Tag Archives: Eat the Young

Why Are Children So Expensive?

I wrote this a few months back, but never got around to posting it. Scott’s post on wage stagnation reminded me to post it, because I discuss some of the same things here, while he ignored what I think is the most obvious cause of wage stagnation.

Someone posted on twitter, asking why kids became expensive. I answered mostly about the spiritual reasons: the unwillingness to sacrifice. And that’s true; kids are affordable, IF you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

However, as Nick B Steves has said, ordinary virtue should not require heroic effort. You can have many kids if you’re willing to make extraordinary effort to do so, but any sane and healthy society should make it relatively easy to have many kids, ours does not. So,I’m going to show why kids are so expensive.

****

Wages

The first reason is wages. Inflation-wise wages have been stagnant since about the 70s. Despite massive increases in productivity, people are not making more real money.

Wages are determined by where the demand for labour and the supply of labour meet: how many jobs are there and how many people need jobs. This is elementary economics, but I’m going to make it clear here, because when it comes to discussing labour supply and demand, I notice people tend to make self-serving analyses as if basic economic principles change when it comes to labour, so I want to make it clear:

The more jobs that need to be filled, the higher the demand for labour, so this pushes wages up. If the jobs to be filled decreases, demand for labour decreases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force increases, labour supply increases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force decreases, labour supply decreases, pushing wages up.

Over the past 60 years or so, there have been multiple major trends both increasing the labour supply and decreasing labour demand.

The biggest trend is feminism. Feminism pushed women into the workforce which (more or less) doubled the labour force over a period a few decades. This pushed wages down hard.

The second major trend is immigration. Since the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, opening immigration up, 59 million immigrants (as of 2015) have arrived in the US. The US population in 1965 was 194 million, in 2015, it was 321 million, for a total growth of 127 million. 46% of US population growth since 1965 has been from immigration.

That is a unnaturally massive growth in the labour supply, which has had a massive downward pressure on wages.

I will note here, that keeping wages low has been a near explicit part of the arguments for immigration. “Labour shortage” is synonymous with “wage shortage”; when employers argue that there are not enough workers, what is really being said, is they are not paying enough to attract workers. “Jobs Americans won’t do” is synonymous with “Jobs Americans won’t do unless paid more than currently offered”.

To make matters worse, the 1965 INA opened up immigration from third world countries, where wages were already naturally low. So labourers being imported into America would be willing to work for much below what an American would accept as reasonable, increasing the downward pressure on wages.

While these two trends where increasing labour supply, other trends were decreasing labour demand. Particularly off-shoring and mechanization.

Off-shoring moved industry from high-wage America to low-wage third-world countries, while mechanization has replaced human workers with machines. Both of these have had large depressive effects on labour demand, and therefore wages, particularly in non-service, low-skill occupations, which are the easiest jobs to both automate and move.

You can’t afford children, because you’re not getting paid decent wages because capital has systematically forced you into competition with poor third-world labour, imported labour, and your wife over jobs, forcing wages down.

****

Housing Costs

Housing costs are the single biggest expense (rivaled only by taxes) to your average person, and housing costs have exploded.

In 1960, the median house price was $58,000 (in 2000$). In 2000, the median house price was $119,600. In 2015, the median house price was $294,200 (in 2015$), which comes to $213,700 in 2000$.

In 55 years, housing prices have almost quadrupled, while wages have stagnated.

One of the major reasons is the increase in housing size. Since 1975, housing size has doubled. But that does not explain a quadrupling in housing costs. It would at best explain a doubling, but should be less than doubling because new marginal square footage should theoretically be cheaper due to the fixed costs in a home.

Another major drivers of house pricing includes increased demand from the fracturing of the family. In an intact nuclear family, two parents and their children share 1 house (possibly with a grandparent or two). In a divorced family, two parents and their children share 2 houses. An unmarried man and an unmarried woman have 2 houses (roommates amerloriate this to an extent). A single mother with children and her baby daddy have 2 houses. Etc. Throw on top of this the shift from multi-generational homes, and the fracturing of the family and the turn away from marraige has had a large, but, AFAIK, unmeasured effect on home prices (this would make a good study proposal for any economists out there).

Another major driver is immigration. 59 million people needing housing is a huge upward driver of housing demand and therefore housing prices.

A third major driver is schooling and safety. “Good schools” is a major driver of house prices and “safe neighbourhoods” because most parents, understandably, want their kids to get a good education and to be able to live without worry they’ll won’t become involved with or victims of drugs, gangs, and crime. Everybody is also aware that “good schools” and “safe neighbourhoods” are politically-correct codes words for schools and neighbourhoods without poor minorities who statistically make schools bad and neighbourhoods unsafe.

Because federal laws make discrimination in housing on any basis but price illegal, the only way to keep schools good and neighbourhoods safe is to discriminate on price. This puts a huge upward pressure on price, as people move to high price neighbourhoods to escape poor minorities (who may then follow them, because they too want good schools and safe neighbourhoods, forcing the process to repeat, escalating prices even higher).

Because of this, safe, affordable housing is functionally illegal in American cities and prices ever increase.

****

Two Income Trap and Child Care

The increased upward pressure on housing prices has the side effect of forcing more families into the two income trap, so they can afford a good house.

This has a variety of effects that increase costs, making children expensive.

Child care is the largest of these. As I’ve explained before, affordable child care is impossible, so child care will immediately eat up a significant portion the second income. Child care by itself, is a major factor of why children are so expensive.

A second income usually requires a second vehicle (more on this below), another major fixed expense. A stay-at-home parent has time to cook home made meals, mends clothes, and participate in other cost-saving activities; a dual income household will eat out more often, purchase more expensive pre-made food, have to replace clothes, etc.

The two income trap imposes a number of large extra costs on families and removes many cost-savings that an at-home parent allows.

****

Taxes

I was going to write about the increasing tax burden here, but I couldn’t find much much data on the overall US tax burden; most of it was just federal tax rates, and calculating overall tax burden for the average middle class person over time is much more effort than I’m willing to put in to a blog post.

But according to this 2012 NYT article, the overall tax burden has been declining somewhat, except for low-income people, who continue to pay minimal taxes.

So we’ll say increasing taxes probably aren’t particularly responsible for kids costing too much.

****

Vehicles

Among average people, vehicles are second largest major fixed expense after housing, and they have generally gotten more expensive over time, primarily as more families have moved to being two car households and gas has gotten more expensive.

This site compared a few classic cars and all have increased by half to almost doubling since 1965 (inflation-adjusted). But these are classics and so might no be applicable.

According to Wiki, the Chevrolet Impalla was the best-selling full-size car in 1965 and is still the best-selling today, so we’ll use this and assume other similar cars are competitively priced. In 1965, a 4-door V-8 sedan Impala was 2,779, which comes to $20,910.17 in 2015$. The base price of a new Impala in 2015 was $27,700. An increase of about a third.

But large families need more than five seats. The 1965 Impala 9-passenger station wagon was $3,073, $23,122.33 in 2015$, the 6-passenger was $22,347.32. You generally can’t buy station wagons today, because US regulations classified them as cars, making them uneconomic to produce under US fuel standards, which was a major regulatory backfire for environmentalists, as families switched to minivans and SUVs, which were much worse on fuel. The best-selling SUV in 2015 was the Ford Escape, which started at $24,000, but only can seat 5 passenger. The best-selling minivan, is the Dodge Grand Caravan, it seats 7 passengers, and started at $22,000. The Chevy Express was the cheapest 9+-passenger I found on a site, and it starts at $29,000 for the cargo version, so probably just a bit more for a passenger vehicle.

So, it looks like 3-4 child family vehicles are significantly more expensive to buy, as are larger 8+ child family vehicles, but, contrary to my expectations, the large 5-7 child families are about the same.

Except that the SUV’s and vans cost a lot more in fuel and as mentioned above, 2-income families now almost always need 2 vehicles.

Gasoline costs have increased: with the exception of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises (when prices hit $3/gallon, post-WW2 gas prices generally stayed between $1.50-$2/gallon (in 2015$). Since 2000, gas prices have ranged between $2.50-$3.80 per gallon. Since 2006, gas prices have generally been higher than the $3/gallon they were at the peak of the oil crises. During this time gasoline usage has also been increasing, likely largely due to increasing suburbanization.

Another hidden cost: older vehicles were generally easier to repair and maintain at home, but the increased inclusion of electronics in vehicles, makes it increasingly difficult to repair without very expensive specialized electronic equipment, necessitating an increasing reliance on professionals for maintenance and repair, adding significant cost.

So, the need for two vehicles due to the two income trap has increased the cost of vehicles significantly for your average family, while vehicles themselves have become moderately more expensive. The cost of gasoline has increased significantly while consumption has increased.

