?

I wish the author had expanded on this a little more because that feels like a high leverage point.

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.

workforce in usa seems pretty good. Have you seen the homeprices they are able to afford ?

But that's the thing. Most people can't afford a home here; we're renters. The exception is upper class people riding stock market hype bubbles.

I think that's a bit disingenuous. Home ownership under 35 is nearly 40%. 35 and up it increases to above 60%

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/07/younger-house... has some nice statistics.

Those numbers are made up, just like all the others.

Your instinct that those numbers don't match the reality you see is probably right. But it's less likely the #s are made up and more likely there are qualifiers.

It'd be interesting to see what would happen to 35 and up if you excluded everyone born before, idk, 1980, and then again if you excluded everyone born before 1965.

> It'd be interesting ... if you excluded everyone born before ... 1980, and then again .. .before 1965

On one income, I owned my first house in 1994 for $425/mo and next in 2001 for about 2x that. Hurricanes hit elsewhere in 05 & 07 (last here 1921) & I lost the 2nd when my (mandated) insurance doubled my monthly house payment.

By 2021 we could minimally survive on 1.5 incomes (did 1). Today it's 3.5 incomes (have 4).

Luckily, the link provides just this information:

35-44: 62% 45-54: 70% 55-64: 75% 65+: 79%

In case you weren't aware:

> The name "homeownership rate" can be misleading. As defined by the US Census Bureau, it is the percentage of homes that are occupied by the owner. It is not the percentage of adults that own their own home. This latter percentage will be significantly lower than the homeownership rate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_...

To add to what you said, and make it a little easier to visualise why it's misleading:

If you have one person living on their own in a house they own, and four people renting bedrooms in a shared house, the home ownership rate is 50% despite only 20% (1 of the 5) of the people being home owners.

If the home owner then rents out one of their bedrooms to someone expanding the population between the two houses from 5 to 6, then home ownership rate is still 50% but now it's 16.6% (1 in 6) of people who own a home.

False. The homeownership rate is about 66%. Most people can afford a home here.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

> The homeownership rate is about 66%.

And declining.

    Homeowner vs. renter statistics reflect a decline in homeownership

https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renters-vs-homeowne...

> Most people can afford a home here.

Correction, most people have been able to afford a home in the past in the US.

Homes used to be affordable, now they aren’t.

Gen Z is becoming homeowners at a record pace:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...

Record pace for only the last two generations:

> Roughly 30% of 25-year-olds in 2022—the oldest of the Gen Z (born between 1997 to 2013)—owned their home in 2022, a slightly higher percentage than the 28% of Millennials (born between 1981 to 1996) who owned homes at that age and the 27% of Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980)—but lower than the rate for Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), 32% of whom owned homes at age 25.

32%->27%->28%->30% appear to be just rounding errors, especially considering the number of individuals concerned.

If anything, such numbers indicate to me that homeownership rates haven't meaningfully changed and the only thing that did change is the advent of noisey narratives.

> appear to be just rounding errors, especially considering the number of individuals concerned

Isn't it in fact the opposite? The bigger population, the easier to find a significant signal? Those are variances of millions of people. We wouldn't treat a 5% swing in unemployment as a rounding error, would we?

>We wouldn't treat a 5% swing in unemployment as a rounding error, would we?

If unemployment keeps hovering around 29% +/-3% over basically a century, that variance is a rounding error.

> If unemployment keeps hovering around 30% +/-5% over basically a century, that is in fact a rounding error.

“rounding error” isn’t typically used to describe double-digit percentage changes. You might say within normal variation but it’s a significant change and, ignoring the fact that those numbers are much greater than the actual unemployment rate, it’s well over the measurement precision and real shifts of millions of people are going to be scrutinized.

>“rounding error” isn’t typically used to describe double-digit percentage changes.

What? We're talking about a 5 percentage points variance, that is a single digit percentage point change. This is regarding a 29 percentage points average over a span of like 80 years concerning millions if not billions of people.

That is a rounding error, whether it's home ownership or unemployment or whatever you want those numbers to be.

35 is 15% larger than 30. Our measurements for unemployment are precise enough that it’s not just margin of error.

At the moment, that’s a change of 16 million people. A century ago, it was 5 million people. Both of those numbers are large enough that they absolutely would get attention and public discussion.

I think you are failing to understand my point:

If something trends give or take 30% for 80 years or more, a +/-3% variance is a fucking rounding error. I don't care if it's home ownership or unemployment or whatever the number is, it is a rounding error not worthy of concern.

It's like the lowering and rising of the tides. It goes up and down, but the sea level remains basically the same overall; thus, nobody cares about the exact tide at an exact time for figuring out sea level because it's a rounding error.

Put more bluntly: The trend has not changed, what is there worthy of my concern?

Because the economy is a complex system which is constantly changing, and it’s important not to lose track of why we measure it. A 5% charge likely isn’t evenly distributed, and the real impacts are often masked – if a major industry moves offshore, there are inevitably regional impacts more significant than the national average and if a bunch of people get new jobs working at McDonald’s or delivering Amazon packages it matters that they and their communities are poorer even if it looks like the unemployment rate is back to where it was 3 years ago. The minor fluctuations are the cue to look at the responsible factors, not to say “meh, it’s 15%, not 50%” and ignore it.

I'll be honest, how is it physically possible for a 25yo to own a home?

Family wealth is the most common. That doesn’t mean “mommy and daddy gave me a house” as often as it means things like living rent-free on your parents’ property so you can save money, having them co-sign a loan, or cash gifts helping with the down payment.

The other thing is remembering that cost of living varies significantly. Even 25yo FAANG engineers struggle in San Francisco but there are other parts of the country where someone with middle class income can buy if they live modestly and are thinking along the lines of a basic condo in a non-luxury neighborhood.

I don’t know why we call having a mortgage “ownership”: it’s not. Across the western world mortgages are getting larger and longer relative to income.

More people are in more significant debt bondage than in the past, that’s not an improvement.

The proportion of owned outright homes has been declining in the western world for 30 years.

Because you legally own your property.

So long as you make your payments on time, the lienholder cannot confiscate your property to make the pie whole. The money might be theirs, but the property is yours.

Depends on the jurisdiction but they are often within their rights to call the loan especially if it goes into negative equity.

Bullshit. US residential mortgages can't be called, even if there's negative equity.

The US isn't the only country in the world

I can easily afford a home, but I have no interest in buying one.

I'd rather take all the extra money I save by renting and invest it in other assets. I also value my time and I don't want to have to do all the chores and upkeep a house needs. Sure I could pay someone to do all those things I suppose, but then it makes renting even that much cheaper.

Owning a house used to be a goal of almost everyone? But I wonder if like me younger generations don't even have an interest in buying a house and maybe that also affects the homeowner rate.

If anything that would make homes cheaper to afford, but I’d argue you’re in the tiny minority of people who think like that.

You could hire your landlord to do all the chores and upkeep for your house. I'm sure he would do it for cheaper than your rent. How many times has he been around this year to fix things for you?

My landlord is excellent IMO. They always fix any issues I have usually by the next day. I can't say I have had a ton of issues though.

But I mean stuff like mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, cleaning out the gutters, and various other repairs and such that happen over time. That is what I mean by I value my time, and those things can take a considerable amount of time.

Also my rent is only ~$1000 per month for a 2-bedroom. It would cost me like 3x that for a basic house in mortgage plus property tax plus utilities plus maintenance etc. Sure a house is much larger space, but I don't really need all that space... And I don't find any smaller homes really. Property taxes alone would be like 1/3 to 1/2 my rent...

Sure, but is it worth $1000 per month to have the lawn mowed and snow shoveled? Repairs and improvements are not a service he does for the renter, it is something that he does to keep or increase the value of his real estate investment.

Your $1000 per month rent can only be compared with the interest part of a mortgage you'd get for the exact same housing you are paying rent for. If the rent is less than the interest would be, then yes, you are better off renting. You also have to be able to invest any money that would have gone to a mortgage to make more than the price of your rent in profit every month, because that is your loss each month on rent. It is achievable if you're shrewd and can stay cold headed. Compounding effects help you, but you're also vulnerable to rent hikes. If you stay for more than a few years with the same landlord, they will catch on to that you have a stable situation and are saving/investing, and they won't be able to sleep at night thinking about all that juicy income that you're saving and investing, that could belong to them.

I've shoveled snow and cleaned gutters, even put on a new coat of paint a few times. It is not worth paying somebody $1000 per month for that. That's a salary for somebody working 50% of full time just taking care of maintenance on the unit you're renting. You're also comparing renting a smaller place vs buying a bigger house. That's also part of the problem. Landlords have hogged all of the apartments and smaller housing in order to extract the lifeblood of young workers, when such units would also be available for sale and not rent in a healthy environment.

I'm really not sure what you are saying here.

"Your $1000 per month rent can only be compared with the interest part of a mortgage you'd get for the exact same housing you are paying rent for. If the rent is less than the interest would be, then yes, you are better off renting."

Why just the mortgage interest? Why not the property taxes, the utilities, the repair costs, the time to perform the upkeep and maintenance (which for me has a monetary value).

I have been renting where I am at for 14 years now and there have been no crazy rent hikes.

It was ~800/mo 14 years ago and has climbed slowly to ~1000/mo currently.

I have looked many times at buying a home in my area, but there is nothing in a similar area, and a nice house that I would actually want to own for less than about 2000/mo for a mortgage (probably more like 2500/mo now). That doesn't even count property taxes which would be like another 500/mo.

Then, if I value my time, I would need to pay someone to do the mowing and shoveling and other maintenance beyond that...

It's way more expensive than renting.

With renting I'm paying about $12,000 a year and that's it. That includes water and heat too and me not having to spend any time or money on upkeep or maintenance.

With all the money I save, I do multi-family real-estate investing and development. That generates me a passive income plus huge deductions from asset and property depreciation. And when the property is improved and sold after several years nets a large gain which I move into a new property thus not having to pay taxes on that transaction either. The return on this is far greater than the average rate of a home appreciation minus mortgage interest.

Nobody can afford it, to the point where we’ve done dark bloodpacks with banks and financial institutions to try and get the average family into what used to be an average priced home.

A mortgage is 30 years. Who thinks most people will have well-paying jobs in 20 years? In 10? In 5? What's the current percentage of American workers who can afford a house, a car, and a single child responsibly? What's the average income-to-mortgage ratio in America, is it sustainable?

What rationalization are we supposed to have for self-worth when robots and AGI do all of "our" labor?

This entire society is melting down so that a handful of billionaires can have and do whatever they dream of, the rest of us are supposed to do what exactly?

We're supposed to find meaning and worth in the scraps that are left?

edit downvotes without rebuttals are equal to "shut up and keep working"

Yeah, it's more or less same mess in Europe too. Young people are supposed to take 20-30 year mortgages that require a stable career to pay back, while corporations do their best to make everyone unemployed via advances in AI and robotics. Hell, my country also shares more than 1000km of with Russia, and who says we won't have WW3 in 20-30 years?

At this point the main economic improvement in my life will probably come when I inherit my paren't house. Career, work, that is all uncertain to build a life upon, so I will just rent and downshift.

It is _far worse_ in Europe since mortgages are typically not fixed rate for 30 years - an aberration almost unique to the US.

Oh yeah, you're right. Rising rates basically crashed the entire construction sector in my country for that reason, since few people can afford the rates, so no new mortgages.

Stop being a turkey voting for Christmas. Lose the puritanical outlook on life and start considering the myriad ways a few hundred billionaires could be stopped by the general population at large.

I don’t think you have grasped the catastrophic damage the housing crisis has done to trust in the western economic system. At this point younger generation would put the CCP in charge in they knew they’d fix housing. And they would.

Younger generation is owning homes at the fastest pace in history.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...

You're on point on this. It is the largest upheaval of things since the industrial revolution. The idea that most adults would work 9-5 with weekends off in a job that could be stable for years has not been the standard historically. People would work seasonally, fixed employment was rare unless you were a slave or a serf.

Right now today, and for the past decade, the reality is that two employees doing the same work for the same company for the same pay can have totally different living standards. For one of the employees, maybe half or more of his salary goes to rent, what's left after living expenses he tries to save for a down payment. For the other of the employees, his full time job is not even his main source of income. His main source of income is his home increasing in value every year by more than what he makes from working. He keeps all of his salary after tax, because he doesn't pay rent. Maybe a small fraction of his income goes to pay for the last scraps of an ancient mortgage on his home.

For the business employing these two people, it is the same. They pay the same salary, get the same output from their employees. They can't do anything about outside factors if they want to treat their workers fairly. This is also why they think "young people don't want to work" and such.

The industrial (or post-industrial if you want to call it that) economy is built around labour. That is completely gone by now. Young people growing up knows that working is for complete suckers and that a person has made some major fuck up in their life if their income depends on working.

*the credit they are able to afford

or, rather, the risk financial institutions are willing to take in order to, again, transfer value to shareholders in an ever-increasing manner.

Have you seen the sacrifices made to afford those homes? Just because someone owns a home doesn't show the whole picture.