****

Food

Food is generally the fourth biggest cost to families after housing, taxes, and vehicles. The average American spends less on food, as a percentage of income, then they used to. Hoever, good expenditures have stopped declining and been flat over the last 15-20 years.

However, this is deceptive, if you look at average household size since 1960, it mirrors average household size relatively closely. The levelling off of food costs as income share matches the levelling off of household size. This suggests food costs have been mostly constant per person, but less kids means less spending on food.

In a time of major productivity gains and stagnant wages, food costs have not really shrunk.

A major cause of this is the increase in eating out. It costs more to eat pre-made food than it does to make your own food. The average American now spends about 43% of their food budget on eating out. As well, when eating in, they are more likely to buy expensive pre-made meals than making their own. All this increases food bills.

The primary cause of this increase in eating out and in eating pre-made foods, is the two-income trap. When one parent was at home, they had sufficient time and energy to create homemade food, saving money. When both parents work, food preparation time becomes a luxury often foregone due to a lack of time and motivation.

In addition, to eating out costing more, eating out itself has increased in cost.

In economics, there’s an informal purchasing power parity index known as the Big Mac Index, that can roughly how close inflation rates measure actualy close consumer price data.

In 1968, when it first came out, a Big Mac cost $0.49, $3.34 in 2015$. In 1986, the first year of the Big Mac Index, it cost $1.60, $3.46 in 2015$. In 2000, $2.51, or $3.45 in 2015$. In 2015, the most recent year the BMI measured, it cost $4.79.

The cost of a Big Mac stayed relatively even until sometime after 2000. Since then there has been a ~40% increase in the cost of a Big Mac beyond inflation. My anecdotal experience in Canada and basic market competitiveness theory, suggests that this growth is probably true across eating out on average.

So eating out, which is 40% of your food bill, is now 40% more expensive than it used to be.

I’ll also note here, that the rapid growth of Big Mac costs past inflation, suggests that inflation has been severely underestimated, in which case, everything I’ve posted is much worse than the numbers suggest. I’ve always been skeptical of CPI, but a 40% extra increase over 15 years in something as basic and omnipresent as a Big Mac heightens my doubts.

Food costs haven’t really increased, but they haven’t particularly decreased either.

****

Education

Saving for college is a major expense for many middle-class families. Lots of ink has already been spilled over this, so I’m not going to repeat much. College has been increasing in price much faster than wages. 8 times as much according to this article.

A lot of young people start off with a lot of college debt. The average student loan borrower has $37k in debt upon graduation. That’s a lot of money, the equivalent of a down payment on a house. Instead of buying a house and accumulating capital, they’re paying off usury.

And they’re not really getting anything of increased value for this debt. The money is being burned in cost disease and their job prospects are worse than those of college grads decades ago.

****

Consumer Debt

Now, one of the major destroyers of people is usury. The average millennial has $42,000 in debt, the plurality of which is credit card debt. The average American is $33,000 in debt. I’ve already written about usury (and inflation) before, but debt and debt payments are major

Usury takes advantage of the average person who is not mentally equipped to fully understand the implications of debt and compounding interest. It shackles them in debt bondage. The average American spends $280k over their lifetime just on interest. The average person with credit card debt pays $1.1k in interest each year.

Household debt has increase from 31% of income in 1951 to about 100% now (it was up to 120% during the housing boom). All this debt means increased interest payments to banks.

Usury is strangling the average household, particularly the young.

****

Communication Technology

This is a simple one, but the average American user spends $47/month on mobile phones and $132 on cable and internet. That’s almost ~$180/month. When I was growing up, cable was rare and internet and mobiles practically non-existent. And this is just monthly bills, not including the purchase of HD TV’s mobile phones, and computers. This is a huge added expense most families take on.

****

Personal Choice

Finally, personal choice is why you can’t afford children. This is what my tweets harped on. People can’t afford children, because they are unwilling to sacrifice for them.

People eat out instead of making meals at home (driven by the two-income trap). People buy larger houses than they should (driven by “safe schools” and the two-income trap). People by two cars (driven by the two-income trap) and new cars. People go into consumer debt. People take useless degrees. People buy luxuries.

There are major structural issues making children expensive, which I’ve outlined above, but on the individual level, you can probably afford children if you are willing to sacrifice. People have been raised and become accustomed to luxuries they can’t afford (hence the massive amount of consumer debt most have). This may be due to structural issues, but on an individual level you can probably afford kids if you sacrifice.

Don’t go into debt for a useless degree; take trades or get a useful degree. If one of the parents stays home and engages in traditional money-saving practices (such as home-cooking and coupon-clipping), the family can avoid buying a second vehicle and paying child care costs. This will require buying a smaller house, children may have to share rooms and you may have minimal private space. Luxuries in entertainment and food may need be cut back. Cable cut. Home internet forgone for mobile only, or vice versa. It may require moving to a lower cost county or state.

Your grandparents raised 6 kids in a small 3-bedroom house with no TV, 1 car, minimal entertainment or luxuries, home-cooked meals, and penny-pinching. You can too if you will it enough and are willing to sacrifice for it.

****

The reason you can’t afford children is because wages stagnated while costs increased across the board.

Wages have been destroyed by a rapidly expanding labour pool due to immigration and feminism. At the same time, housing costs skyrocketed due to the two-income trap, a quest for safe schools and neighbourhoods, rapidly and artificially expanding population, and family breakdown. The two-income trap necessitated two vehicles, which along with gas greatly increased transportation costs.

Education has trapped the young in debt, while general usury eats people alive and prevents them from accumulating capital.

Finally, you’ve been raised to be accommodated to a lifestyle and luxuries you can’t afford and which you finance with debt.

On a personal level, you can overcome this and have children by making major sacrifices. On a societal level, it is insane and unhealthy to require the average person to make inordinate sacrifices just to be able to afford children. Any decent and sane society will do what it can to make raising a family comfortably affordable to most people.

Our society has been designed to destroy your ability to have children without either being rich or taking on massive usurious debt and making inordinate sacrifices.

****

Post-Script: I am not blaming immigrants for immigration, minorities for integration, or women for feminism. All of these are structural issues basically forced upon an unwilling populace by government and capital. Immigrants, minorities, and women followed, as would be expected, the incentives given them, and I generally don’t fault people for following incentives unless it’s a heinous evil, which none of the individual actions taken under this incentive structure would be. In fact, minorities and women probably suffered the most under this regime. Immigrants generally benefited, but being foreigners had minimal hand in the original changes in the 1960s.

The ones at fault are government and capital who imposed a destructive economic incentive structure upon society so they could destroy wages and increase consumption to feed their greed and lust for power. They are the ones who caused this and the ones responsible for why you can’t afford children.

Make sure you aim the blame properly.

Why Young People Leave the Church

Heartiste has posted a chart of where couples meet their spouses and romantic partners:

Follow the yellow line, it represents the church. In 1940, the church was the third likeliest method of meeting your spouse, after family and friends. Now it is the lowest, practically non-existent, while family is the second lowest.

Some of this could possibly be chalked up to declining church attendence rates, especially among the young, but, church attendence has remained near 40% since 1940.

Church leaders are always asking why young people leave the church. The first graph is all that needs to be said.

Young people are looking to find love. This is natural, this is healthy. If they can not find love in the church, they will find it elsewhere.

The church should be supporting young people in finding love, so healthy, productive marriages will result. Instead, the church has entirely abandoned its responsbility to promote family formation, and has left the process to peers, clubs, and online dating.

Why is the church letting this happen? Why is the church forcing their young people to rely on friends, the club, and online dating to find a family? Are godly marriages going to result from restaurants and bars? Are peers the best means of finding a marriage partner?

If young Christians are forced to look elsewhere to find love and marriage, they will be enticed by the secular world. If a man can’t get a wife at church, that cute non-Christian smiling at him at work may have a stronger pull than his developing faith. If a young woman isn’t being courted at church, resisting the temptation of the attention of dozens of men at the club will be difficult.

If the church doesn’t capture its young people through marriage and love, the secular world will through sex and pleasure, and the church will continue to collapse.

Is the church really going to allow the depersonalized meat market that is online dating to be the most effective way to find a Christian spouse?

Of course, church’s aren’t entirely to blame: where are the parents? Look at that blue line? Why has this generation completely abandoned their children to fend for themselves?

If you want to see the church renewed, if you don’t want your young people to continue abandoning the church, fix this. Bring your young people together and get them married. Don’t abandon them to their own devices and allow the secular world to devour them.

****

Here’s some ideas for churches of where to start fix this:

1) Christian parents need to start talking with other Christian parents and start meeting with each other as families. Bring your children together in casual situations so they can get to know each other.

2) Christian families and churches should work on positive courtship. Courtship should be about bringing compatible Christian young men and young women together. It should not be a negative sorting mechanism to prevent young men from courting young women.

3) Churches need to create a culture where going for casual first dates are not a big deal. Being serious about finding a spouse does not mean that every interaction must be deathly serious. Church culture should accept that early interactions can be both and purposeful; casual dates should not be treated as major decision points equal to buying a wedding ring, because how many men are going to court enough girls to find the right one when young when a date is treated as the equivalent of an engagement.

4) Similarly, casual interactions should not be held against men or women. Men who ask a lot of women in their church out for casual dates for the purposes of getting to know each other, should not be worried about being shamed as players, likewise, women who accept many such casual dates should not be shamed as sluts. (For both 3 & 4, this, obviously, does not mean tge acceptance of casual sex).

5) Don’t discourage young dating, encourage it. There needs to be an elimination of ‘sex is bad’ talks in youth groups, more ‘sex is good, get married as soon as possible so you can have it’. Instead of discouraging dating, start getting your teenagers to take it seriously and setting them up together. If the church doesn’t start getting young people together in marriage, the secular world will bring them together in fornication. In the war between young hormones and chastity, Paul was exceedingly clear on what is to be done. Modern teachings on abstinence need to be destroyed as the near-satanism they are and replaced with the wholesome promotion of marriage. Two teenagers marrying in the church and starting a family should be celebrated as a triumph of the church, then young couples should be supported by the church as they set up their family lives.

6) Large churches should be running regular, casual events for their young adults (including teenagers) so they can get to know each other and pair off. Small churches should be networking together with other churches to create regular casual events so young adults can meet each other and pair off.

Broken Identity

At this point you’re probably aware of the alphabet soup that sexual identity has become. LGBT has been replaced by LGBTQIA, while others are rolling in even deeper distinction, such as the unintentionally hilarious acronym, LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM being used by Wesleyan University. Facebook has 56 different gender identity options, but even FB’s heroic attempts at inclusivity doesn’t include an array of other identities covering every possible combination of sexuality possible and ignores that special magic known as otherkin. Then of course there’s an slew of other identities that aren’t even sexual, (I think), such transable, transfat, and the hilarious transnigger.

And you thought I was joking.

 

Certain segments of young people tend to take these identities and run with them for all they are worth. Most of us have come across an insane Tumblr profile of someone listing off a half-dozen different identities to which they hold and demanding people address them by the ‘proper’ pronouns. Here’s a sample list of some of them, and, if the rabbit-hole really interests you, here’s a guide to creating your own personalized pronoun.

It is easy to laugh at all this craziness, but this trend of extreme self-identification points to something much deeper than a few troubled individuals. This letter to Ask Amy illustrates nicely:

However, I was never very open about my sexual orientation. I felt like I always knew, but at the same time I didn’t know how to figure it out.

When I was 17 I went to a party; there was a girl there I liked, but she came with a guy. At some point, she came over and just started kissing me and it was like magic. Then the guy came over. It turns out she wasn’t interested in me, but was doing something he had talked her into.

That was my only experience with another woman — but I know I’m bisexual. I came out at school to some friends, but no one took it seriously. I even came out to my family — but my mom is the only one that took it seriously.

I have been in a relationship now with a man for a year and a half. I love him, but I feel like a part of me is missing. Turning 20 is a wake-up for me. I’m figuring out what I want to do in my life (and friends are getting married). The guy I’m with takes my confession of being bi as, “You’re just bi-curious.”

I’m thinking about asking if we could take a break so that I can try and find myself, but I’m terrified that if I do the door will close entirely. Should I “come out” again and hope I’ll be taken seriously and that he’ll support me?

Here’s a girl whose sole lesbian experience is a single meaningless kiss at a party and who’s in a serious relationship with a man, but still feels compelled to identify as bisexual, even to the point of destroying her relationship to experiment. The key to the whole issue is that she feels a part of her is missing and she wants her identity taken seriously.

A key need of man is identity. His identity informs him as to who he is, but man is a social animal, so who he is almost entirely a function of his social relations. He cannot create his identity in isolation. Once developed, his identity exists as a spiritual sense of place telling him where he belongs in the world and how he relates with the people around them.

A key part of growing up is developing this identity, finding out who you are. A mature adult has discovered and established his identity; he might further develop, refine, or even alter his identity, but he has a secure sense of his place in the world.  (There is a reason listening to 40-year-olds talk about finding themselves is disgusting, it is an aberrant and unhealthy infantalization of themselves).

The proper time for developing this identity is early adulthood, what we now call adolescence. A child’s identity, his spiritual sense of place, is not something that really exists as independent of his parents, he is basically a cypher of his parents. It is early adulthood where his he really begins to form his own independent identity.

In a healthy society, identity formation is a relatively straightforward process. You belong to you family, you adopt the faith, ideology, and history of your thede, to a greater or lesser extent, you become economically productive and contribute to society, you find a spouse get married and have children, you make a few friends, involve yourself in the community, and adopt a leisure activity or two along the way. Your particular quirks, skills, and deficiencies naturally grow out of this process.

It is fairly easy to have a sense of place when you can tell yourself “I am John Yeoman, son of Jack Yeoman, an Englishman of the County of Smallshire. We Yeoman’s have been Anglicans attending Smallshire Church for 5 generations. I am a farmer who works the land my fathers have for more generations than can be counted. I am husband of Jane Yeoman and father of 4 children. At the pub on Fridays, where I am known for losing at cards, I play the fiddle and retell stories about our childhood pranks on Mr. Cooper with my childhood friends.”

That sort of identity writes itself and grows naturally. When you are part of a culture, do things for others, and are socially connected to the community around you, your identity forms on its own and you learn who you are organically. A spiritual sense of place just happens.

In our modern society though, this process doesn’t happen. Think of your average “adolescent”. At the time when a person should be developing his identity, he is stuck in a public school doing nothing productive to anyone else, while learning multiculturalism, how evil his country and people have been to oppressed minorities. He lives with his family in a neighbourhood he moved to just a few years ago when his parents upgraded their house. His family, if he is lucky, consists of an intact nuclear family, maybe a cousin or two, and the occasional visit from his grandparents, if he is not, he lives in a broken home with a single mother, maybe a step-father. He probably has some friends, most of which he will never see again after high school. He probably doesn’t go to church or participate in any social activities with anybody who is not also an adolescent. He is definitely not married and any relations with the opposite sex he has had has assuredly been temporary and known to be so beforehand. Maybe he has a hobby or a sport or two, maybe he doesn’t.

So what is he supposed to base his identity upon? His disconnected family? His Christmas-evening only religion? His oppressive country? His lack of culture (called multiculturalism)? His grades? His sport? It’s all kind of lacking isn’t it?

Look a the letter writer above? She’s 20, she’s been a biological adult for 6-8 years now and she’s just now thinking of “finding herself” possibly by destroying the one thing she has that will let her actually find an identity. What has she accomplished that she can base her identity? What place has she found in her community? Has she been economically productive? Maybe a few part-time jobs. Does she have a family of her own? Just a boyfriend she’s considering leaving. She needs an identity, something that defines her in relation to the world around her, and will make the world take her seriously (ie. will give her a spiritual sense of place). Yet she doesn’t have anything, and it’s not really through any fault of her own.

This is the allure of these weird identities young people have taken too adopting. They do not have the experiences, productivity, community, or social relations to create true identities, so they have to start making up their own. Creating identities usually requires hard work though; you can not become a violinist without practicing or a volunteer without volunteering.

But if you take and magnify a personal quirk, you can easily create a new identity. Like to emotionally bond to people before having sex? You’re a demisexual. Have a low libido? You’re asexual. Like White Fang and think wolves are cool? You’re a wolfkin.

This extend beyond just the weird sexual deviancies though. How many young moderns base their sense of identity on other hedonic pleasures? How many young people have their music consumption as their main identity? How many young people have gamer as one of their main identities? How many young people are identified through their drug use? Their fashion sense? Their sexual conquests? Their television tastes?

Doing these activities may or may not be particularly wrong, but using such as a primary identity indicates something is broken somewhere. Something is missing in their development when a young adult’s primary identity come through shallow pleasures rather than through something true and real.

But this goes beyond just young adults, even our adults are constantly “finding themselves.” Stable social relations, productive economic work, community involvement, friendships, family, all are declining. People are becoming more isolated from each other and more alienated from their work. They need to find something to fill this gap.

This is why a homosexual can’t just be a guy who privately sodomizes other men, he must be out of the closet displaying his pride. He has no other identities to hold onto, for he has no deep social relationships and no spiritual sense of place, so he has to make an identity out of where he enjoys sticking his penis. This is the true horror of the homosexual movement, the abolition of the self until only your identity is your penis.