There are plenty of Americans that own homes and are struggling to make ends meet elsewhere.

Home ownership is set up to consume a person. Miss a payment and there are serious repercussions to one's financial well being, so it becomes a priority.

Up to a point, miss a credit card payment and it's extra fees. Miss a utility bill a month, and it's the same. Buy less food and you'll survive, albeit less comfortably.

> There are plenty of Americans that own homes and are struggling to make ends meet elsewhere.

They need to downgrade then. Not everyone needs to live in 5 bed mcmansion. I know ppl who bought 100k cars are 'struggling to make ends meet'.

> They need to downgrade then.

Seven of us were living in a 3/3 - when I could no longer afford the monthly payments that doubled via insurance increases. What would you have us downgrade to?

> Not everyone needs to live in 5 bed mcmansion.

This seems like a unproductive assumption and one unlikely to be the rule. Why introduce it into the conversation?

This is not unique to US in any way I can see. Also, doing by far the biggest financial decision of a lifetime should expect some serious financial analysis beforehand, and plenty of extra buffer for 'what if' situations. Quadruple that for US due to healthcare (and education for potential children) costs.

But what I see sounds mostly as FOMO and emotional decisions. Having home ain't some basic human right but a luxury, where I come from (central Europe) it was like that for hundreds of years. All generations living in 1 tiny basic house was the default, inheritance with many kids was very tricky and thus often cousins were forced to marry. Maybe there was some period in US where things were significantly cheaper, but what were the reasons? Maybe US wasn't so full of people. Maybe poor blue collar construction workers were squeezed much more harshly so that things were done cheaper. Also, construction got (at least in Europe) massively more complex and thus expensive due to regulations, materials etc. There can be 10,000 other reasons. But it seems otherwise smart folks here are mostly looking for first target to blame.

Cheap housing is a pipe dream in strongly capitalistic society like US. I know everybody not having it wishes for it dearly, at least until the moment they cross the fence to home ownership and then suddenly want to see their biggest investment appreciate sky high. Seems like human nature, me first and then the rest (I am not an exception, but then again stuff above doesn't make me lose sleep, life has way more important qualities than hoarding wealth at other's expense).

This is a very smart, level-headed analysis of the current state of affairs.

I want a financial person to explain to me why we continue to expect exponential growth of companies’ revenue year after year, and why that makes any logical sense in a world with finite resources.

Population explosion = growth of consumption and we have not yet hit the finite limit but we eventually will, perhaps soon

Globally the number of children born peaked in 2013-2017. We'll start seeing it once these people come of age.

That's interesting, and good, I suppose. I knew that the birth rate had peaked but I didn't know that the absolute number of births had peaked.

According to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year the highest number of births was 146.05 million in 2012.

(But the total number of births per year fell throughout the 1990s ... mainly because of the birth rate falling in China? ... before rising to that global maximum in 2012.)

I always describe it as a range, as estimates differ and the true peak might have happened even outside it.

It's a historical milestone and I'm surprised there's so little awareness of it.

There will most likely never be this many people born in a year ever and we crossed this point without much fanfare.

Personally I think the predictions are overblown - as they assume that the generation "peak" will have 90% the children their parents had. Fertility rates in countries like Niger and Nigeria are already dropping at a faster rate than that and it's these places where the most people are currently born.

They'll rationalize the irrational.

The thing is, if more of the value produced by labor was directed back towards labor instead of equities, you're going to see far fewer people asking "how is this sustainable?", because they're on the gravy train too, but the equities holders have now gotten so used to being the special kid in the class that they can't fathom not trying to keep labor costs as low as possible.

It's a perfectly sustainable model (assuming you're fine with an economic crash every dozen years or so)

Obviously physical limits will bind at some point; indefinite exponential growth implies at some point that each electron in the observable universe is outputting the entire current world GDP every year, which is pretty unlikely under our current understanding of physics. But it's for you to explain why the physical limits bind at the point we happen to be at right now. Why does the observed historical trend break now, rather than (say) in fifty years' time?

Inflation (so numbers grow), different companies at different stages, etc? Also not exponential growth, but just significant growth and crashes every X years

If you're willing to drop the "logical" constraint, I think this explains most of humanity due to us being fundamentally a story-based species:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

In our culture, someone bringing logic to the table is likely to get crushed by someone bringing a good story.

And to make the situation even funnier: most anyone could tell you story after story about this phenomenon! It reminds me of:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...

(Ironically, this too is a story, lol...perhaps no other way existing is part of the problem?)

Value growth isn't tied to physical resources anymore, it's increasingly ascribed to intangible things, such as intellectual property. I'm not saying that growth is guaranteed to continue, just that economies have already been growing based on more abstract values; it's not all about food and fuel anymore.

Even so, the IP is used to make things which require resources. Disney IP is used to make toys, movies, books, etc, that all require electricity, paper, computers, employees sitting and eating, commuting into the office. Or a vaccine patent will be used to make a vaccine which requires a factory to be built and operated, the product produced, stored, shipped, used, and disposed into a landfill.

That's true, but more and more products are moving away from dependence on the physical resources. Kids don't buy toys much anymore, they play digital video games. You can see a doctor on Zoom instead of driving to their office. I'm not saying that's better, but it's happening.

The real problem I see is when people use wealth generated from intangibles to put the squeeze on physical resources, such as buying up land as an investment to drive up the price when people need a place to live.

Maybe in the future it will be possible to live in a purely digital environment, thus solving the housing shortage.

lol Ready Player One springs to mind immediately.

> Value growth isn't tied to physical resources anymore, it's increasingly ascribed to intangible things, such as intellectual property

No this isn’t accurate. No one values IP for its own sake; it is still responsible for generating revenue and being translated into profit. The process by which this happens is still resource extraction (raw materials into chips, energy into processors, etc etc etc).

And you are really only talking about tech. Every other industry has the same demand for infinite growth and can’t hide behind an IP abstraction layer.

> it's not all about food and fuel anymore

Is it, though?

The biggest IP bubble now is AI, and the main bottleneck of AI is energy to power those datacenters. Doesn't google use as much energy as a few small countries now?

Biggest pharma IP now is Ozempic, which let's be honest here, is because westerners are addicted to processed corn and fried stuff. And hectares of monoculture corn sprayed with Roundup and sprinkled with just the right amount of laboratory-calibrated satiating salt is far easier to produce than a balanced diet. And what is needed to grow all that corn, soy, and alfafa feed? The tapped-out Colorado or the dwindling Ogallala...

I'm sure there are a couple of pure IP-value plays out there, but look deep enough and most everything is tied back to food, fuel, or the finite ability of the ecosystem to maintain infinitely-exponential growth.

Yes, everything is ultimately dependent on physical resources, but the value creation is at a higher level, and you hopefully get more value out of less resource as things advance. I don't consider AI a positive example, it's a hype bubble for sure. But think how much computing power per watt you get compared to 30 years ago.

Consider also the green revolution which enabled more calories to be grown per hectare. I don’t know if it takes less water and nutrients, though.

The Haber–Bosch process that powered the green revolution is merely a way of converting fuel into heat into fertilizer.

Calories per hectare is one way of measuring food systems, and a great way when we assume fuel inputs are infinite, inexhaustible, and cheap. Calories per unit of inputs is another way.

The green revolution was not only a result of the Haber-Bosch process, although that's an aspect I wasn't thinking about.

Hybridization of crop plants increased the calories per hectare per year produced. Again, I don't know if the plants were actually producing more edible nutrients per pound of fertilizer.

>Biggest pharma IP now is Ozempic, which let's be honest here, is because westerners are addicted to processed corn and fried stuff. And hectares of monoculture corn sprayed with Roundup and sprinkled with just the right amount of laboratory-calibrated satiating salt is far easier to produce than a balanced diet. And what is needed to grow all that corn, soy, and alfafa feed? The tapped-out Colorado or the dwindling Ogallala...

Doesn't Ozempic make people eat less? If anything it's disproving your point. It's providing value, but at the same reducing the amount of "food and fuel" consumed.

To me it's more like slapping an expensive patch on an imperfect solution. Instead of encouraging healthier diets which have lots of follow-on nutritional and long-term medical benefits, we're paying pharma a huge monthly subscription price to keep doing something that's causing the problem in the first place. It's better than nothing, sure, but holistically it looks more like a rent-extraction trap to me.

> Instead of encouraging healthier diets which have lots of follow-on nutritional and long-term medical benefits

This has been done for a while and mostly doesn't work.

Cool statement. Why not?

I think why not will not fit in a single book let alone an HN comment, but everyone can see that it definitely doesn't work.

It does work for a small minority of society. For the rest it does not.

Also, it's very hard to make something work which huge monied interests design products in a manner to ensure you fail. Are you just going to ask your grocery store to stop putting salt-fat-sugar in bright packages right by the checkout, packages and foods that are being developed by well paid groups to get you to consume as much as possible.

It's also very hard when your body is designed to do one thing. Consume as many calories as possible so you don't starve to death, because your genes are screaming at you "Starvation is coming, it always does".

So the only 'cool' statement is yours by completely not understanding the situation at all.

Does it matter? If snake oil doesn't work and a better drug comes along and it works, why would you care why snake oil didn't work?

Because humans (like most animals) are optimized at a deep level to seek high-energy foods, and neither encouragement or shame are powerful enough to override that.

Junk food is convenient and more enjoyable, at least in the moment of eating. In the last 60 years there have been changes to the environment that reduce physical activity (more automobiles, less walking, less strenuous physical labor on the job) but I think that the most relevant change is the abundance of highly palatable calories. 60 years ago we largely didn't have "convenience foods" and the fastest snack you could make yourself (like a cold sandwich or a piece of fruit) didn't have the "craveability" of Doritos or microwaveable egg rolls. Back then the average American could afford to buy far more calories than needed, but those calories would take prep labor and/or not be highly palatable, so in practice many fewer Americans overate buttered popcorn the way that people overeat Doritos today.

America was on-average wealthier than most of the world and an early adopter of highly palatable convenience foods, so its obesity problem came on earlier. Global obesity rates are rising as more people globally can afford microwave ovens, frozen pizzas, drive-through restaurants serving french fries, and other such aids for high speed ingestion of delicious, calorie-dense foods.

Most people who need to lose weight cannot willfully maintain diet alterations in the long term. They go back to old habits. For 99.9% of human existence starvation was a much more common health threat than obesity and we're just not "wired" to experience excess food intake as a threat. The GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide reduce the desire to overeat, regardless of how palatable the food is, so people who could not lose weight before are able to eat less without having to consciously suppress desire every day.

Advice doesn't work that well in general, especially when it's vague and general advice like that. I would also guess that there are competing forces trying to make you eat their product and that they put a lot of money into that.

> And hectares of monoculture corn sprayed with Roundup and sprinkled with just the right amount of laboratory-calibrated satiating salt is far easier to produce than a balanced diet

Man, i wish Americans were just eating the corn with salt. Would be a lot healthier than corn starch+syrup whatever.

~75% of US corn goes to fuel and animal feed.

There is no rationality. It is a justification for “I’ll get the most I can now and push the externalities on some future fool”.

It is no different from traders hunting buffalo to extinction. They got their money, consequences be damned.

Exponential revenue is easy - you just need exponential inflation and it comes for free.

Increased productivity is maybe the goal - but how it's measured is up for discussion. If you do it in dollars, then do you adjust for inflation? If you do, what inflation? (inflation on the price of bread or super-yachts etc).

Or do you do it in value? What can you get for your work? In the 1990s a "machine in your pocket that can play any music ever recorded" would have been near-impossible/priceless. 25 years later it costs maybe a dollar a day and we can all have it. If we can always get the same stuff for an ever-decreasing amount of effort, then that could be seen as exponential growth. You could argue that you could measure growth by technological advancement.

Conversely if your rent is going up 10% a year, then who cares that you're 5% more productive and making 5% more money every year. That doesn't feel like growth.

Unless you're not renting and you're the landlord and then you're experiencing sweet sweet growth.

>I want a financial person to explain to me why we continue to expect exponential growth of companies’ revenue year after year, and why that makes any logical sense in a world with finite resources.

Because entropy. When a living organism stops its exponential cell division, we call that death. In an economy, when things cease to grow, we call it recession. When that growth is in balance with the decay, we call it a healthy economy. When it outstrips it, we call that inflation, which the monetary system is designed to fight against.

Adult living organisms don't have exponential cell division. When they do, we call that cancer.

>Adult living organisms don't have exponential cell division.

Sure they do. Your cells are dying and being replaced constantly. Cancer is just when the instructions for said division get messed up, i.e. runaway inflation in this analogy.

I think you missed the word "exponential". Adult living things don't have exponential cell division. If they did, they would continue to grow in size. But they don't. They have cell division at a constant rate, not an exponential rate.

Spot On, modern economy resembles cancer too.

A hundred years ago, the average person had little free time, little spending money, and little to actually spend that money on, if they had any.

Human attention is absolutely not a finite resource. Or at least companies haven’t come close to monetizing all of it.

I think you need to take your comparison further back. As I understand it, before the Industrial Revolution, people had plenty of free time. For instance, looking at the Middle Ages, many spent the morning tending to their fields and then the rest of the day was theirs.