This is the modern world, a place where people are so empty, their identities so broken, that it has become mainstream for people to base their identities on, to relate to the world through, their hedonic tastes. A healthy society is one where identity creation is a natural process that flows organically from the process of growing up. A person should be able to naturally find and fill productive and healthy social roles, so he can find a spiritual sense of place, so he can belong.

Guest Post From Europa: Demographic Figures

Today’s post are some talks and demographic figures compiled by a European reader who wishes to remain anonymous. I haven’t watched the videos, so I can’t guarantee their content.

Remember, we are willing to accept guest posts as long as they are readable, on-topic, and provide some value.

UN figures 2010 European women 1.5
Greece 1.4,
Spain 1.4,
Portugal, 1.3,
Italy 1.3,
Germany 1.3
Ireland 2.1
Europeans over 65 up to 2030 up 40%
Nothing changes by 2040 2 workers per retiree

1900 25% World population in Europe
2050 7%
29 countries, including 12 EU countries Fertility Rate below Replacement Level
Germany 82m – 71m
By 2050 number of 16 – 64 year olds in Europe declined 20%
By 2050 EU Short of 35m workers
Same period South Asia workforce up 50%
Same period Central Africa workforce tripled.
At present there are more people over 65 than under 16 in the UK.
In the EU now 4 workers per pensioner.
By 2050 2 workers per pensioner.
In the US 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day and Social Security has an $80 BILLION deficit.
Germany 80m today four generations 10m.
Scotland extinct within 5 generations.
In Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore the birth rate is falling towards 1.0 meaning a 50% population fall per generation. Not even the Black Death had such a catastrophic impact.
Germany 1.41 children per woman
USA 2.06,
Sweden 1.67,
Spain 1.48,
In the USA there will be more people by 2050 over 80 that under 15.
There are more pets, especially dogs, than children in Japan.
Lee Kwan Yew Singapore elder statesman, unless things change there will be no more original citizens.
Japan current trends Government estimates population 2012 121m today 48m 2112.
60 years of age +
Japan 42%
Germany 38%
These figures assume that Japan and Germany’s birth rate will increase.
Russian population decline.

143m today 2030 10% less

EU today & 2050 750m

Spain today 46m 2050 48m through immigration
Italy today 61m 2050 62m through immigration

Germany today 82m 2025 79m
Minus 0.02% Growth Rate
Half the population 44 or younger
1.4 children per woman
21% over 65
Contraceptive use 66%
Life Expectancy 80

Fertility has declined by 50% last 50 years.

Over 90 countries have sub-replacement fertility rates.

During the lifetime of today’s young people the World’s population will start to decline.

The US is the ONLY developed country with a healthy fertility rate.
UN Population office.
Latvia 1.3
Romania 1.3
Andorra 2.13
Spain 1.3
Lithuania 1.3,
Italy 1.3,
Hungary 1.3,
San Marino 2.13
Bosnia 1.3
Germany 1.3,
Russia 1.3,
Japan 1.3,
Armenia 1.3,
Croatia 1.3,
Singapore 1.4,
Estonia 1.4
Austria 1.4
Lichtenstein 1.4
Switzerland 1.4
Portugal 1.5
Georgia 1.5
Czech Republic 1.2
Slovakia 1.2
Slovenia 1.2
Republic of Korea 1.2
Moldova 1.2
Bulgaria 1.2
Belarus 1.2
Greece 1.3
Poland 1.3

In Russia 140 deaths for 100 births
Russia today 145M 2045 70M

Latvia more deaths than births 1989 – 2002 13% population decrease.

Within a generation this situation will unfold throughout Europe.

Since 1970 immigrants and their children have prevented decline in the US population. By 2040 the world population, according to one UN estimate, will start to decline.

World population around 2065 will peak and then start to decline.

The US workforce will remain stagnant over the next two decades.

The EU work force will decline after 2040 indefinitely, as far as demography can see.

The number of Europeans 30 – 40 will decline significantly, by 15% – 20% possibly, in the coming decades.

By 2050 every region of the World will have a significantly higher proportion of older people.

US 3 workers per retiree today by 2030 2 workers per retiree.

As of 2010 the working age population of all the rich countries combined has already started to shrink, see birth rates.
1.78 Norway,
1.74 Finland
1.74 Denmark,
1.68 Holland.

Since 1990 60% of US population growth has come from immigrants and their children. This figure is 80% in Europe.

Population Loss by 2050

Russia 57m 40%
Germany 32.5M 40%
Italy 26.5m 46%
Ukraine 22m 48%
Spain 21m 46%
Poland 18.5m 46%
UK 14m 25%
Czech Republic 5m 50%
Belarus 4.8m 50%
Austria 4m 41%
Serbia 3m 41%
Switzerland 2.9m 38%
Bosnia 2.3m 50%
Lithuania 1.8m 50%

Average 611 divide 14 = 44%

Mexico 6.8 children per woman 1970 and 2.3 today.

Teenagers Don’t Exist

Recently the topic of teenagers, and how awful they are, came up in a Twitter conversation I involved myself in. While I’ve mentioned the topic in the past, I thought I’d write a bit more on them here.

Adolescence is a modern invention/perversion. Until about the 1800s or so, a person of about the age 13 was considered an adult. Since about that time, better nutrition has led to puberty occurring earlier (in the 1800s it occurred at about 15-16, it now occurs at about 12-13), but at the same time independence has also decreased. A teenager is a biological adult. (Mentally, a person continues maturing until sometime in their mid-20s).

The problem of rebellious or destructive teenagers is not a fault of the teenagers, but rather a fault of society. A teenager is an adult being treated as a child. A 14-year-old should be learning independence and self-sufficiency by going out into the world on his own (on an apprenticeship, to college, to his own shack on the family farm, etc.) and should be looking for a wife shortly therefore after. Instead, in our modern world teenagers live under the dominion of their parents as a child.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24 ESV)

Of course teenagers rebel, any adult treated as child will rebel against being infantilized. They lash out because they know at some level that their parents having dominion over them is wrong, because an adult still under their parents is against the natural order. It is not teenagers that are the problem, it is the parents and the society.

Now of course, teenagers are not always going to make the best decisions because they are new at being adults and are learning the basics of adulthood, but in our current order, instead of learning about adulthood at age 15 so they are responsible adults by their 20s, people are now making the same failings in their early-20s and sometimes even their late-20s/early-30s, so your average person is not a responsible adult until their 30s.

Despite this, most modern teenagers would probably break is left on their own. This is, again, not the fault of the teenagers, but most children nowadays are so thoroughly over-protected and over-controlled by their parents and infantilized by the school system that they have never been learning the kinds of independence a healthy adult needs.

Children nowadays are being raised to learn a horrible combination of lack of freedom and lack of discipline. A child learning both will be the most self-actualized and most successful. A child with freedom but no discipline will generally pick up some level of discipline through trial and error, and a child of of discipline but no freedom will usually be able to survive although possibly not thrive, but one with neither will drown.

Ideally, we should start training our children to become adults when they should do so, in their mid-teens.

****

This is not going to happen on a society wide scale because infantalized adults are useful for the long march.

Adolescence gives the public school system an extra 4-6 years (8-12 extra if he goes to university) to condition a person to the docility and obedience necessary to get a man to be willing to work in a cubicle or factory for 3-4 decades of his life. It conditions a man to accept schooling and academics as being the primary measures of worth, so that he is willing to feed his mind, time, and money into the progressive college system. It prevents early family formation and helps keep the squeeze on the family so the state can continue to interject itself. It conditions dependence and a slave mentality in a man so he is more likely to see dependence on the state as normal. Adolescence is just another case of how its all related; the long march continues.

Repost: Tuition Bubble

Don’t have a new post for you today, so here’s a repost from the early days.

Here’s the New York Times running only a bit behind in reporting on the tuition bubble. I thought this would be a decent time to weigh in on the issue.

the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000

To be honest, this is not that bad. $23k is a lot, but livable, even 54k is not insurmountable, but for the 3%, $100k is a serious commitment. In some areas equivalent to a mortgage on a starter home.

The problem though, is that these are ok only if there is employment for those taking the loans. The NYT doesn’t cover this in this article, but the real problem is half of these people graduating are not going to have jobs or will be underemployed.

$23k in debt is doable if you make $40k a year, even $120k ($900/month according to the article) is doable if you make $60k a year coming out of university and live frugally for a few years.

But, if you are unemployed or working part-time as a barrista, there is no way to keep payments up on much more than a few thousand dollars worth of debt and still be able to advance in life.

****

The NYT misses that the tuition bubble is not a bubble because tuition costs are high; an expensive degree can be an excellent investment for both the lender and borrower if it increases future earnings.