Yes but my point was not about a specific time in the past, it was about how that free time wasn’t captured by the market - in ways it is now and will continue to be in the future.

Yeah, but they were all illiterate and politically powerless, not to mention spiritually oppressed, so what were the actual, tangible options for things they could do with ‘their day’? They didn’t even own their own land.

It's all just one big ponzi scheme. Albeit a legal one.

That's close but not quite. In older times, this economic profit is an accumulation of wealth, instead of having the apples just pay for the daily laborer's calories, it means, maybe they can take a few apples home to make apple sauce and that the farm owner can sell the extras in a market. You paid for the maintenance (ie. workers not starving, replacing machinery, ) and you had some left. Land is a whole other problem. The Wealth of Nations has a pretty good description of the interactions between labor, landowners, capital.

The recent problems is the disconnect between money and actual food/materials/energy production.

If your grandfather lived in a 100kw village with a 100 dollars circulating, and made 1 dollar, it is reasonable to think he could buy 1kW for his family.

If we live in a 100kw village (because no, we should reduce energy production) with 100,000 dollars circulating and you make 500, you can buy 500w.

Now do it for turkeys, or steel, or etc... Degrowth is impoverishment in most cases. Things haven't gotten much more productive, and we are more people

Assuming you’re asking in good faith:

1) Ephemeralization [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization] is when we arrange a given set of atoms in increasingly useful ways, letting us get the same thing done with less.

A trivial example is information distribution. Another one is how we turned sand into thinking machines. Myriad more examples exist.

2) We have vastly more resources than people think. Our deepest mines are ~5km. There’s a hell of a lot of planet below that, with increasing % valuable metals. There’s enough room on the planet - you can give everyone on earth a big house with a yard and we’ll all fit into a single Canadian province, or into Texas. We can generate 100% of our power needs with solar, nuclear, and batteries. And as we get richer, there are more and more people with the time and ability to make greener choices.

Our systems are proving to be flexible - look at the price of solar + battery over time; look at the deluge of funding for nuclear research. People are working on bio jet fuel. Other people are working on carbon capture tech and geo-engineering ideas for the worst case scenario.

3). We’re not stuck down here. There’s a whole universe out there. A tiny but growing % of our economy happens off-planet. A private company recently landed on the moon. SpaceX is dramatically lowering launch costs. In a few decades, we’ll be mining materials up there and manufacturing goods in space.

Also: Nobody in a village should take up 2 houses for themself.

But some can, and can even take up 100 houses... so long as the other villagers are fighting amongst themselves, over whether their house should be larger than that of their neighbor.

Turns out most of their problems are arguably traceable back to those people with 100+ houses each.

Which would be glaringly suspicious to an outside observer. But the villagers are too busy being enraged by the idea that some lazy person might not have to live in a tent.

What’s ironic[1] about these comments is they set up these ignorant-sheep narrative about how the villagers are bickering among themselves. Which begets more finger-pointing among the villagers instead of looking at the real source of their problems.

[1] Not ironic if you don’t think you’re one of the villagers.

It is a narrative, yes, but are you asserting that the narrative is not substantially true? I struggle to think of anyone I know of, let alone know personally, that is mostly on the systems analysis side of the spectrum vs the story telling and bickering side.

Culture is constantly running in the background, teaching us not only what to think, but also how to think. And changing culture is hard.

I assert that there is no good evidence that it is true and that in lieu of good evidence it’s a limiting perspective to propagate.

I know how the real world works and am not fooled by the bread and circus—of course I am! :) And how often do I reveal that in real life? Very rarely because I don’t have any sympaticos in my life right now. But how many people do I know who are like me? And to how many people do I look like an unconscious NPC on this issue?

It’s a limiting perspective because you stay stuck in the mode of bickering among yourselves about who has seen the light and who hasn’t. Instead of the more useful perspective: that a non-insignificant people already know or that if they don’t then it won’t take much to convince them (X years of brainwashing does not take X years to undo).

> I assert that there is no good evidence that it is true

And what evidence could you provide (say, a description of your methodology, hours of search, resources searched, notes you've taken along the way, etc) can you offer to support your "is no good (how convenient) evidence"?

> It’s a limiting perspective because you stay stuck in the mode of bickering among yourselves about who has seen the light and who hasn’t.

That may seem to be the case, but maybe ~no one has seen the light (perhaps due to a culturally infused unwillingness to try)?

> Instead of the more useful perspective...

You have no way of knowing the utility of either approach. Realizing this (including how to realize it) is highly useful.

> then it won’t take much to convince them (X years of brainwashing does not take X years to undo).

I agree with this, except for the "won’t take much to convince them", as it could be mistaken to mean that finding the method also won't take much. But I will always upvote optimism!

> And what evidence could you provide (say, a description of your methodology, hours of search, resources searched, notes you've taken along the way, etc) can you offer to support your "is no good (how convenient) evidence"?

What evidence do I have prepared for random strangers on the Internet who are as disagreeable as me? None!

I will protest bare (uncited, shooting from the hips) “common wisdom” and counter with my own uncited perspective; mine is on the face of it no less wrong!

Why the hell would I just let such misanthropic, holier-than-thou garbage philosophies remain unexamined?!

EDIT: Three sentences in a row with exclamation marks might have been overkill. :smile:

Excellent point. You could look at it as very resilient diversion -- even calling out the diversion becomes a diversion.

I'm wondering how often it happens organically, and how often it has some conscious help.

And what in your opinion is the real source?

I didn’t dispute the source. I questioned the assumption that “people” (whatever that means?) are oblivious to it.

>Also: Nobody in a village should take up 2 houses for themself.

>But some can, and can even take up 100 houses...

How much % of the housing supply is actually taken up by people with 100 houses?

Ever wonder about who can afford to make all-cash, above ask offers on houses?

Or you can rent that house after the PE firm buys it and rents it out...

https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becom...

https://www.thesling.org/are-hedge-funds-and-private-equity-...

>Or you can rent that house after the PE firm buys it and rents it out...

That's fine? It's still contributing to the housing supply, it's not like they're hoarding the houses. Moreover unless you want to ban rentals entirely, you're going by definition need people owning more than one house. Finally, the fact that rents are sky-high as well, suggests that housing is expensive in general, not only home ownership.

It's fine if you're trying to keep people off the streets.

It's not fine if you're trying to keep a middle class.

>Finally, the fact that rents are sky-high as well, suggests that housing is expensive in general, not only home ownership.

There's a "cartel as a service" / rent fixing software system for that...

https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

I believe the correct response here is "That's wonderful! It lets everyone get in on the benefit of being a slumlord without the hassle of shaking down your tenants. Now you can just buy shares in this instead!"

Very well said. The asset class is currently in the middle of strip-mining the middle class for everything they have.

Homeownership is one of the main ways that Americans transfer wealth, as it's usually the only asset that adults nowadays have that can be transferred outside of whatever's in their bank accounts.

When homeownership becomes restricted due to PE firms and Investment firms buying up entire communities to turn into rentals, the wealth transfer is hampered. Well-off adults are still having to rent and are now directly competing with younger Americans who are still growing in their careers and pay scale.

This puts older Americans in a tough spot of not being able to generate wealth or equity that can be transferred to their children. And this puts their children and younger Americans in a spot where they cannot afford to live where they work, and cannot afford to save enough to begin the journey to homeownership. And the promise of a wealth windfall when their parents pass is becoming less and less common.

What is worse the PE firms can collude (internally and/or externally) to withhold units for rent to influence prices once they capture enough of the market.

Tax everything. Fight corruption with white phosphorus.

Constructing new buildings would be contributing to the housing supply.

Buying an existing home, so long as it's rented out is yes technically providing housing supply, but it is unhelpful rent seeking.

That big investors would rather buy up existing homes rather than invest in building new ones is a pretty clear sign that the housing system is dysfunctional and requires work on the taxation/regulation side that would encourage more productive use of investor dollars.

How much of zoning laws are lobbied by peopke with 100 houses? People owning the houses is not the problem, as other people still live in those houses. The incentives to keep it a good investment is still a problem.

>How much of zoning laws are lobbied by peopke with 100 houses?

Dunno, in my experience all the NIMBYs in my area look like some rich person with way too much time on their hands attending city planning meetings, not some slick lobbyist. If anything the discourse goes both ways, with some alleging that "greedy developers" are the ones doing the lobbying.

Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation [1]. With that said, we are approaching a housing shortage of +4.5M [2] units, and in concert with YieldStar's Backpage revenue maximization engine [3] (which is laundering landlord price fixing), renters are being squeezed (because where are you going to go if you can't afford to buy? you will pay, or you will be homeless, which certain jurisdictions are attempting to or have outlawed).

To solve housing for those who need housing, enact state level YIMBY policies to override local planning (who will always kowtow to local folks who show up to say no, and local folks who say no because it costs them nothing to do so as they already own), provide cheap money to builders [4], and build as fast as you can.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_impact_of_institut...

[2] https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2024-06-18-The-U-S-is-now-short...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[4] https://www.startribune.com/janet-yellen-minneapolis-treasur...

(Edit: I would still support restriction of investment ownership of housing, depending on implementation details; you have to defend the young from the old and Capital, as they are treating the young as cattle to be squeezed for all they've got simply by virtue of their existence timeline [5] [6], and it's causing folks to simply give up)

[5] https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64GTDwWJo4

(as always, think in systems)

A 4.5M unit shortage wouldn't be present if the past several administrations hadn't allowed huge amounts of immigration in the past decade. Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that".

If every person who came to the US in the past ten years went home, there would be a colossal increase in housing availability and rent prices would crater.

So would the economy.

There is some truth to their point. The economy in aggregate is receiving the benefit of immigration labor (through reduced labor costs and inflation) while socializing the harm on everyone who is competing for this housing (because, obviously, there are only so many affordable housing units available). There is probably a discussion to be had about governing immigration quotas according to available (not planned, available; hope is not a strategy) affordable housing. This would internalize the externalities currently being shifted around on the macro balance sheet.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/17/immigrants-help-economy-job-...

A close relation of mine worked in a very, very high-up position in the Department of Agriculture. He has been farming-adjacent for his entire career, and years before he joined DoA he explained to me how meatpacking and butchery has slowly been taken over by a central set of massive corporate conglomerates who destroyed competition in the beef industry by pricing then out.

All of these major central corporations are completely dependent on illegal labor, and if they hadn't been able to pay lower wages, their takeovers couldn't have occurred at the speed or scale they did. My relation talked about this issue in the DoA and many senior officials pushed back and said that since addressing this issue of illegal labor in the beef industry would cause a rise in beef prices, threatening the availability of the migrant labor base is a no-go. (Biden admin, not that it matters--I'm sure the answer would have been the same under any admin through at least GWB).

That's where we are now, in US agriculture, residential construction, etc.. Prices must be kept low, and therefore the stream of low-skill desperate labor must not be turned off. Massive companies enjoy enduring near-monopolies because no one is willing to threaten the comfort of the American consumer.

All excellent points, a fair assessment of the situation. But, I would also say corporate profits of these firms rely on this low skill desperate labor that cannot organize and will not speak up (versus being shipped back to whatever terrible place they fled from). ADM, Bunge, Tyson, Koch Industries, etc are what come to mind in the ag sector, but is certainly not all inclusive.

I don't have a solution, but I hope smarter people than me with leverage figure it out, because it isn't sustainable.

The problem is the people running the show don't care if it's sustainable. They just want to get theirs and get out. Earn enough money and you can insulate yourself from consequences

There's far too much of this happening across all sectors, including government

And prices for much of what we buy would instantly double. The US is addicted to cheap immigrant labor for a huge number of jobs that Americans largely aren’t willing so do.

Yes; the increase of prices alongside domestic labor cost is part of the necessary "immune system of capitalism" that is suppressed by immigrant labor. If a first-world business cannot survive without offering very low wages, it needs to die off and make way for new businesses, even if that lowers material product and service availability.

> The US is addicted to cheap immigrant labor for a huge number of jobs that Americans largely aren’t willing so do.

Maybe more like "business owners are 'addicted' to paying cheaper wages that only immigrants from poor countries are willing to do at the offered rate."

For better or worse, US consumers are addicted to the low prices those low wages enable. Just look at how upset people are at the relatively modest inflation of the past four years. Thats nothing compared to the shock that ending immigration would create.

Since we live in a democracy, such a plan would be swiftly reversed because of the pain it would cause.

Immigration into the US was curtailed in the 1920s and then reopened in 1965. This period was one of relative wealth for the middle class. Since the late 60s to early 70s, the middle class has suffered an ever-decreasing quality of life. It doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion that reducing immigration will necessarily lead to a decrease in quality of life. Increase in the cost of some items (the ones whose price hinges on cheap immigrant labor) would be met by increase in wages, especially for people in the lower socio-economic rungs.

> For better or worse, US consumers are addicted to the low prices those low wages enable

You cannot convince me that low prices require low wages when companies are raking in record profits. We could have better wages, the same prices and lower profits. That is a sacrifice I would be happy to have businesses make

> Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that".

If all of the job growth is happening in select metro areas around the country, the existing domestic population is going to move into those areas, regardless of the level of immigration

This is true, but "Americans aren't able to move to major metropolitan areas because it's too expensive" is an easier problem to solve than "every year there are 800k-1.4M new people to house, and they tend to also want to go to the major metropolitan areas".

Fortunately there is a lot of job growth outside the major metro areas. Look what's happening now with oil and gas extraction in North Dakota or plastics manufacturing in Ohio.

I believe you are correct that if every immigrant of the last ten years left the US abruptly, rent prices would be among the things that would crater, yes.

Are you suggesting that 10 years of immigrants going home would be a net positive for the US?

It depends on what "net positive for the US" means. There would be immediate product and service shortages and lost intellectual capital, but a huge explosion in available housing, spots at universities, open jobs desperate for labor, etc.

I use the dramatic case of "all immigrants going home" to illustrate that immigration affects the housing crunch and it's ridiculous to talk about it without mentioning the population increase. Personally I think the government should intensely crack down on illegal immigration, destroy business that use illegal labor (even if that's to the detriment of the consumer), and then make legal immigration tuned to attract high-skill immigrants easier.

Immigration has always been big and has gradually picked up speed. The idea of immigrants going home does not make any historical sense, neither does stopping immigration.

What do you mean that it doesn't "make any historical sense"?

We've never done it that way -- there's no historical precedent. America has done well, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to change that particular thing so radically after over 130 years of similar, but varying, immigration rates to today.

Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much larger than external migration -- people moving from the hinterland to cities with jobs. But housing would be a lot more expensive because we would no longer have cheap labour to build & renovate our houses.

This is the constant refrain of pro-illegal/poor/migrant immigration. My answer is: "in the first world, businesses should operate by offering competitive wages, and the lifestyle costs of first worlders should be balanced against those wages". I am uninterested in living in a materially wealthy society that can only operate on the back of a recently-arrived serf class, and it's bizarre to me that so many people defend this system as desirable and morally righteous.

"serf class"? Immigrants to America come here because they choose to. They're not serfs, they're not locked to the land. They move freely, and at much higher rates than other Americans do.

Okay, "serf" was the wrong word, since they are indeed not bound to parcels of land under a feudal government.

What do you think about the content of my point?

I think it only applies to illegal immigration, not legal immigration.

immigrants come because they have no better choice

that's called exploitation

No it's not. We're offering additional choices to the immigrants, all the moral blame lies on the people who are persecuting the immigrants so much that they are forced to flee.

Yes, we often exploit illegal immigrants, but legal immigration is not exploitation.

given the context of paying less than what residents are willing to work for I assumed we were talking about undocumented folk, in which case i would say moral blame lies with bosses willing to pay under the table

Those people would still exist though, just live in places with (even) less possibilities. And even without immigration, the first world is still very dependent on low cost labor, because of all the material goods produced abroad.

>enact state level YIMBY policies to override local planning (who will always kowtow to local folks who show up to say no, and local folks who say no because it costs them nothing to do so as they already own)

It's more than that; it's a standard free-rider problem.

If all the other districts in your city support development in their area, then your own property value will go up, but you won't be burdened by any local development costs. And if you develop in your district but nobody else develops in their district, then your property value won't go up (or will go up only slightly) but you're burdened by the local development costs.

It's classic prisoner's dilemma stuff.

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.

> 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 do so, what is a human going to do when all of their incentives are to say no?

As a YIMBY activist who also owns property, I have seen this first hand at local planning meetings. Rebutting complaints point by point (crime, decreased property value, traffic, etc) with data, we finally arrive at "because I don't like it" typically when having this discussions (happens all the time with utility scale solar permitting as well). I am only one person saying "yes, build, build, build." We need more of this, everywhere, and I argue the solution is not simple; if it was, this would be solved instead of being a herculean effort. Please consider attending local planning meetings to voice your support for building more housing in your communities.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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 - he shouldn't be able to tell you not to build a house in his proximity.

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".

You didn’t say “someone wants to live next to you”. You said “build a house”. Presumably, this includes a “house” that can hold 1000 people at low rent. If it doesn’t (since that would undeniably destroy your property value), then you’re willing to impose regulations on the pretty deregulated picture you’ve painted. If it does, then you’re not going to find that many people who own property agree with you.

>Presumably, this includes a “house” that can hold 1000 people at low rent.

Presumptuous indeed. There wouldn't be a housing shortage if vast parts of the U.S. weren't restricted to single family homes. The choice isn't a single family home or a housing complex that can hold a 1,000 people, but more efficient usage of space and infrastructure, one that isn't totally centered around everyone having a vehicle. That can also mean low rise multi-family homes seen in cities worldwide, and yes, also big complexes where viable.

>If it does, then you’re not going to find that many people who own property agree with you.

Well if things don't change, lots of people won't be able to own property, and the rules will change anyway. We're seeing this in California.

so “yes”?

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.

And if all of your neighbors don't like your skin color or religion, can they drive you out of town?

That is why no country in the world actually employs limitless democracy. There are usually guaranteed and protected civil rights that you can enjoy regardless of current majoritarian (and fickle) opinion in your town.

There are more systems in the world than absolute monarchy X absolute democracy that votes on everything all the time.

Yes they can, and historically they have. The places where this doesn't happen are places where most people have decided that these traits don't matter that much.

> And if all of your neighbors don't like your skin color or religion, can they drive you out of town?

Democracy is not required/irrelevant for that...

Yes. Democracy is a gang-rape. Better than most systems although I think maybe Hoppe was right. .

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.

May I ask which country?

A county in USA

Oops. Yes, reading is fundamental!

May I ask where in the USA?

Lots of such counties exist. Most of Alaska qualifies, as do parts of TN, NM, AZ, etc. should be a list of some you can pull up and start there if you're looking to do same.

Does this mean any random communist party elite from across the pond can do the same? They have enough bucks to draw squares all over your county

There is no regulation on buying or building here based on citizenship, come on over. I don't like communism but I believe they ought to have equal property rights regardless of their political opinion or national origin.

I'd worry if they build a casino or some ugly polluting sun blocking high rise condo in my back yard :)

I disagree with you but applaud the principle :shrug:

> Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation

I believe this nationally, but when you see things investors buying 1/3 of Atlanta homes in a given quarter [1] or investors buying 26% of the affordable homes, it becomes hard to believe there is not some level of effect occurring in target population centers. Most of the arguments I see about the small effect of investor purchases seems to focus on national averages (happy to be pointed elsewhere), but I think focusing on national trends will dilute the observed effect where it is occurring.

[1] https://atlantaagentmagazine.com/2022/03/24/investors-purcha...

[2] https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2023/

I also think there is far more informational to sellers that allow easier one way ratchets in price. Just a few houses selling higher than average in a neighborhood can increase housing prices in that area in the matter of days. In addition buyers are not limited to local market work. With online information you've brought the worldwide back to worldwide web. You see very view poorly listed underpriced houses any more. They get bought up insanely quickly.

Institutional ownership is immaterial? Erm, from the same source, 10% of some metros is a lot, and that’s just moving the meter to 100+ homes. If you did 10+ or 3+ it would be even more.

“This share rises to 3.8 percent of single-family homes for institutional investors owning over 100 homes, and up to 10 percent in certain metro areas such as Atlanta.”

Then if you also consider foreign ownership of home, it would rise even more. Lots of wealthy folks have dollars due to it being primary international currency and they buy up our assets

Unfortunately this is a big side effect of internet we haven’t solved yet. It’s made buying a home anywhere easier, which inflates prices (demand is much higher now for same number of houses), squeezing out middle class locals

34% of Americans rent their homes, and having a good stock of rental units is good for America because it makes it a lot easier to move. Institutional owners provide the vast majority of rental units.

Getting rid of institutional ownership would increase rental prices substantially, and that's bad for the poor and for the mobile.

> Getting rid of institutional ownership would increase rental prices substantially, and that's bad for the poor and for the mobile.

Extremes are unhelpful, we must find balance. Institutional ownership restrictions reduces monopoly pricing power, and rent controls de-risk against rents rising faster than wages. Outright outlawing of institutional ownership is not a solution, but allowing it to operate in a highly regulated fashion (where there are still some, but more reasonable, returns and mobility is enabled for mobile consumers of this service). If the argument is continue increasing supply vs rent price controls, well, it is clear that isn't happening in the short term.

TLDR Housing needs to be pushed more towards being a regulated utility, vs a free for all. If we regulate electricity like a utility, why not housing?

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.

Could it simply be over-regulated in the housing generation aspect, but under-regulated in the housing distribution aspect?

These are (strongly?) correlated though, right? Over-regulating distribution should reduce generation because builders can’t depend as much on pricing signals.

I'm not sure. How do you measure "degree of regulation"? At face value it's an abstract concept with a lot of dimensions.

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 get better and can mean things get very very much worse (hey let’s allow toxic wast dumps under homes because that was too regulated before!)

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.

> Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation

This statement and citation fail to account for the impact of AirBnB and other STR market-makers on the housing market.

I strongly suspect a big part of housing price increases is the "small business" equivalent of institutional investors - someone buys 1-2 units that they do not plan to occupy and rent them as STRs. Similarly, vacation homes (aka homes that will go unused for the vast majority of the time) are now much, much more affordable if you can book a couple rentals a month to supplement a mortgage.

I'm *sure* AirBnb has some fascinating data on this, but I don't expect to ever see it in the public eye without government intervention (much as we'll likely never see Meta's studies on teen users' mental health).

tl;dr - but what about her airbnbs

> I strongly suspect a big part of housing price increases is the "small business" equivalent of institutional investors - someone buys 1-2 units that they do not plan to occupy and rent them as STRs.

This does not pass the smell test to me. Small businesses somehow are more inventivized to do this than institutional investors? Because the margins are not sufficient to attract the large businesses?? That needs evidence.

In general, small landlords don't make sense to me as something to ban.

Someone buys a two flat, lives in one and rents the other to help pay for the mortgage. That has classically been ok. You're only objecting to the short term ones?

> Small businesses somehow are more inventivized to do this than institutional investors? Because the margins are not sufficient to attract the large businesses?

Yes. When Joe is buying a couple homes, he doesn't have to pay for HR, business dev, legal, compliance, etc etc. And -

> That needs evidence.

Fair enough! I care about this topic, but not enough about this thread to make a carefully cited case here (no offense to you, friend). I'm sharing from anecdotes and personal (albeit unscientific) research.

> Someone buys a two flat, lives in one and rents the other to help pay for the mortgage. That has classically been ok. You're only objecting to the short term ones?

Yep, and I've come around on this. I used to think landlord = bad (in college, we're all young and naive at some point), but I've come around to the real economic need for an LTR market. I'm thinking of cases where an individual buys up a handful of properties to use as STRs, removing them from the LTR market (which reduces supply which increases rates of the remaining units). I have seen this happen in my area in real time but I recognize that it is scientifically unsound to extrapolate that to other areas.

Canadian leaders have finally admitted that high levels of immigration combined with no changes to housing policy has destroyed their affordability.

This means immigration policies must be explicitly tied to housing policy if you don’t want to screw over your poor.

Maybe more important over decadal spans:

You also need to align housing policy to demographic changes such as family size, length of time that children remain living with parents, relatives or carers, as well as prevalence of work from home, availability of “local” work within affordable commute range, availability of public transport.

In other words, “planning for the future”.

The neo-liberal project destroyed more than western industries, it bankrupted our perception that there are more than just market incentives that can build healthier, happier, more resilient and, yes, wealthier societies.

YIMBY policies just end up with a small number of luxury condos being built.

You need SHIMBY policies, social housing in my back yard.

This doesn't sound true so I would need a citation on this.

As long as you're not tearing down 10 units to build 5, more supply is more supply. Doesn't matter nearly as much whether they are luxury or basic.

Not if the investors are willing to warehouse units to keep prices high, rather than lower prices in order to sell. If prices of luxury units are high enough, you're talking a significant percentage of units that can just be held while investors still break even or profit. Why lock in a loss or low profit (and, in doing so, hurt the value of your other holdings)?

More supply is more supply. Eventually the strategy breaks.

I'll be happy to see when it does. We're not there. And, anyway, a break of that strategy probably means that inventory gets flooded to the point that you needn't have overbuilt at all.

>Not if the investors are willing to warehouse units to keep prices high, rather than lower prices in order to sell.

Source this is happening?

>Why lock in a loss or low profit (and, in doing so, hurt the value of your other holdings)?

Because you have to pay upkeep on those units so they don't fall apart, and repay the bonds you raised to build those luxury condos in the first place?

>Source this is happening?

Here is a conservative think-tank using its existence as the premise for arguing against rent control: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/want-to-end-apartment-warehousing...

>Because you have to pay upkeep on those units so they don't fall apart, and repay the bonds you raised to build those luxury condos in the first place?

If you raise rates on the buyers that do exist, you can cover these expenses.

>Here is a conservative think-tank using its existence as the premise for arguing against rent control: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/want-to-end-apartment-warehousing...