The whole article is off-base as high tuition costs are irrelevant if the economic benefits of the degree match or exceed the cost of the degree.

The tuition bubble is a bubble because a lot of these degrees are worthless.

So why are they worthless? Part of it is simply the transition to post-scarcity, even highly educated and skilled people may simply be replaced by machines. Some of it is because these degrees teach no useful skills, such as Master of Puppetry, an awesome album but a crappy degree. But there is another, even more fundamental, problem that the NYT ignores almost completely.

****

The main problem is touched upon later on in the piece, but only very obliquely:

the main job of the admissions staff, after all, is to admit students

An off-hand reference in the second half of a sentence at the bottom of a paragraph is all the NYT devotes to the  crux of the tuition bubble.

****

Huh? Isn’t admissions staff’s job to admit students?

No, the admissions staff’s job is to screen out students for whom university (or college) is not appropriate.

****

Doesn’t admissions already do this?

No. It doesn’t. 68% of high school graduates go to college.

Thank about that for a second.

The average graduate is going to college

Remember back to your high school graduation; think about your average classmate.

The guy who wasn’t particularly bright or particularly stupid.

Do you think he would benefit from spending 4 years learning political theory or reading Rousseau?

Do you think it would benefit anyone else that he “learned” this?

****

The evidence says he doesn’t.

One-third of those entering college drop-out.

They pay the expense of a couple years of college and do not even get the dubious benefits of a degree.

The college system is taking advantage of these people who shouldn’t be in college.

****

One-third of college students are dropping out, at the same time, grade inflation is running rampant.

College is becoming increasingly easy, yet still a third of students still can’t hack it.

The admissions people are failing their job. One-third of people entering university are not capable of completing even the dumbed-down modern university curriculum.

Think about how many more would not be capable of completing college if standards were similar to those 50 years ago.

****

Look at this post from Adacious Epigone on IQ by intended major from a few years ago.

Look at education, public admin, business, psychology, legal professions, health professionals, etc.

The average incoming student for all of these is only around average intelligence. About half of them are of below average intelligence.

This is why there is a tuition bubble.

****

It used to be that a college degree meant you were a cut above the rest; that you were a competent, intelligent individual.

Now all a college degree shows is that you are able to stomach a university’s bullshit for a few years and are not a complete dullard.

That’s why your degree is worthless.

It doesn’t signal you’re a superior intellect with a strong knowledge of your specialty.

All it shows is that you’re not completely incompetent and are able to parrot BS back to the BS’ers. How much is not being completely incompetent worth to an employer?

Even a high GPA doesn’t mean much. With grade inflation everybody’s GPA is fairly high, how can an employer trust that you actually earned yours?

****

As an aside, look at public admin and social services: 96.3.

Do you want to know one reason why your government doesn’t work very well? The people in public admin are being educated to run the government. Do not think that these are not going to be the front-line clerks at the DMV, or even their supervisors; these are actually the people who are going to university to learn how to create public policy. They are the ones who will be creating government policy and regulations that will control your life.

Most of them are of  below average intelligence.

Think about that for a minute. Please don’t weep.

Of course, the average business major is not much better, barely scraping by at 101. 2.

And we wonder why the US economy is stagnating?

Teachers are at 99.3. Half of all teachers are of below average intelligence. Here’s where you can start weeping for the future.

Your kid is likely being taught by someone of average or below average intelligence.

If you’re reading a post about the economics of post-secondary education on a blog for leisure (like say, this post you’re reading right now), it’s highly likely the large majority of these teachers, bureaucrats, and businessmen running things and teaching your children are much more stupid than you.

Aren’t you feeling comforted?

****

Thankfully the drop-out rate is so high. I’d hate to think what the school system and government would be like if a third of these sup-par students didn’t fail to finish their degrees.

****

So, after all that, you’re probably understanding why the tuition bubble exists.

It exists because too many people are getting a degree.

Everybody wants to enter the road to the professional, white-collar, middle-class, which is what university is thought of as now.

But not everybody is capable of being a white-collar professional.

Of course, modern liberal dogma can’t admit that some people are just not capable of being white-collar professionals, after all, we are all equal. The Bible (or Stephen Gould, depending on your religious beliefs) and the Constitution (or your sociology professor, depending on your political beliefs)  say so.

So those in charge, those who would read the NYT, can not and will not prevent those who shouldn’t be going to college from going to college.

Instead, they’ll encourage them to go. They’ll give these marginal students huge, government-backed loans they’ll never be able to pay back. They’ll lower academic standards as far as they can go, then lower a them a bit more, destroying any academic, economic, or signalling value of your degree in the process.

Doing otherwise would expose their ideology for the lie it is and their ideology takes precedence over the good of these marginal students, not to mention the other students whose degrees are made worthless.

So, as these marginal students flood colleges, demand for college education increases, so tuition goes up.

The academic value of the degree erodes, as grade inflation and lowered academic standards become necessary to keep these people in college, and maybe (hopefully) let them graduate.

The economic values of these degrees plummets. Your degree no longer signals competence, knowledge, and intelligence to an employer; all it signals is a lack of incompetence. Why should he pay well for that? Why should he hire the marginally competent at all?

Thus a bubble. Paying more and more for less and less.

One thing though, bubbles can’t last forever. Reality always wins in the end.

Eventually, the post-secondary education system will run into reality.

****

Economists do not predict a collapse of the student loan system, which would, in essence, mean wholesale default.

NYT’s economists never fail to be amusing. I wonder if this was Krugman or Friedman, maybe both?

Those who are blinded by ideology will run full tilt into the wall of reality. They will then act surprised.

****

With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country

$1 trillion, that’s almost 7% of GDP. If a large percentage of these loans default, this will be a major economic catastrophe. It may be possible for the US government to forgive them, but that will be a significant increase in national debt.

Students are likely stuck with this debt.

****

So what can we do?

Short answer: nothing.

Long answer: That’s a question for another post.

****

One last note:

Leaders of the for-profit industry defended themselves

I’m usually a staunch defender of the free market, but in this case, all I can say is:

Fuck them.

The for-profit college industry is a brood of blood-sucking parasites taking advantage of students who should never set foot near a college for their own benefit, and the student loans programs in a disgusting display of parasitic corporate welfare. May their whole industry rot.

Self-Esteem is for Losers

Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor
than to divide the spoil with the proud. (Proverbs 16:18, ESV)

The Bible warns against pride numerous times, but I think a better word would be hubris.

The problem with the word pride is that it holds different meanings, all of which are used interchangeably.

a :  inordinate self-esteem :  conceit
b :  a reasonable or justifiable self-respect
c :  delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship

The biblical injunctions against pride concern themselves with the first meaning; a belief that one is higher than one truly is.

Pride is the original sin and the sin from which all sins flow.

Lucifer, the morning star, thought himself above God and tried to ascend to His throne. His fatal sin was hubris.

Eve’s original sin was pride:

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She wanted to become as God; she thought herself greater than she was. For that she was forever cursed.

All sin is man thinking his own reason and his own ways are superior to the reason and ways of God. But as God pointedly asked Job:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

Man, in his pride, thinks himself wise, but his wisdom is foolishness. He elevates himself in his own mind above His creator and suffers for it.

In Proverbs humility is linked with fear of the Lord:

The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom,
and humility comes before honor. (Proverbs 15:33, ESV)
…
The reward for humility and fear of the Lord
is riches and honor and life. (Proverbs 22:4, ESV)

It is clear, humility is knowing your right place before God and before other man.

A humble man may still have pride of the second and third definitions: he may respect himself because he is made in God’s image which is reflected through him, imparting upon him value; he may take joy in doing acts of right, knowing these acts come from God’s providence.

The pride of a humble man and the pride of the hubristic man are as far as the east is from the west.

A man of hubris thinks himself higher than he is, a humble man knows himself for who he is.

A humble man has true confidence, for he knows who he is and accepts his lot. The hubristic man’s confidence is but a mirage.

****

Respect is something that is earned. It is primarily a masculine concept; where a man earns the respect of his warband (or a functional equivalent) by contributing to the warband. A man who is not worthy of respect, who does not contribute leads his warband to its death.

Respect is esteem given to you by others in recognition of your deeds.

A humble man’s contributions usually relate to or exceed how he thinks of himself, so he is oft respected in proportion to or exceeding his beliefs of his own station.A man of hubris is rarely respected according to his belief, as his empty thoughts of pride far exceed his contributions.

A man should strive to be both humble and respected.

Know your place, accept your place, contribute the best you can, and let other raise your esteem.

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:8-11, ESV)

This is the masculine form of respect.

Respect is very different when framed in a feminine mode of thinking. This mode of thinking is devoted to a close-knit family where everyone is valued because immediate survival is not on the line and division in the home can rend the clan’s survival as surely as a rival warband.

Man is to be respected not for what he contributes, but simply for existing.

“Treat everyone with respect.”

This, as with most feminine modes of social interaction, works well on the small scale, in a tight knit family group apart from the immediate demands of survival. When applied to the immediate kin group, it leads to harmonious family relations working together for survival and against foreign threats.

It does not work in an extended group or when the lion is skulking in the bush. When applied to a survival situation, respecting the incompetent leads to a swift death.

When the feminine mode is applied on a greater scale, respect becomes meaningless. If everyone is respected, then what good is respect? If you give the same esteem to the criminal as to the saint, how is your esteem of any value? If one is respected regardless, why should one contribute?

In greater society, respect must be of the masculine form; it has to be earned for it to be of any meaning or value, otherwise it is naught but dust.

Not everybody deserves respect.

****

We come now to self-esteem.

Self-esteem is always based within the feminine mode of respect. “Everyone should have good self-esteem“, regardless of their actual contributions or abilities.

One should esteem oneself regardless of whether one is worthy of said esteem.

To this end, the dullard is praised as highly for butchering the English language as the wordsmith is praised for his beautiful sonnet evoking ancient imagery.

Under the cruel tyranny of self-esteem, man’s hubris is raised far beyond any reasonable estimation of his proper place. His elders, those wolves in sheep’s clothing, lead him into the violent trap of the sin of pride.

To add to the cruelty, he is incapable of developing proper self-respect or respect from others. His hubris overtakes him, but he knows in his heart of hearts, that something is not right. He knows in his heart of hearts he does not actually measure up to his own hubris, for reality continually and brutally contradicts the words of those sweetly poisoned tongues. His true confidence is eaten away nibble by tiny nibble, while he invests ever more heavily in his false hubris to keep from emotionally drowning.

Eventually, he will fall and self-immolate.

But, to twist the knife ever deeper, despite his inflated opinion of himself and the false praise of his elders, he will never earn real, masculine respect. His words will always exceed his deeds for how could he learn to contribute when he is taught to value his failures as highly as his contributions?

He will never earn the true respect of others. Because his self-esteem to be based solely on honey-dipped falsehoods, rather than the confidence of real accomplishment, this will eat away at his emotional and spiritual core. He will need their praise and their false respect, for his self-esteem depends on it, yet he will never have true respect and genuine praise for he is incapable of earning it.

He will never know and accept his proper place; he will never have the true confidence of the humble man. He will always think himself better than he is and pine for the respect and rewards he believes himself entitled to, but because he is not as high as he thinks he is and he has not earned them they will forever elude him. This will cause bitterness, as he questions his whole self, never knowing why he is not in “his proper place”, yet never being able to truly find his proper place.

Thus we end, self-esteem is for losers.

It is a false confidence that robs one of true confidence and replaces it with a sinful mirage. It erodes your emotional and spiritual core and makes you dependent on others for your confidence.

Winners gain confidence by trying until they succeed. They put in the effort, improve themselves, and eventually, their pride comes from knowing they have earned their place and being confident because of it.

Losers have no success upon which to build their confidence. They do not know their place, or they know and shudder at their worthlessness, so they demand others’ praise to inflate their sinful hubris.

****

I say this to you:

If you have any love of a young one, fight his self-esteem, crush it ruthlessly. Praise his true successes, but never let your praise be inordinate. Do not praise his failures; when he fails encourage him to try harder, to practice more, to push himself beyond what he currently is, so he can truly succeed.

Build in him true confidence, so he can climb to the mountain-top, look down, and know his place.

Only those who hate their children develop their self-esteem.

****

Also know this, if someone demands your unearned respect or curses you for lowering their self-esteem, they are a loser. They are drowning themselves in the sin of pride and demanding you help them do so. They need your accolades to prop up their ego because they lack the true confidence that comes with success, with genuine contribution, with real respect.

By demanding unearned respect they are only showing they are not worthy of it.

Lightning Round – 2012/10/10

A salute to conventional wisdom.

Destroying our kids, one drug at a time.
Related: John Dewey is one of the worst Americans ever.

If she’s had sex before marriage, she’s probably had better sex before she married you.
Related: Ruined by 5 minutes of alpha.

Debasing marriage.
Related: Peter Pan Manboys.
Related: Mark Minter on marriage. Nihilism in action.
Related: The importance of marriage. Part 2.

Feminist responds to Aurini. Can’t handle red pill; calls him a monster;.
Aurini responds.

The Bible: the original Red Pill.

Some brides are just disgusting.

Most women aren’t worth chivalry.

No dating relationship should last 9 years.

Game Theory: The Axioms of Game.

The misandry bubble has popped. The anti-feminism bubble is beginning.

Boomers and the War on the Young.

SAT Data: Boys score better, even though girls do better in school.

The manosphere is for men.

The good guys win one.

Female doubts about a marriage lead to divorce (men’s don’t).

Science: Slowly destroying egalitarianism brick by brick.

Better strength than smarts.

Frost contemplates being back home.

As I’ve written before: child care is not economical.

Cool. I hate the phone, but I hate texting even more.

Why liberals are ugly redux. The original.

Society requires old men to be dangerous.

The decline occurs because society is corrupt at every level.

Liberal economics. We trade “leadership” for stuff.

Estonia: Austerity works. Screw you Krugman.
So did Reagenomics. Screw Keynesianism.

Producer tells the truth. Leftists freak out.

Alternatives to tough luck for libertarians.

Socialism in action. Good food banned in schools.

I hate the phrase “correlation doesn’t equal causation“. It is almost always used as an intellectual cop-out by people who don’t understand it.

The miracle of photoshop.

Hehe… Tolerant leftists and dating conservatives.

Striking is for ignoramuses without self-respect.

How it feels to be smart. I’m not quite as smart as the writer, but his observations seem about right.

(H/T: SDA, Maggie’s Farm, Bitter Babe, 3MM, the Captain, Instapundit, Shining Pearls, RWCAG)

Demanding More

There’s been a little bit of debate on the infantalization of men within the alt-right/manosphere, so I decided to weigh in. (I have a companion piece to this post here, read it to give more context to this post).

The Social Pathologist wrote:

The manosphere rightly criticizes women for their diminishing femininity, but what the manosphere does not do so well is criticize the increasing infantisation of men.  When Roosh and his followers point out that quality women are only to be found outside the U.S. he is giving the masculine version of the modern feminist lament that there are no good men at home. What many manosphere commentators fail to recognize is that the nice computer nerd is the male equivalent of the nice fat chick. The manosphere demands thinness  but criticizes women for wanting its feminine equivalent. Mote, beam, eye. It’s all a bit of hypocrisy.

There are two problems with his argument here.

The first problem is the difference between the manosphere and modern feminism. The manosphere is actively trying to improve men; they are encouraging men to become better, more masculine players, or better, more masculine patriarchs. They are actively trying to move away from being the nice computer nerds and become better at being a man. (Whether that’s better or not for women is debatable).

(The other section of the manosphere, the MGTOW, may not advocate self-improvement as much, but they are not hypocritical because they are also no longer calling for women to improve. They’ve simply decided to take their ball and go home and have given the reasons why).

Modern feminism on the other hand is actively trying to make women less feminine. They are actively encouraging women to be fat (fat acceptance), to be “outspoken” (read: bitchy), and to discard their traditional societal roles. They are actively trying to make woman worse. They are encouraging women to become bitchy (not nice) fat chicks.

The second problem with his argument is the underlying social context. The problem the manosphere has is not, so much, about women preferring alpha men to beta men, it is that women and society lie about it.

Men are honest about what they want. Most men (lying manginas and fat fetishists, aside) are honest about their preferences and are quite willing to say “I want a thin, feminine women with a nice chest.” Women are told and know exactly what men want. Some women lie to themselves that fat is beautiful (Rubens like fat women… dur), but even then their complaints are that men do not appreciate their “beauty”, not that men are actually lying to them about it.

On the other hand, women lie (or genuinely don’t know) about their preferences. If you ask women (be they your mother, sisters, female friends, whomever) what women want, the answer will usually be something similar to “a nice, loving man in touch with his emotion who wants to settle down and share the housework equally.” The problem being something any nice young man looking to settle down realizes quite quickly: women’s actual choices in men are something else entirely.

If women just came out and said that they were attracted to aloof, dominant, irresponsible, alpha bad boys, there would be no problem. (There would also be no problem if women found betas attractive like they said). Men would have the honest truth and could live their life accordingly. The problem is that men are sucking up the lies about women’s desire for a loving beta, are having these lies dashed around them, and, when they wonder why, are lied to even more. It is not the preferences that are the problem, it is the lies surrounding the preferences that are the problem.

The difference is that men are honest about what attracts them, but women are dishonest (or mistaken) about what they are attracted to. These are what separate the “why are there no good men?” feminists and the manosphere.