Your claim:

"Not if the investors are willing to warehouse units to keep prices high, rather than lower prices in order to sell."

Their claim:

"If it costs more to maintain a unit — and keep it in compliance with housing codes — than rental income justifies, it only makes sense to padlock it.

In other words, an anti-warehousing law would force owners to lose money every month — or rent a substandard unit at the risk of being in violation of housing laws."

Those aren't exactly the same thing. You're talking about developers/owners refusing to sell a luxury condo, whereas the "conservative think-tank" is talking about landlord refusing to rent a unit below his costs. Besides the difference between selling a unit vs renting it out, there's a huge gap in the middle between "minimum cost to the landlord of having a tenant" and "whatever the market rate for rent is". Even if we assume whatever the "conservative think-tank" said is true, it doesn't apply above that lower bound.

>If you raise rates on the buyers that do exist, you can cover these expenses.

Are you talking about renters or buyers? Your usage of "rates" imply that you're talking about renting, but "buyers" implies you're talking about buying.

I don't assume that what they say is true; in fact, I think that they're wrong. It was an example of even the people in whose interests it is to deny that warehousing happens, not denying that it happens.

As for the difference between renting and selling, luxury and non-luxury, apparently "supply is supply", so it doesn't matter in the aggregate. The details kind of don't matter, because at market scale, some factor should make "move it or lose it" on empty units the norm. Homes are to live in; if you're not filling them with people who are living in them, something has failed, socioeconomically. It used to be a matter of taking a lower profit in the interests of community stability and vibrancy (which a local landlord or seller would want; many aren't local), but now that everything is hyper-efficient, perhaps the cost of holding unproductive property isn't high enough.

Warehousing can work to an extent, but eventually there is enough supply to overpower it. Again, the answer is to just keep building. There's also very little evidence that it is happening. NYC has vacancy rates below 3%, its extremely difficult to get much lower than that.

Building more social housing is a noble goal, but attaching stuff like that to zoning approvals is a great way to ensure nothing gets built. Your pet cause might be housing for poor people, someone else's might be housing for LGBT you, undocumented migrants, or drug addicts. All of those are noble causes too, but all make housing less attractive for developers to build. Given that we're already not building enough housing, making it less attractive to build is the last thing we want.

Your first statement is flat-out wrong. The supporting citation does not actually support it, though it hints at how institutional housing ownership has contributed to housing price inflation. To wit: it explains how innovations during the GFC turned direct investment into an appealing proposition for investors. These investors helped to backstop housing values that would have fallen even further than they already had. In other words, the much-needed correction to the pre-GFC bubble that the GFC represented was disrupted and reversed.

The actual solution to housing price inflation is a full correction that wipes out the inflated value of housing in this country, cutting each property's worth back down to its intrinsic value. Affordability and use would reset to what the real market actually can sustain, as when the income tax forced wealthy property owners to divest of and demolish or convert their grand mansions into apartments for people to actually live in.

There is no housing shortage (Zillow has an obvious conflict-of-interest). There is no need to load even more money into the system by providing cheap money to builders (a naked corporate giveaway that will surely represent yet another wealth transfer from taxpayers to business-owners). Pop the bubble. Planning considerations can follow, once land and property values actually reflect their intrinsic worth. If you do it before that, you throw billions of dollars worth of resources and labor into misbegotten initiatives that do no good for the communities that they're supposed to serve (e.g., highway expansion).

Fannie Mae [1], a GSE, and the Federal Reserve [2] also provide data that confirms a housing shortage. I agree Zillow is potentially non biased, they are simply the most recent data point I've come across wrt to total shortage amount vs the slightly stale citations below.

[1] https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2020044pap...

> The actual solution to housing price inflation is a full correction that wipes out the inflated value of housing in this country, cutting each property's worth back down to its intrinsic value. Affordability and use would reset to what the real market actually can sustain, as when the income tax forced wealthy property owners to divest of and demolish or convert their grand mansions into apartments for people to actually live in.

Your thesis is not grounded in reality, and will never occur due to how durable the economy is (preventing mortgage defaults) due to structural demographics as well as how much equity exists in housing in the aggregate (~$17T as of this comment), preventing a correction from MBS investment failures. As long as demand outstrips supply, no correction will occur, as owners and sellers can outlast buyers. There is no bubble, housing is what housing is worth based on limited supply. The market can sustain this as long as people are willing to buy at the prices on offer, and if demand diminishes (unlikely due to population growth, household formation, and immigration), prices will slowly deflate over years as sellers organize themselves in time series by motivation. Gotta live somewhere.

"We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price."

>While the United States does indeed have a national shortage of affordable housing

Note, an affordable housing shortage, not a housing shortage. In other words, there are not enough suitable houses on the market at affordable price points, not an absolute shortage of housing. This does not need new builds to remedy, in full; transfer or rehabilitation of underutilized housing would be a major component of a solution. A major and full correction incentivizes owners and investors to sell-at-loss or walk away from unsustainable ownership of housing that then becomes available as affordable units. Affordable unit count must increase with the basic affordability of units.

>as owners and sellers can outlast buyers.

That's a big assumption to make. Unfortunately for owners, their housing values are tied to other parts of the economy that are not as resilient, and vulnerable to developments that are already well underway. For example, the commercial real estate market is going to correct, if not collapse. This is a certainty. Admittedly, the timeline has been shifted back, but through tactics that, ironically, reveal the fundamental weakness of the market. These are foundational holdings that support - as collateral, as capital - the positions of the entities who themselves support residential property values with their activities.

You should also look for the rental market cartel to be broken soon. The RealPage lawsuits will dismantle the unlawful pricing power property managers have wielded. That will increase competition and affordability. Hopefully attacks on unfair pricing schemes ("specials" that amount to lowered rents that only apply for the first year) follow, further increasing affordability.

>There is no bubble

I'm just highlighting this so that others can see how disconnected your argument is from reality.

>"We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price."

Now you're just taking the piss. I'll bite the bait. We're both aware of the context of that quote and how it refers to grossly unethical, quasi-legal actions taken by a desperate entity on the precipice of biting the curb for their financial hubris and malfeasance. I don't know that you want to be taking that affect? It would mean that your stance is one that's in grave jeopardy if people figure out what you're doing before you can lie and cheat your way to safety.

Instead of "house", you could also imagine a similar analogy around "amount of apples one person needs to eat to live".

The sociopathic villager who went to the village's communal trees, and took way more apples than they can ever eat, while others don't have enough apples to eat, should be tossed into the lake.

But the sociopathic villager tells stories in the village square, of how those villagers who are starving are lazy, and trying to eat apples without working to gather them.

A village elder starts to say they saw the sociopath going and taking the apples under the cover of darkness, and that's why some people are starving.

But the sociopath quietly welcomes the elder into the fold of those who have cellars full of more apples than they can eat. Then apple hoarding is suddenly the noble way of the ancestors, according to the elder. And, hey, look over there, at those lazy people over there trying to eat apples while working only a half day! Hate those greedy freeloaders, over there!

The housing crisis is one example, but I'm not talking about which parties have literally 100 houses in real society (nor want to get diverted with "just let developers make more money, by building more, and stop looking at any other factors of the problem"). I'm talking about essentials, greed, and corruption more generally.

I have a better analogy. It’s the analogy of a guy who got up every morning to plant apple trees in his orchard. When the time came for harvest, he picked all of the apples and sold them to market. With his proceeds, he bought some more land from his neighbor and planted even more apple trees. The next year there were too many apples for him to pick by himself so he hired a few people to help out, and used the proceeds to expand his orchard.

There was another man in the village who never planted a tree or picked an apple. Instead he sat in his house filled with envy and resentment at the apple farmer, and made up a bunch of ridiculous stories about how the apple farmer was stealing from everyone else. And so he found all of the other villagers he could sway, and inspired envy in their hearts. And the envy and resentment and hatred grew and grew until one night, they went to the orchard and burned down all the apple trees and the man’s house while he and his family slept inside. And then they all celebrated their crime.

Of course, when no one else in the village ever planted an apple orchard ever again, there were murmurs of complaint. The town baker couldn’t bake his famous apple pies the next fall, but he knew better to complain because he didn’t want the envious mob showing up at his bakery in the middle of the night. So he kept quiet.

The housing crisis is one example, but I’m not talking about which parties have obstructed the creation of wealth in real society. I’m talking about essentials, envy and corruption more generally.

As you adapt my quote, for contrast, you substitute "envy" for "greed", which seems meaningful.

So is the gist of your analogy that, in reality, the problem of what might appear to be greed, is actually strictly envy, by the people who don't merit the wealth?

And when you made the envious people outright psychotically homicidal, was that for a bit of levity? Or do you feel that strongly that irrational envy underlies real world complaints that people might have about inequity?

> And when you made the envious people outright psychotically homicidal, was that for a bit of levity?

More like realism. Read a history book sometime.

The main difference between your parable and mine is that yours assumes a zero-sum world in which there is a fixed number of apples that are grown and the only question is how to divide them. In reality, that’s not how it works. In reality, wealth can be created. A greedy person is a problem if he takes things away from other people, but if he does productive work that creates more wealth for the world, even we allow him to keep much of that wealth for himself, the rest of us are still better off with him around than without. Conversely, if we destroy him or his ability to create wealth out of a shortsighted envy because we falsely believe in a zero-sum world, we also ultimately impoverish ourselves out of spite.

Even your own parable ends up proving my point. Your parable is essentially the “tragedy of the commons”, and the point of the tragedy of the commons is that when productive assets (like apple trees) are commonly owned, the individual incentives go against the common good and also the stewardship of the asset. Conversely, if the orchard is private property, the owner’s incentives instead favor both of these things. This is why virtually all productive agricultural land is privately owned and worked for profit, and if you look back at those same history books I mentioned earlier, most attempts to abolish private ownership of farmlands—most of which were ideologically motivated by various rationalizations for envy—have resulted in lower food production and often outright famine.

How do you imagine villages actually worked? An extremely common way was that the entire village would be owned by one man who would collect rent from all of the villagers.

My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside.

Capital wanted to break labor. And they did.

> Too bad that can't buy a functional society for people born after 1980.

They don’t care about a functional society or other people. Their kids are off in Bali this week, Nice the next.

Yea, the world of the actual-rich is like Elysium, but (for now) without outer space as the physical separation. They live in an entirely different world, fully detached from our reality. They don't need to care about "a functional society" because they make their own society and very rarely have to land on planet Earth and interact with our dysfunctional one.

Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. And it's not even close. Millenials are the second richest in American history.

The only problem is housing. Any discussion not focused 100% on housing is not grounded in reality.

>Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age.

source: https://www.economist.com/img/b/608/739/90/media-assets/imag...

> per-capita

Anyone looking at this chart can see the asterisk in it - adjusted by household size

This is not a per capita income chart. It even says it is not in the chart.

More of Generation Z lives at home in their 20s than baby boomers, so the income of their household is higher.

They can't afford a house or even rent, and live with their parents, meaning a richer household, and are said to be richer.

This was discussed (elsewhere) three months ago when this Economist article came out.

If you looked at the source paper, they do the same analysis on "couple sharing unit", which doesn't have this problem. Confusingly, their definition of "couple" also includes singles, so genZ getting married later or whatever isn't an issue either.

>Subsequent references in this paper to couple incomes always refer to the income of the individual alone if single, and the equal-split income of the individual and their spouse if married.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap...

Richest? How? 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. Unfortunately, our standards have gone up and there are things that are now necessities that weren't before.

>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_income#Discretionar...

I don't think it's that weird.

I think most people would naturally define wealth by the kind of life and lifestyle the wealth can afford.

Who cares how much actual money it is if it can't actually afford a decent life.

It's a real problem that you absolutely have to have money for living (food, housing, healthcare), but it's the same money you use to buy computer games or supercars.

> Wealth is generally understood to mean how much assets you have accumulated

...by accountants.

"Wealth" as used by most people is related to quality of life. It even shows up in the phrase "house poor" where maybe someone has great net assets but cannot live comfortable life due to the drain of the house. Wealth is not money.

Wealth is composed of many factors of which one is money, but you need money to have wealth.

Therefore, wealth is money.

Life is composed of many factors of which one is carbon, but you need carbon to have life. There, carbon is life.

---

No, life is the combination of carbon and other things, so wealth is the combination of money and other things. It's the combination and interaction with other things that is important and focussing just on money is missing the forest for the trees.

This is true, but the converse isn't: you don't need wealth to have money. Just use your credit card instead.

A borrowed dollar spends just as well as a saved or earned one, which is why many confuse spending with wealth.

"House poor" is an oxymoron. They have the option at any time to sell their house to get liquid. I can have ten gold bars and choose to live like a miser because I don't want to touch my gold, but everybody would call that ridiculous. Just as ridiculous are "house poor" who don't want to touch their real estate wealth. But we can't say that, because everybody reading this has relatives who are "house poor", and we all have to work together to keep up the lie.

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.

You introduced the word wealth to the discussion and then proceeded to complain about its definition. What's the point of this?