In a later post he wrote:

The manosphere has quite rightly denounced the corruption of women by feminism but what it has been unable see is the failure in modern masculinity. Roosh and Roissy may get lots of lays but they would have hardly been though of examples of masculinity either in Roman, Greek or Victorian times. Hedonism was always the “soft” option of manhood. And the reality today is that many men are soft. Not so much physically as in character. Women are far “harder” today and more self disciplined. Making women “softer” may restore some of their femininity but it no way guarantees the masculinity of men.  Taking away a woman’s rights does not give a man alpha qualities.

Simon Grey responded:

And so, while I agree with the MRA crowd that most women would make for terrible wives, I also agree with Slumlord that most men make for terrible husbands.  Quite simply, most people in this world are self-absorbed cowards, too afraid to live up to their potential, and too weak to suppress their self-destructive tendencies.  No wonder their marriages and relationships turn cancerous.

I agree, most young men today would make terrible husbands, but they both stop there. They do not ask why, and that is the important question.

Why are most young men today living as “Peter Pan” manboys?

(We could ask the same about why most women would make poor wives, but the manosphere has covered that fairly extensively already; the answer boils down to feminism).

Dalrock has already has partially answered the question and has hit a key point:

While we might argue about the speed and magnitude of men’s reaction to such a shift, as well as the specific mechanism we might observe (marriage strike vs weakened signal, etc), I don’t see how one could argue that an overall decline in men’s eagerness to work hard in preparation to lead families is surprising.

We wanted non threatening men, and now we have them.

But I don’t think he spells it out clearly enough, so I’m going to.

The reason there are so many losers, manboys, men without chests, or whatever you wish to call them, comes down to one, solitary word. This word is probably the single most important word when it comes to any social pheonomenum. This word is:

Incentives

This is the centre-piece of economics. This is the single most explanatory concept in all the social sciences. Incentives.

People respond to incentives. If there are positive incentives for a behaviour, there will be more of that behaviour. If there are negative incentives for a behaviour, there will be less of that behaviour.

No matter how much cajoling is done, no matter how much people are shamed, no matter how many laws are written, the incentive structure of society (of which cajoling, shaming, and laws are all a part) will override them all.

****

So, what are the incentives of the young man today?

I was originally going to write a short narrative, but it turned long, too long for this post. You can read it here, it provides more context.

The young man today is put in 13 years of public school and university, where people are judged primarily by their ability tosit still and parrot what their teachers say. Where masculine behaviours, such as risk-taking, dominance, and rough-housing are discouraged, banned, and punished. Sometimes these behaviours even result in a regime of drugging. The entire system is as structured as a tightly run concentration camp.

On the other hand, young males are taught that their natural desires are destructive and to be controlled, but are not taught the discipline necessary to control them. They are taught to get in touch with their emotions, except those school administration think are dangerous. They are taught self-esteem, where no matter what they accomplish (or don’t accomplish) they are special and deserving. They are not taught self-control, they are taught hedonism.

This produces a horrible dichotomy of a lack of freedom and a lack of discipline. The entire school system is geared towards teaching young boys subservience and dependence (beta traits) and to destroy their in-born initiative, risk-taking, and ambition (alpha traits).

Right from the get go, authorities teach young boys that traditional masculine behaviours are punished, while weakness and beta traits (not always the same) are rewarded.

In university, the incentive structure is much the same. Obey and parrot and be rewarded.

Men are taught, while young, that the authorities will reward for being weak and punish for being strong. They are also taught an entitlement mentality.

This is the incentive structure the primary authorities in their life (children spend as much or more time being instructed by the school system than their parents) ingrain in them from a young age.

****

On the other hand, the social system of both school and university naturally coalesces into an opposing dynamic. Children are socialized through other children than through other adults. They pick up natural, feral attitudes towards interpersonal relations rather than a more mature civilized attitude to social relations.

In this social system, the alphas are socially and sexually rewarded, while the more awkward betas are not. Young men learn that sex, social status, and relationships can be obtained without work. In fact, men are taught that the irresponsible “cool” kids are more likely to be socially and sexually rewarded than the more responsible “nerds”.

In other words, they know they can satiate their primary genetic drive without having to contribute to society, as long as they act “like jerks.”

Young men are taught that irresponsibility pays now.

The only threat we have against this the long term: responsibility pays in the long run.

This worked until the last decade or so, until long-term incentives began to collapse.

****

What are the long-term incentives for your young adult male, so he is responsible?

A good-paying, worthwhile job, a house, a loving wife, social status, and a family.

The good-paying job is dying in the current economic corruption. 50% of our young people are either under- or unemployed. Their college degrees are worthless. They are shackled with near unmanageable student debt. Self-employment is a no-go. Government regulations strangle most industries and are especially painful to small businesses. (Not to mention, the initiative and ambition necessary for self-employment were beat out of him by the school system). Those who do get jobs are usually suffering in useless government busywork or brutally impersonal corporate work.

Simply put, there are no longer any guarantees that hard-work and responsibility will lead to a worthwhile job. But even if he eventually gets a job, he is punished by having half his income is taken by the state and given to the irresponsible.

He can still get a home, but not without the job. That, and the young man doesn’t want a home for himself; he wants it so he can raise a family. This incentive is more an ancillary option to the other incentives.

The primary incentive is a wife and family, but that incentive is becoming meaningless.

The average age of marriage for is 28 (in Canada it’s 31). Think about that. Your average man will not find a wife until a full decade after he graduates from high school and about 15 years after he hits puberty.

During this 15 years of either loneliness and sexual frustration for betas or, for the alphas, hedonism and sexual license, what lessons are being learned by men?

Irresponsibility.

Men are learning to get used to irresponsibility. How the hell can you expect most men to be prepared for the responsibility of a wife and family after he has had a full decade of getting acquainted to irresponsibility?

You can’t.

But lets say he’s prepared for marriage. It’s highly unlikely his wife is a virgin: his dating pool probably has more single mothers than virgins. She’s not going to bond to him.

There’s a 50% chance that he will lose his family. When he loses his family, there is a good chance he will be subjected to alimony slavery and have his family kidnapped from him. I’m not going into detail here, because other’s have wrote much more comprehensive articles on the risks of marriage, but marriage is becoming and increasingly bad option.

Social status? Hahaha… Being a responsible person no longer create social status. “Office drones” are looked down upon. The rich and successful are castigated and punished. Everybody is equal now. There is no more of the base respect and social status given to a man who quietly works hard to provide for his family.

So, where are his incentives to be responsible?

When having a family is a decade away and is likely to be punished with divorce, alimony theft, and having his children ripped from him? When hard work and an education no longer means a job, let alone a meaningful one? When he’s grown accustomed to the freedom of singledom? When he is punished for career success? When the lazy and irresponsible are rewarded with his hard-earned income?

****

Overall, the entire incentive structure of society is biased towards men being irresponsible.

If a man is irresponsible, he gets to play video games now. He gets sex now. He gets to hang out with his friends now.

If a man is responsible, there is no immediate gain. When there were long-term incentives, this was fine, but the long term incentives are breaking down.

Why should men act responsibly, when the incentives are towards irresponsibility?

****

Pathologist illustrated his point about weak men with a story about a “responsible” young women with an irresponsible young man for a boyfriend.

Many in the manosphere would view this woman as a demanding bitch. I don’t. She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31. She has independently, on a low income, saved money and bought herself a house, put tenants in it and has a long term plan for the future. She is keeping down a job and has been able to organise her own affairs. She wants a stable future and does not want to live in poverty. By the way, I’d estimate her BMI at about 22. Such a woman is percieved as a threat to Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Facepalm.

She is a threat to Western Civilization, not because she is a “demanding bitch”, but because she is not demanding enough. If she was a Proverbs 31 women she would not be shacking up with an irresponsible man. She would have demanded marriage to a man “known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.” ie. She would have married a responsible and respected man. Instead, she is giving herself to an worthless man without any demands of responsibility from him.

She is the one creating perverse incentives.

By herself, her actions don’t matter. But if you multiply her by a few million women, all demanding nothing out of the men they bed, then you have a threat to civilization.

She made her choice to date a loser, to be irresponsible, and to reward irresponsible behaviour. She now has to face the consequences of her choices. Society now has to face the consequences of her actions.

When love is free, most men won’t pay for it.

If men aren’t paying, civilization is threatened.

****

The manosphere is right to demand more from women, but there is also a corollary. Women need to demand more from men.

We need a society that demands more from everybody and rewards those, and only those, who meet those demands. People will only rise to the level that societal incentives reward.

Everything in life comes down to incentives. Right now, the incentive structure for men is built so that irresponsibility is rewarded, while responsibility is punished. When the incentives for men are structured this way you will get irresponsible men.

If women, conservatives, and the Social Pathologist want responsible men, they should help restructure society so that the incentives of society, particularly, in this case, those related to sex and relationships, reward responsible men, and punish irresponsible men.

The Life of a Beta

Your average beta is born. He grow up surrounded by family. They are good times, but he barely remembers them.

Then something changes; he spends 13 years being psychological castrated, mentally oppressed, (sometimes) physically abused, and viciously indoctrinated in what we term the public school system. He has no option but to go and is too inexperienced to realize what is being done to him. But, he is promised that if he does good , he will get a good job, have lots of money, marry a loving wife, and have kids of his own; he looks forward to that. While in this system he is thoroughly feminized; his natural masculine traits are banned, punished, and even drugged out of him.

He sees the young alpha who beats him up and torments him. He sees that the young alpha has many more friends than him. He sees the pretty girls who ignore him smile at the young alpha and even hears rumours they do more than smile.

But he is taught by this system, his church, his parents, and every authority figure he knows that if he obeys, he persists, works hard, and he suppresses his masculinity he will be rewarded with a job, a wife, a house, and a family. God, the market, and the state will smile upon him and bless him.

The young bully will get his. God, the market, and the state will punish him in time. Someday our young beta will be his bully’s boss. He’ll have the nice house and pretty wife, while the bully is working at McDonald’s.

So, he endures. He allows himself to be psychologically castrated. He’s slightly uneasy about it, it doesn’t feel quite right, but he goes with it because everyone is telling him to and he doesn’t fully realize exactly what he allowing to be done to him. In his spare time, he and his friends play video games to keep their minds off their lack of social life and of the shit they have to put up with at school.

The young beta is almost done school looking forward to his reward, but then the powers that be tell him, not yet. You’ll get your reward, but first you have to go through a 3-6 year sentence at this other indoctrination system, labelled a university. Go through this and you will be blessed. Just remember to pay the tens of thousands of dollars of tuition, but don’t worry about it. There are loans, and with the money you’ll make, they’ll be easy to pay off.

The young beta acquiesces; he’s a good person, not a troublemaker. He wants to help society, not fight it. Besides he desires his blessing.

So he goes. He is taught in this university that he is evil because he is a man and men oppress women. He was taught that he is evil because the ancestors of people with his skin colour won some land in wars from the ancestors of people with different skin colour from his centuries ago. He is taught that being rich is evil, because rich people oppress the poor. He is taught his religious beliefs are evil and oppressive. It doesn’t sound right, but these are men of learning; these are the great and the good; these are the wise men of society. So he is persuaded.

He avoids being dominant and manly around women, for he doesn’t want to oppress them. He becomes to question whether the house and job he was promised are his right. Is it only his greed and his “privilege” to expect these things? He’ll work hard so he deserves them, then he’ll help others with some of it. He starts going to a more liberal, less oppressive church; one that isn’t so judgmental.

So, he works hard. He studies, he has a part-time jobs, and he takes out some student loans. He goes to the occasional party, maybe he has one or two short relationships, maybe he doesn’t. But he’s concentrating on school.

He sees some young alphas at school. They are always at every party,including all the ones he’s not invited to. They act dominant around women and treat the women poorly. They are oppressing women, yet they always seem to have a girl in their arms and every week in class they brag about the great sex and fun times they had over the weekend.

But the authorities assure our beta that those are not quality girls. Those girls don’t really like him, he’s just fooling the gullible into bed. The women don’t actually like the those oppressive men. Eventually those alphas will end up alone.

Real women like the sensitive beta man. He’s just has to wait for the right girl to marry him.

So, he waits, he studies. In his spare time he plays video games, because getting drunk and partying will interfere with his job and his schooling. When he graduates he’ll get a job and get married to a quality women.

He’s 21 and nearing graduation. He applies for jobs, but none come. He graduates, and moves back in with family because he can’t afford an apartment, let alone his house.

He works a part-time job; the alpha who used to bully him works at the same job, but is paid $1 more an hour because he’s been there longer. The bully always seems to have a girlfriend who visits him at work, the beta hasn’t had a date for a year.

He keeps applying for jobs, but never seems to get any. The authorities tell him not to worry; there’s a recession, everybody is having trouble. Keep trying, we’ll bounce back anytime and there will be lots of jobs. Then you’ll get your job and your house. When you have those a wife will surely come.

He spends his free time playing video games. He occasionally has fanciful ideas about starting his own business, but he doesn’t know how. He has no idea how to start. No one ever taught him and everybody had always told him to pursue a stable corporate job.

After a year of applying, he finally gets an office job. It doesn’t relate to what he studied and is not very exciting but at least he’s employed. He hasn’t had a date since he graduated. One of the alphas from university works at the same job as him. The alpha is also having a liaison with the cute coworker on a different floor.

He has a job, so he purchases a house. The house is expensive, it eats up a large portion of his paycheck, but he gets by. He’ll be able to raise a family with this house. In his spare time he plays video games with his friends.

He doesn’t really have anywhere to meet a girl other than work and church you can’t shit where you eat and none of the girls at church are interested. He tries online dating but is mostly unsuccessful.

He continues to work. He dislikes it and the office politics suck, but he’s good at it. There’s a promotion. He applies, but the alpha gets it as he’s better at office politics. A few months later the alpha leaves for a higher-paying position elsewhere, so the beta gets promoted.

He’s still lonely; the promised wife is not to be found. On the other hand, he’s getting used to having no responsibilities. He can play video games whenever he wants. He can spend his money on anything he likes. Pornography and masturbation takes the edge of his loneliness. A lack of responsibility and prolifigacy with money become a norm he’s accustomed to.

Finally, at age 29 he meets a women of 28 at church. she rejected him a few years ago, but after a bad break-up she started to treat him differently.  She’s moderately pretty, but he can tell her looks are declining. He dates her. He likes her, although, she’s somewhat bitter about men. He finds out that she used to hook-up with the alpha’s at university and they didn’t treat her well. she’s looking for a real man. The beta’s happy because he is a real man.

They get married. The beta has trouble adjusting. His wife does not allow him the freedom he got used to while single, but he loves her, so he spends less time with his friends and less time playing video games. He spends more time watching romance movies with her. They decide to have a child, but the wife wants a bigger house first. On both incomes, they can easily afford a bigger house, so they move.

She gets pregnant and says she wants to quit to raise the child until he’s old enough for school. He recently got a promotion to Assistant Vice Manager of Internal Corporate Affairs, so they can afford it, barely, if he works overtime and they cut expenses.

They have the child, but the wife continues to spend as they did before. She also doesn’t lose the weight she put on in pregnancy, so he’s less attracted to her. On the other hand, he put on some weight recently and he’s too busy working even more overtime to pay off credit card debt to have sex all that often, so he doesn’t mind. He loves his wife and child and would do anything for them.

This goes on; his wife never does go back to work when his child reaches school age. She has a lot of time at home alone, but even then the chores never seem to be done.  When his daughter is in first grade, his wife surprises him with divorce papers. She tells him that she felt alone and unappreciated; he wasn’t meeting her emotional needs, all he did was work. She also tells him she’s been cheating on him with one of the alpha’s she used to hook up with in university. That explains why she’d been losing weight recently.

He goes to divorce court. His wife gets the family house, the child, and he has to pay alimony. She also gets the mutual friends from church. He has to work even more overtime to support both his family. He tries to rent an apartment on his own, but after about a couple years he can no longer afford it. Besides, it’s too big for him and he rarely sees his child anymore, anyway. She now calls his ex-wife’s new boyfriend daddy.

He goes looking for a roommate. He finds an advertisement in the paper. He meets up with the guy. They talk, the other guy seems decent. They get along well. He recently broke up with his girlfriend of two years who kicked him out of her house and can’t afford an apartment on his own either. They move in together.

They enjoy themselves. One good thing about the divorce is he has more free time, so he plays a lot of video games together with his new roommate. They split the rent; our beta makes more than his roommate who only has a low-skill manual labour job, but because of alimony they’re actual spending money is similar.

He reconnects with old friends, one from his university days and a few recent divorcees from church, and he makes new friends through his roommate. The pain begins to fade and he begins to get used to singledom once again.

A few months later while unpacking, the beta stumbles across his old yearbook. He flips through it, reminiscing about old times and old schoolmates. His roommate enters notices him reading, and hey, his roommate tells him they went to the same school and points himself out in the book. The beta realizes his roommate is the alpha who used bully him. His roommate remembers and he apologizes. The beta forgives him; they’re good friends now and in the same boat.

****

This was originally going to be a small part of another post, but took on a life of its own. I am writing the rest of the original post to put up tomorrow. It will have (hopefully) have more context then.