Just use the definitions of words that are in the dictionary and widely agreed upon, so that conversations with other people can be meaningful. If you want to talk about how cost of living is high, or how it's not high but people think it's high because (insert your reason), just use the words we all use and let's talk about that.

Income isn't the only measure of wealth. Also, there are two major expenses affecting Gen Z:

1. Education

2. Housing

Both have been increasing at a rate faster than inflation for some time now. While Gen Z may have a greater income, their major expenses are even greater. When all is said and done, they're poorer as a result. Turns out that simply having money is insufficient to solving all financial problems.

Also, healthcare and childcare.

Great point - the cost of childcare is insane right now! But at least the states using the force of law to make women carry their embryos to term will be paying for it, right? Right?

Food is starting to cost a bit too, especially if one wants to avoid eating badly.

Right now, the ideal political-economic platform will de-emphasize inflation, inequality, etc. all in favor of the five horsemen: housing, education, childcare, eldercare, healthcare.

It doesn't matter how cheap iPads and gasoline are - as long as the five persist, life is an anxiety-inducing gauntlet of financial trials-by-fire for most people.

Knowledge and intelligence is a greater measure of wealth

No, even in real-terms, Gen Z (in America) is shaping out to be the wealthiest generation so far: https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80...

Gen-Z is also owning homes at a greater rate than Millennials were at the same age: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/g...

> Bolstered by high incomes, American Zoomers’ home-ownership rates are higher than millennials’ at the same age

> Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age.

Per capita? Not at all. What source says that?

More of Generation Z lives with their parents than previous generations, often because they can't afford housing, or even rent, high college debt etc. They live with their parents, and thus in households with higher income, so only in that sense are they "rich" - the household income is higher than if they could afford their own house.

Per capita real income higher? No. What source claims that?

Every time someone says this, if there is a source, this always come back to them living with parents and household income being higher. Not per capita.

Your numbers are by definition wrong, since young people would not have a problem to afford housing if they were "the richest generation".

I guess this is the progress of new-speak? We've had a decade of people saying "oh, people are so rich today that they don't want to have children". Now it's "oh, people are so rich today that they don't want to have homes". In a few years it will be "oh, people are so rich today that they don't want to eat food or have medical care".

> 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 ones, not to artificially preserve the old ones. One has to be careful, though, not to distort the market for retraining itself.

> And ever-decreasing prices for consumers. Don’t forget that!

Except that's not happening for major purchases. Housing is more expensive than ever. Education is more expensive than ever. Healthcare is more expensive than ever. Cars and Trucks are more expensive than ever.

Besides taxes, the above are the biggest slice of the consumer's wallet, and those prices have almost never decreased. Shareholder returns keep going up, up, and up though.

Agree that housing, education and healthcare are more expensive than ever.

But I lived through the 1980s and let me tell you, in many ways consumer goods are better and cheaper than ever before. It was just normal and expected that cars would have holes rust in them, and sunroofs that would leak. A home computer was an exotic rarity, and a monitor with a 15" viewable area was considered big. There was an entire industry dedicated to renting TVs, not just because of the high upfront cost but also because they often broke down, and the rental company would provide the repair or replacement.

> Housing is more expensive than ever. Education is more expensive than ever. Healthcare is more expensive than ever.

Housing, education and healthcare are to a very great extent to amenable to globalisation, since houses have to be built on a local plot of land, education is for most folks done in-country and healthcare too is delivered locally. Not that all three, too, are subject to massive amounts of subsidies.

> Cars and Trucks are more expensive than ever.

A Henry J in 1950 was $1,299 (according to https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/car/heres-much-c...), or $16,934 in 2024 dollars; a Nissan Versa is $17,820 today. While more expensive, that doesn’t seem crazy, just 5.23% more — and of course that Versa is a much better car.

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.

> And ever-decreasing prices for consumers

This is more of a hope than a reality. The trickle down economics logic. “We promise it’ll be good.”

There's an elephant in the Argument: Why don't women adopt these elite ideals and leave their kids? We should at least have an explanation why either nothing significant changed in the last 100+ years (a stretch), or something else that is counteracting said elite ideals. To put another way, why did the elite woman act against her own publicly professed Expectation? [0]

Another hint there's something amiss is the flawed premise. Men are not doing nothing! I see a whole bunch of consumption. Here is one of the author's citations:

> Edin and Kefalas describe the behavior of young males in low-income neighborhoods:

>> [...] Young mothers regularly rail against young fathers who squander too much of their earnings on alcohol, marijuana, new stereo components, computer accessories, expensive footwear, or new clothing, while the needs of the family are, in their view, not adequately met. [... Amy] had a boyfriend who worked steadily but insisted on spending on selfish pursuits. This is what eventually broke the young couple up.

All those are true, but try to tell that to every one of those Industries. If you were the CEO of a shoe company men spending on food is money not spent on your shoes. Why have your primary consumer spend less with at your company, even if that benefits the broader social fabric? It is in your material interests (one could argue your "Fiduciary Responsibility") to drive spending towards your company, which is why you pay the Marketing Department the big bucks.

If I were to throw out a guess, I suspect the difference is between Expectation and Ideal, or the difference between external and internal motivation, respectively. You can't form a cohesive self-identity from constantly shifting external expectations (ask your therapist), it must be stitched together from already free-floating desires/values/signifiers of society. Where I think the author gets close is how society influences how and what to Desire [1].

[0]: For those who read Cialdini's Influence this is an apparently powerful violation of the Commitment to Consistency, which hints something deeper is going on. Her deliberately going out of her way to correct the interviewer's view of her perhaps speaks to a greater commitment to another consistency?

[1]: https://iep.utm.edu/lacweb/#SH2b

This article is riddles with biased language and seems generally unscientific. This undermines the premise being highly specific.

The author of TFA read Charles Murray's Coming Apart and has inexpertly regurgitated (to the extent of just copy-pasting the figures) that book's central thesis while failing to understand its nuance and context. If you're interested in this idea -- and you should be, because it's important! -- then you should just skip the article and read the (vastly superior) book.

Born too late to enjoy exponential asset growth. Born too soon to see the true environmental impact of the asset growth.

Lost generation, can I just get some drugs to cope please, my computer job is making me lose my humanity ;(

Just kidding it’s all good :)

It would make an interesting film(book/documentary/comic?) where the protagonist is laid off because the factory in Anytown, Georgia closes down and by some magical plot contrivance he is able to move to Shenzhen and get his job back.

You could go a lot of different ways, or several at once, with this set up.

This is the excuse-plot around Shenzhen IO; you then spend the rest of the game making awful novelty tchotchkes

Given the experiences of my white friends in China, a laid off factory worker moving to Shenzhen would have done extremely well for himself, especially back then.

You know what you kind of hit the nail on the head there -- that narrative has really been pushed by a lot of sources and that kills internal drive if you think all your efforts are for naught.

I don't believe that narrative though.

Also your comment too late for exponential asset growth -- that never stops (see crypto, AI Stocks, tooling stocks, etc). The cycle always continues.

"Born too late to enjoy exponential asset growth."

Unless you bought Bitcoin...

Just wait til you lose your computer job.

> Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.

> But nobody wants to admit it because it upsets people.

Author can explain "everyone".

> Instead, we retreat to discussions of poverty and economics because talking about family and parenting makes people feel weird and judgmental.

And again.

I suppose the jury is still technically out on whether the Western strategy of leaving mostly everything up to mostly chance is a good idea, but I am not liking the preliminary results. I imagine the experts are on it somewhere though (because science and democracy essentially guarantee optimality), so I won't bother worrying about it.

We're encouraged to pick a destiny but hardly anyone reaches theirs and then the fault is put on them so they don't speak up.

> > 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.

Yes, because evolution, no?

Any other situation is really weird (contra-entropic) which is why things that channel sex/violence (testosterone) into constructive ends are so important. We call them "civilization" (verb and noun.)

- - - -

Anyway, the article seems to overlook the Sixties:

> The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon and political movement that developed in the Western world during the mid-20th century. It began in the early 1960s, and continued through the early 1970s. It is often synonymous with cultural liberalism and with the various social changes of the decade. The effects of the movement have been ongoing to the present day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s

It's hard to describe how crazy things got and how we live in a different world now, even the people who were there can barely articulate what happened.

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 gotten a vasectomy. We need to be asking why he didn't- was it a lack of education, or was the procedure too expensive?

Mine cost me $1k up front, health insurance didn’t cover a penny. It’s really silly.

When you think about it, it is kind of crazy. If a person can't afford that, then they definitely can't afford kids.

The sillier part is that it has to save the insurance company sooooo much money to reduce the number of parents, you think they’d be knocking on doors to see if people want them for free

It's the opposite. Insurance companies are regulated and the portion of the premium that they can keep as profit is limited. If they want to make more dollars, they have to increase the amount we spend on healthcare which lets them increase premiums. They would rather keep 20% of $10k than 20% of $1k.

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 is a topic near and dear to my heart, because unwanted children leads to enormous suffering (which I have seen up close as a volunteer Guardian ad Litem, a legal advocate for children in the system). A recent thread on the topic of unwanted children at scale [1].

So I bought and operate a domain which points to the r/childfree subreddit wiki list of doctors [2] who will provide permanent birth control to people who want it without onerous conditions such as partner approval, being over 30, or having at least two or three kids first. I run marketing campaigns on socials with this digital property. Next steps are building a site to act as a "store locator" app for this data. My partner and I also contribute in r/sterilization for those seeking permanent birth control, helping folks navigate insurance (bisalps in the US are free under most insurance situations, and vasectomies are covered at 100% in 10 states) and logistics.

High level, we should collectively be robustly supporting parents who want to be parents, but we must aggressively assist though who would rather not. 40% of US domestic pregnancies every year are unintended [3]. ~600k children are in the foster care system [4], very roughly half of which are adoptable but are never adopted. It costs ~$310k to raise a child from 0-18 in the US [5], and this does not include daycare or college costs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/childfree/wiki/doctors

[3] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...

[4] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-kids-are-in-foster-ca...

[5] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Brookin...

Bandaid solutions to societal ills probably just prolong the suffering.

On the contrary, this is a pipeline problem. If you get to the root of the problem by avoiding unwanted children, the effort to paper over the suffering in the future is never needed. Society ain't changing on any meaningful timeline (based on all available evidence), "the purpose of the system is what it does," so attack the root cause in earnest.

It is a choice to not actively solve for the suffering, so find an inexpensive point of leverage to attempt to solve for it. Folks seeking this healthcare are being marginalized by the system at great cost realized as externalities, and therefore require empowerment (with strong positive second order effects). Like vaccinations, prevention is far cheaper than the alternatives.

Tangentially, it's kind of wild to think that the global population boom, billions of people, over the last ~100 years was because of women not being empowered [1], broadly speaking. Because as soon as women are empowered [2], educated, and have robust access to contraceptives, boom, fertility rate plummets off a cliff. Turns out, society (economic pyramid schemes leading to pearl clutching about rapidly declining populations) and men [3] [4] want more children than women do. Ergo, we must empower the human, because all available evidence demonstrates the system is built and operated to subjugate rather than empower (from a first principles systems analysis).

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982392 (citations)

[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/women-children-study-1.711984...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity...

A society that doesn't support having children won't lead anywhere worth going.

I'm pretty sure that given the support they needed, and a society that didn't program them all the way to want other things in life more; the numbers would look very different.

And that IS the long term problem.

Which is not at all an excuse for not solving other problems, I don't feel it has to be one or the other.

Society very much has, and is, changing; drastically, exponentially. And in an increasingly destructive direction for quite a while now.

And it will have to change into something more constructive, humane, rational; if it wants to survive at all.

Indeed, society can fix the system if it so chooses. Otherwise, it must make peace with rational actors making rational decisions in an irrational and dysfunctional system. In my small acts, I am gifting agency and freedom. Society is free to make a better offer (I wish it would), but we know it won't.

Prof Scott Galloway asks, "Do we love our children? [1]" I can prove that we don't, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is clear as day.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...

Then it will be replaced by something more suitable, like many times before.

Once you drift too far away from basic human needs and the truth, something will happen, and we're more or less there if you ask me.

I'm curious how you would prove it? The biggest indictment of humanity to me is our destruction of the biosphere for future generations (and at the rate we're going, a few current generations as well).

Is it that or something else?

I can enumerate the long list of policy that treats youth as a resource to extract from vs supporting and enabling their success. Is that what you had in mind for this?

No need to enumerate the list; I can imagine rather a lot of it, and it probably isn't limited to youth, but they're usually the least able to deal with those who would extract from them.

But I still think the largest indictment of humanity is our failure to care for our home. Buckminster Fuller gave us the idea of "Starship Earth"; that we are all the crew of a spaceship that winds through the galaxy and we must all cooperate to maintain it for those that come after. It seems almost certain now that we will not make it.

I think it would be cool to know your main digital property or some other way to connect - so folk who want to help could reach out.

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

You think doctors should be forced to perform procedures they don’t want to perform?

At the very least the doctor should be required to refer the patient to a different doctor who is capable of performing it. This question is kind of similar to "Should pharmacists be able to deny birth control (or other medicine like vaccines) to people because of the pharmacist's personal religious belief?"

Except it’s not a question of the doctor’s personal religious belief or preference, but rather a question of professional judgment.

It is technically possible for a physician to prescribe methamphetamine or fentanyl. Many adults in the United States want to consume methamphetamine or fentanyl. (Sometimes both at the same time!) But it is very hard to find a physician who will write those prescriptions purely on the basis of “the patient asked for it”. Like it or not, some degree of paternalism is an inherent part of the practice of medicine.

The current version of the Hippocratic Oath says this:

""" I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism. """

Which does not include "except those I don't feel like doing".

The Declaration of Geneva states the following:

""" THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration; I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient; """

Which I read to similarly state that a doctor's own preferences as to the procedures is necessarily secondary.

This amounts to saying doctors should be forced to perform procedures they believe are not in the best interests of their patients, go against conscience, or expose them to significant litigation risk.

All surgical sterilization procedures come with physical risk, and many other birth control does as well.

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.

Pretty sure adoption is very difficult nowadays. Also people do change their minds about having their biologically own kids.

It's difficult and expensive, and my wife and I have no issues conceiving. Why make it even more competitive for people who can't conceive?

Why question a human’s innate desire to raise their own off-spring like we’ve evolved to do for millions of years?

So often people chime in with the “just adopt” and while I agree in a perfect world, that’s exactly what would happen, but in reality it goes against a very fundamental part or human nature to opt to raise someone else’s child instead of your own. It just completely misses the human element of why people are so naturally driven have kids and families to begin with.

Because sometimes we need to question "fundamental parts of human nature"

Plenty of people raise other people’s kids without ever knowing. They didn’t love them less.

Yes, but usually they believe it is their own kid

the reality is, most kids you can adopt are severely messed up, due to drug use of parents or poor eating/nutrition of parents.

i guess you are downvoted because it sounds like you say that drug use or poor eating are the main reasons for children to end up in adoption. i don't think that's true, there are many other possible reasons. that said, whatever the reasons are, i fear few children come out unaffected by whatever trauma they experienced which lead to an adoption, with the only exception of children being adopted right at birth.

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.)

Curious if the doctors are actually just proxies for insurance providers in this case?

And yet, there were generations of children who were raised by fathers and had two-parent households.

Access to birth control has increased at the same time that single parent households have increased. It doesn't seem to be having an effect.

I also take issue with your claim that men don't want their own children. Again, we're talking about a change that happened in the 60's and 70's. Is your argument that all men suddenly changed to hate children 50-60 years ago? No. What happened is that divorce laws changed. Social expectations for men and women changed to be more sexually promiscuous. The legal framework that encouraged two-parent households was dismantled.

The author covers the latter topic somewhat, but doesn't delve into the topic of the legal framework that enables one-parent households. There are a multitude of laws surrounding divorce and child support, which originated in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, that encourage single motherhood and make it extremely difficult for working fathers to raise children. For generations, it was possible for men to work and raise children when they were not working. Now, the responsibility of work is often used to deny fathers custody.

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.

There are chances for chronic pain though. A few people on HN said they wouldn't have done that if they knew what would happen

Yes. I had pain for a while. Mine was not a quick recovery, and I now sleep with a body pillow between my knees (although my back and hips like this). I do a lot of cycling, so I am sure that is part of the issue.

Overall, I would recommend it. My wife and I didn't want to risk having more kids.

That sounds like a huge negative to me. How much will it worsen with age?

Really for males there is condom (big downside in feeling) or surgery with chronic pain as option. Great options.

Chronic pain (pvps) has a 1-2% incidence rate, and can be treated in many cases.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5503923/

Options for women include childbearing, which bears risk of severe medical complications and death; hormonal birth control, which is mood-altering, causes weight gain, unsatisfactory sex; IUDs with risk of chronic pain; and condoms which always seem to magically slip off.

1-2% of having permanent pain between my legs sounds like an ENORMOUS amount

Right. That's actually less than the failure rate of condoms used as intended. But you'll never experience childbirth, postpartum pain, and you can just walk away from a family if your partner's vagina is a source permanent pain for her.

The condom failure rate might be higher, but the result of an undesired pregnancy because of condoms failure is not that rate. Childbirth is limited in scope and postpartum pain will not last permanently.

Permanent chronic pain will last until the end of your life, that's heavy in my book.

That being said I assume this statement is country specific, because for example in Italy if you walk away (as a dad) from your family, most of your income will go to the mother. Not only that, it is basically guaranteed that as a dad, you will not get child custody (unless the mother gives that up voluntarily), so if you actually wanted to be a dad, SORRY, you are not going to enjoy your kids. And yes the mother can walk away from you, with your money and your kids.

That being said, I'm seeing this through the lense of a stable couple with children (my case). Both me and my wife discuss our options and we don't like any contraceptive options right now. Either diminished feeling (which I have to assumes vary drastically per person), or some damage to the body (external hormones for female, chronic pain for male).

Terrible across the board

You aren’t escaping life without pain.

I torn my quad last year, and then one of my kids did a butt stomp right on that knee joint as I was lying on the ground. Any minor residual vasectomy pain is the least of my concerns.

That's an ACCIDENT, not a decision.

It's a costly inconvenience. Women are responsible for their bodies. Then you have to sell the prospect of someone cutting at their manhood. It just ain't happening.

perhaps some guys have kids because their wives/girlfriends required them to do so.

No woman can "require" a man to have a child.

No but she can lie about the status of her birth control and guy cant (either your wearing a condom or your not and its easy to see). I have a friend that had a child with his girlfriend after she lied to him about having and IUD. She legally speaking raped him and had his child forcing him to be a parent against his will. Now if he leaves her she will get child support from him until their child is 18.

It's called eugenics and was widely practiced in the 20th century against the exact people you propose.

Edit: Down vote as much as you want. Eugenics is the above. Doesn't mean I'm for or against it. It was promoted at the time as a way of protecting children from growing up with "unfit" parents.

The difference is eugenics involved forced sterilization against your will, where what people here seem to be calling for is a free voluntary sterilization option.

I think the lines are very blurred in reality. Doctors and social services didn't always sterilize by force. Many times it was a matter of convincing a person, or outright tricking them.

Just the threat applied today of the government taking away your children unless you can provide a minimum standard for them, is enough to convince many people to not procreate. Ie eugenics with a different process.

If you read the above paragraph and think "what's wrong with that", then you're in company with a lot of people who are not unreasonable. But it springs from the same idea as eugenics. Now consider the above paragraph applied to minorities or the indigenous population. Suddenly it is an awful thing.

You can also argue that nobody should have the right to pass on hereditary diseases and conditions to a child. What do you do if they want to do it anyway? Etc, etc. There are arguments for and against. Well being of the child vs human rights of the parent.

You have no right to judge like that, other peoples choices in general are none of your business because it's not your life; and come one, you obviously don't know the whole story.

How about buying a bag of food for the guy instead? Get to know him and try to understand the path that led him there. Like, actually solve a problem, make something better instead of hating more.

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 cycle of dependency and collapse. Fathers teach boys to set boundaries for themselves, which has the effect of weaning them off psychological dependency on their mothers approval and innoculates them to some of her edges and those of other women. This is why only can men make other men, as without masculine boundaries, their emotional locus of control is external.

We blame the absent fathers, and that's at least half the problem, but only half. The other half is that mothers don't raise men alone, and so you get punks and criminals, boys with "nice guy" predatory survival strategies, neurotics, and other maladapted and unserious men. It's arguably why "bastard," is such a longlived epithet. The only reliable escape is to master something and find mentoring in pursuit of the competence that develops the necessary self-confidence and esteem for setting personal boundaries.

> He should be held to high standards. Otherwise, he will sink to the level of his environment.

A male peer group can raise these standards, but it's mean reversion, and if you're in a neighbourhood of boys raised alone by their mothers, that's going to be a low bar. The entire culture war is between people who resent their dads for being absent or weak, and those who don't. There are paths out, but as a wise woman once said, "no one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."

> 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?

I've never read about this topic but the comment above interested me in trying to find any references related to the claim it's making. So far, [1] is the most interesting one. While it doesn't precisely line up with what is claimed above, it does say that a more "paternalistic" parenting style is causal for the child's later political beliefs.

[1] https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2022/june/when-par...

It very well could

> 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't support all of, or won't oppose all of.

That’s usually what people mean when they use the term “culture war”. If that’s not what they meant, I wonder what is?

I personally prefer another definition of culture war that rises above the ever-changing ground-level arguments. This would be the belief that a person is ultimately responsible for themselves, and any policy or belief that removes that internal locus of control is antithetical to a healthy life and society. I think from here, much of the individual arguments can be classified.

Well, that's a very nuanced and mature view of things, but for most people culture war means 'they different than me - no like!'. Very tribal, usually built around team blue vs team red. Cliches, stereotypes and tropes.

I think the concept you have expressed is simply the struggle for individual rights writ large. The struggle for a man to move through society by his rules, instead of being controlled by his parents, government or religion. Which, until the last few hundred years in certain parts of the world, has not been remotely possible.

>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".

Yeah there are some interesting ideas in there and I respect the ideals of open debate and exploration of these topics, but this is by far the weakest part of the comment. I'm also finding it difficult to infer which tribe that is supposed to apply to - similar accusations are often lobbed at the blue tribe for supposedly wanting the state to act like a father, but I think performative masculinity in general speaks much more to a lack of strong male role models. So maybe it's better to assume the problem across the board, and perhaps only modulated by political tribe - the first comment on the original blog post speaks to the phenomenon even extending to other cultures.

> and there is almost no increasingly-terrible situation in which a mother will not love her son.

Could someone please rephrase this? I'm having trouble understanding it.

Mom will still love her son even as he does worse things.

You see mass murderers and serial rapists whose mothers still love them.

In jail the first phone call everyone made was to their mom. The toughest skinhead, face-tatted nazi mofos begging to get on the phone and sobbing as they talk to their mom. That opened my eyes.

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

Who is blaming women?

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.

There was nothing blaming women in that post. Get some reading comprehension please.

This comes off as incredibly preachy about gender roles.

It is frankly just Freudian horseshit.

It reads like Jordan Peterson nonsense.

Men* have to have a purpose for being. They will either find a constructive one or a destructive one. If they fail at either, they'll find a way to self-destruct. It's really that simple.

* Can't speak for women.

Scott Galloway has been saying something similar.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/19/opinions/masculinity-toxic-me...

We may agree or disagree with Galloway, but we need to pay attention to this issue.

Why would you be able to speak for all men?

Because I'm right.

The author makes good points, but there is no mention of the demise of religion or the social factors leading to the dismantling of the nuclear family as causes.

I was telling my wife about the loss of religion and how that leaves many people without without purpose. Religion is often a precursor to the cultural norms we live, without even being aware of. Sunday is for resting in the west for example.

To find a reason to keep living is very hard and may entail an acceptance that all is for nothing and being content with that. Many people cannot walk that path or have deep anxiety before even being able to confront those questions on a personal way. Religion fills that gap, until the person wants to move forth.

It is easier to look into the void with a guide.

> I was telling my wife about the loss of religion and how that leaves many people without without purpose.

The hole left by religion is being quickly filled in by politics, which are taking on increasingly quasi-religious properties.

Which is frankly a lot more dangerous, considering there's no more clear separation between church and state, since the state becomes your religion and allows you to make real policies.

Basically, belonging to a church didn't mean you could lose your house, but with someone who creates a policy targeting the other end of the political spectrum could very easily affect you negatively economically.

Which is batshit insane and scary, which leads to further polarization.

I think the holy inquisition would like to talk with you. The separation of church and state is modern and likely a consequence of the church becoming socially weaker. I think religion has an important place but definitely at arms length from power and, kept, so.

The problem is that god is dead; we killed him and as far as I know, there is no way to bring him back.

What is so great about religion as a reason to live?

I want to live because life is fun some of the time and death is boring.

Isn't that what Nietzsche was saying about "God is dead"? Did either of us read the book itself?

> I want to live because life is fun some of the time and death is boring.

It is good you found out. I found my contentment is similar, but for me it was a journey and it took most of my adult life to understand it. Some people do not agree with your assessment nor can they understand it at all. It is nice to have a simple “what is life for” explained in “because god said so” or short stories of sheppards and people living a simple life.

Regarding Nietzsche it took more than 2 millennia of western philosophy to get to him. For people that never were exposed to philosophy his works are as comprehensible as the Heisenberg uncertainty.

Pretty sure its the other way around.

Religion co-ops practices that people enjoy into being part of them. Christianity is a great example with its adoption of pagan practices such as Christmas.

The birth of Christ was going to be celebrated with or without any pagan influence. It just so happened that it did.

Personally I am not religious and I don't get along much with my immediate family

Any solution that involves a prescribed push towards religion and family would be antithetical to my freedoms of religion and association

Me and the vast majority of my friends haven't experienced religion, and yet we're all in stable nuclear families. I didn't know we were anomalies.

How vast and how many of these friends would take a bullet or sacrifice a finger if it meant you getting to keep your arm? You only know who your friends really are in these circumstances, otherwise they are tourists.

"Hoisted on the petard of the our own decadence" seems to be a valid interpretation only if you think that the last 200 or so years of family structures in capitalist, Western nations is the only valid way of raising children and maintaining family bonds. This sort of thing reeks of the kind of chauvinism you only get from the echo chambers reverberating within the hallowed halls of places like the author's alma maters.

A big subtext of this article is that individuals with low socioeconomic status are incapable of making good decisions and must be strictly governed, and that the upper middle class is just as guilty as the absent fathers for the erosion the nuclear family structure.

I find the argument that folks with disposable income set a poor example for those of lesser means to be specious, pernicious, and divisive. It's the kind of argumentation that sets lower middle class conservatives up against upper middle class liberals so that they're too busy fighting a culture war to consider what new atrocity billionaires are getting away with behind their backs.

I've read TFA and another one linked by TFA. I did enjoy the reads and the links but... In both articles the author seems to contradict himself, more than once.

For example:

> The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs.

> it is those who have more to start with (i.e., upper-class individuals) who also strive to acquire more wealth and status.” Plainly, high-status people desire status more than anyone else.

So which one is it to achieve status: goods/wealth or beliefs?

Or this:

> It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore. 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 people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.

Once again: which one is it?

Then in both articles there's the same mechanism of saying basically "it's not visibly the fault of X, but under the hood it's actually the fault of X".

I mean: how can you argue with people who consider that everything that is wrong on earth is the fault of the "rich" and that even if the rich have good values, it's their fault that the poor have bad values?

"They do A, they say A. But they think B. Hence the poor are suffering".

Another take is that intellectuals, including in universities, have been very hard at work in the west (both in the EU and the US), since decades, to push the religion of the state. And what stands between the state and the individual? Religion and family, for a start.

And in a deliciously ironic turn of events, it's the one class leftist intellectual from universities (there are no right-wing intellectuals in universities anymore) hate the most, the "rich", that managed to push back against that narrative and raise their kids perpetrating the notion that being a united family is a good thing.

I really don't buy it that the rich are oppressing the poor by showing united families. And no amount of quoting french intellectuals is going to change my mind.

This really is not the greatest article in my opinion.

Much of the rhetoric follows circular reasoning without solid evidence and is mostly biased opinion.

What is promoted as forgone conclusions, is harmful, and follows along similar lines to Critical Theory seen in Marxism and its more modern derivatives.

Ultimately the issues come down to the social norms which have been degraded, while also not going into why or how those social norms were actually degraded (in any real fashion).

Critical Theory is caustic, and promotes nihilism and the absence of a cohesive cultural/social norms or mores. We have seen this more definitively recently with the Woke, but its been ongoing since the 70s.

If the author was at all genuine in their coverage, they would at least have covered this in some reduced fashion, it seems telling that no mention is made about the actual causes.

Instead, the overarching structure and themes are blame unemployment, then blame the men for being selfish (needing respect), then blame the rich who lie, but its not the mothers fault (so you can't blame them). In essence, its blame everyone but the group who is contributing most to the problem (those with the snake tongues pushing critical theory to distort reflected appraisal).

All said, its very childlike, and on its face the article checks almost all of the boxes to be considered soft-socialist/communist propaganda.

The article fails to follow rational principles (utilizing multiple fallacies with little to no direct support), it hits common socialist talking points. These include aspects where foregone conclusions are drawn towards destructive interference of gender relations, employer relations, government/societal relations, and western identity/concepts [indirectly].

The article presents much opinion as fact, and while some of the numbers referenced are correct in isolated cases the conclusions drawn are not.

In my opinion, the author lost all credibility by the end of the article, and it is clear they are promoting harmful narratives that don't address the underlying issue.

TL;DR don't bother reading the article; it has no real insight into the problem.

> 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 apex has decided that family instability is unimportant is disproved by the numbers the author themselves shows.

But most such narratives are based on grievances and not facts. So it’s not surprising that the author makes claims that are not only not backed by evidence but are disproved by all the evidence the author themselves includes in their article.

It’s still important for the ruling class young adults to prosper, including marrying(from their own class).

I’m in a thriving affluent family community, and I haven’t seen anything like what my lived experience is portrayed in media after the 1980s.

I think this is a case of the unwashed masses having no idea how good it can get, and the government failing to counteract cultural messages that being a single mom is empowering.

I remember when The Simpsons first came out, and the writers were going for the "low/working class struggling family" vibe. Now, you look at the same Simpsons lifestyle and think "These guys are loaded!" Single earner with a stable job, two story house in the suburbs, kids' school is not dysfunctional or gang-ridden. This is like a top 10% lifestyle in 2024 USA.

> ... is disproved by the numbers the author themselves shows.

Yup I just made a similar comment (but using other examples). TFA is contradicting itself and another linked article (from the same author) is also contradicting itself.

You and OP seem to be missing the author's point: the rich are lying to the poor. Whole families for me, broken families for thee.

(I don't think there's anything in it but that's what the author is saying.)

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 the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.

> But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.

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?

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.)

> 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

Yes, but they do not support this with data, just an anecdote.

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...

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.

The author addresses this with the anecdote about the discussion panelist espousing different views in private vs public. The "social apex" does practice family stability themselves, but de-emphasized it as a cultural norm. Presumably through their power of, say, academic research and media production.

Though the article could have done a better job explaining this. It's like a reverse phenomenon of "do as I say, not as I do".

Though the article could have done a better job explaining this. It's like a reverse phenomenon of "do as I say, not as I do".

That's probably what the article meant but I'm skeptical that it makes a significant difference in behavior. There are other positive behaviors that "social apex" people say and do but lower income people as a group still don't imitate them. Strictures like "don't use tobacco," "don't impregnate/get impregnated as a teen", "drink unsweetened iced tea instead of Coke," and "use free time to exercise instead of snacking and binge watching" are significantly less popular among low income/status groups than high income/status groups.

I don't think that disproves it at all? Affluent families have decided that family stability isn't too important, but their affluence makes it easy to obtain, in the same way they obtain other unimportant things like fancy dinners or overseas vacations. If Amy's boyfriend from the article were rich enough that he could satisfy all his selfish pursuits while still spending on the family, it sounds like they'd still be together.

Several of the graphics in the article are from the book Coming Apart [1] which actually makes a more complex argument.

Specifically, it says the ruling class no longer publicly supports traditional family structures, despite continuing to follow them for themselves.

Nobody these days would have anything bad to say about single mothers, or unmarried couples. But when you look at the behaviour of the top 20 percent in socioeconomic status? They're all forming married two-parent households.

(The book covers a load of other topics and supports its observations a lot more than my short HN post, naturally)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)

> The idea that the social apex has decided that family instability is unimportant is disproved by the numbers the author themselves shows.

Henderson acknowledges this explicitly. He spends a great deal of time pointing out the hypocrisy of wealthy Americans proclaiming that marriage is outmoded and unnecessary for raising children, yet mostly wait to get married before having children themselves.

Many have not yet squared up to the fact that society itself is an unprofitable boondoggle that requires massive moral radicalization and willingness to participate in odd, polarizing institutions and practices.

We live inside the semi-decayed skeleton of a society built by deeply religious people who believed that society should be built and maintained because that is the moral thing to do. They weren't only motivated by per-capita GDP or the promise of weekends off or the pursuit of variety in breakfast cereals, as neoliberal economists seem to claim. They had deep underlying motivations to create a civilization in which they and their families could flourish and engage in the twin pursuits of culture and commerce.

We are now seeing the third-or-fourth generation that is growing up in an era where economic metrics are cited as the "core fundamentals" of a society; unfortunately, comfort and consumption are not motivating enough factors to drive people to feel loyal and energized to contribute to their civilization. Take away the glory and meaning from the basic acts of living among your peers and you will end up with large swaths of people who do enough to get by, and not much more.

In other words, everyone became a Marxist, at least when it comes to the materialism.

I think you should elaborate on that.

Not sure why the negative votes on this one, one of the only takes that doesn't make me feel insane so far. I'll reword my understanding of it.

Society requires effort and investment that doesn't produce immediate material benefits. Rationalizing everything down to profit and loss encourages people to see the collected effort as a tragedy of the commons. You need to actually want to be part of a society to start, then if enough people join you, you can actually build one!

For what it's worth, the comment score that I can see is oscillating between 0 and 2, so if it's showing greyed out, that may just be an indication that it's a polarizing comment.

I totally agree with your second paragraph.

> Take away the glory and meaning from the basic acts of living among your peers and you will end up with large swaths of people who do enough to get by, and not much more.

This is exactly how I feel. Sure, my life is comfortable, but at the same time it's so small and pointless, which leaves me completely unmotivated. Why do anything if nothing matters.

Oh that. That's easy. Here's what you do for that:

Go to the store and get some loaves of bread, sliced meat and cheese, lettuce and tomato, mustard and mayo. Make sandwiches. Take them to people who do not know where their next meal is coming from and give them to those people.

There is a way out of this slump, but it is difficult. My recommendation is that you spend a period of self-investigation, and then begin to use your moral and aesthetic judgement frequently. This is difficult for many Americans because most of our time up to adulthood is spent in schools, whose major function is to suppress your natural and parent-trained senses of judgement and morality, and instead instill obedience to the directions of various legal and economic authorities:

https://selfdirectededucation.neocities.org/pdf/JTG%20The%20...

What I mean by executing your moral and aesthetic judgement: you need to discover what you think is RIGHT vs. what is WRONG, and what is BEAUTIFUL vs. what is UGLY, and begin to make amends for wrong-ness and ugliness in your community and your social circles by adding right-ness and beauty. It could be as simple as looking at a blank wall in your apartment and thinking "that's UGLY, for the entire course of human history people have decorated their dwellings using their own cultural stylings; what is my culture, and what are its stylings?" and then decorating your apartment, or it could be as complex as (to use another commenter's example) looking at homeless people who don't have anything to eat and thinking "that's WRONG, why are people living on the street with no food, how could this problem be rectified?" and feeding them sandwiches or joining groups attempting to mitigated homelessness. (I personally do not think that individuals bringing meals to homeless and poor people is a good or sustainable practice for society, but it doesn't matter; each person needs to develop their own thoughts and opinions on the matter.)

My overall point is that the chief desire of "capitalists, communists, schools, prisons, politicians, profiteers, thieves, predators, etc." is your apathy, both to the moral practices of your society and to the aesthetic decisions displayed to you. As long as you don't care, they can do whatever they want, because you're not going to get in the way. You need to flex your own opinion and become radicalized in applying your own judgement to the things that you see in society. Never assume that "the experts have it under control" or that nothing matters; in fact, society is made up of individual people, of which you are one, and you need to contribute your judgement and effort to the way that society acts and looks, or else everything will seem "small and pointless", as you say.

You also have to look at much of the impetus behind how long held religious morals were devised.

Millenia of human suffering. Wars. Oppression. Exploitation.

> “Chanel, a white thirty-three-year-old with three children, ages fifteen, nine, and three, broke up with her youngest child’s father just after we met her for the first time. When we ask about him later, she says dismissively, ‘He’s not around no more. I got rid of him…He was only here to sleep—didn’t want to pay no bills, didn’t want to do nothing. When he was here all he did was fight and argue and drink. I had to get rid of [him].’ She purses her lips in disgust as she tells us such men are unworthy of the children they father.”

She had 3 children with that guy. Instead of picking a nice dorky Christian boy, she went after the tingles. I hear so many stories from young mothers about how they had the opportunity to settle down with a wholesome boy who was willing to care for them, but she preferred the bad boy without a job because the sex was just so fucking awesome. And then she gets pregnant and start tricking on the streets. I have no sympathy for such women because they can’t help their monkey branching tendencies. The social media has convinced these girls that it’s ok to play fast and loose with sex, which results in fast and loose choices and long-term devastating social consequences. As much as men need to be taught, women need to be taught to lower their physical standards. Because the hot gangster guy who gets “play” is hardly going to settle. Sure the acne-ridden nerd is ugly, but he’ll be there for you through thick and thin.

This is an insane level of projection

While I disagree with most od the unsavory stuff said above, I do think there's a nugget of truth in the premise. If you pick a man because he's wearing expensive sneakers you really can't be surprised when he continues to spend his money on expensive sneakers.

Sounds like she had at least two different fathers to her children, maybe 3.

This is poverty creating behavior. She made an enormous mistake bearing a child to not one, but two deadbeats, but she doesn’t frame it as her error.

Absolutely nothing you said about her is based on any facts or analysis in that article. Don't fall into incel behavior here with projections and unfounded assumptions spouting them off as fact. Do better.

The reason women don't pick the "nice dorky Christian boy", is because of comments like this. Nice Guys turn everybody off.

Visit r/exchristian to find out why the "nice Christian" guys aren't always a great catch. I say this as someone who was a "nice Christian" guy.

And when men sleep around they are just sowing their wild oats. Yet when women do it, it's some kind of unnatural moral failure.

Everyone should be free to explore their own sexuality, without judgement, and with robust education and tools to control their own reproduction.

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