Monthly Archives: June 2012

Fat Acceptance

Fat acceptance seem to be going around the manosphere right now and derisive mockery seems to be the order of the day. It seems to have started with this guy’s (probably satirical) blog on fat game.

I’m going to avoid the derisive mockery, but  instead I’m going to talk about shame and self-hatred.

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First, some theology. Being fat is generally a sign of sinfulness.

Sloth and gluttony, the two primary causes of obesity, are two of the cardinal sins. It is shameful to be fat, because it is shameful to sin.

Derisive mockery is not untoward to someone who advocates the acceptance and normalization of sinfulness.

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Theology aside, obesity is still something to be shamed.

I do not need to go into all the ways obesity is unhealthy for an individual, that’s common knowledge. By allowing yourself to be obese you are quite literally committing slow, likely painful, suicide.

By allowing your body to destroy itself you are showing that you do not love yourself or your life. You are also showing you do not love those who love you and will be devastated by your early death.

If you are married, by being fat you are showing your spouse through deed, if not word, that you do not love them enough to remain attractive enough to have a healthy sex life.

You should be ashamed of being fat.

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Fat acceptance is concerned with ending self-loathing fat people feel for themselves. That is wrong.

Self-loathing and self-disgust is generally a sign that something is wrong in your life. It is your body and subconscious telling you that something needs to change as your current actions, lifestyle,and choices are negatively impacting your body and its ability to reproduce itself.

It is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect you.

In the case of obesity, the shame and self-disgust you feel is your body telling you that you are killing yourself.

When your body and subconscious  tells you something is wrong, the answer is not to get over it, the answer is not to drug it into submission, the answer is not to accept it, the correct answer is to figure out the reason your body and subconscious are screaming at you and to change yourself so they no longer have to scream.

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Your body evolved in an environment of scarcity. Food was scarce, you rarely gained the calories necessary for optimal health, so your body adapted to urge you to eat as much as possible, particularly of sugars and fats, which provided a large amount of calories.

Modern industrial agriculture has made food abundant; it is no longer scarce but your body still thinks it is, so it demands you eat, and it particularly loves its fats, sugars, and salts.

When you do not eat as much as you can your body screams at you that you are starving yourself; when you exercise, you are depleting your energy reserves and you body screams at you.

This is why it is much easier to gain weight than lose weight. Your old primal self is no made to handle the new modern world. You should not ignore this, but you should know why this pain exists.

The curse of being fat is: Your mind and body scream self-loathing at you for being fat, but your body screams pain at you if you diet and exercise. It is painful either way.

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So why do people participate in fat acceptance, when their own bodies and minds are screaming at them that they are killing themselves, when all the research says they are killing themselves, when obesity negatively impacts yourself and those you care about?

Easy: change is hard.

It is a lot easier to come to accept (and possibly overcome) your self-loathing mentally than it is to overcome the pain of diet and exercise. Self-loathing is vague and amorphous, pain is immediate and direct.

Self-loathing can be reasoned at, self-justified, denied, and overcome by other emotions. There is no reasoning with, denying, or ignoring pain: pain is.

Instead of facing the pain, it is easier to accept the self-loathing.

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Shame is used for societal control. It is used by society to prevent people from following their base urges to self-destruction.

Forgoing shaming obesity, gluttony, and sloth is not loving; it is apathetic. It is people to destroy themselves.

Fat acceptance is not something society should embrace, for the good of fat people.

This is not to say fat people shouldn’t be loved, they should, but their obesity and the behaviours contributing to it should be shamed out of love.

Fat acceptance is telling people it is okay to engage in self-destruction.

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If you are fat, realize it is not healthy. You are hurting yourself and showing you do not love yourself or those around you.

Realize that the pain may be unavoidable, but it is necessary.

Overcoming the pain and making yourself a better person will do much more for you, your self-respect, and your happiness than any amount of fat acceptance.

If you want to improve yourself, I would recommend the primal diet.

I tried the primal diet; while being strict on it I lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks. After that I became less strict, but I’ve still lost about 25 lbs (12% of my body weight) in 3 months. I’ve never been actually fat, maybe skinny-fat, but I did have a gut, it’s quite noticeably shrunk.

The best part, after the initial three weeks it’s required almost no willpower on my part. I rarely feel hungry and I never feel like I’m missing anything; it requires very little discipline. Once you get over the initial hump, it’s easy. It causes minimal pain, while still getting results.

So, do yourself a favour. Try the primal diet.

Lightning Round – 2012/06/26

Athol explains the difference between “Man Up” and being goaded to improve yourself.

A disgusting situation.
A disgusting situation made right.

Roissy shows why feminists do not have boys interests at heart. He also shows 3 qualities of a good girlfriend; it is sad that not all girls can meet even this very low baseline.

Roosh talks of hedonic adaptation. Pleasure is no substitute for meaning.
Related: The hedonic treadmill in action.

Price tells churches how to avoid divorce. Why do non-Christian players and “misogynists” often have a more biblical view of divorce than the church?

Publius talks of the delusions of bureaucrats.
Related:Public servants are depressed because unions wipe out potential joy from hard work as a bureaucrat. I know by experience: government work can be soul deadening.

Publius also hopes in futility that Europe’s experiences will give the left pause.
Obama proves they won’t.

The Canadian state oversteps it’s bounds and kidnaps a man’s children because he’s fat.

Mangan notes that our civilization is slowly becoming less capable of accomplishing things.

You’ve probably seen this, but a women learns about the reality of mutually exclusive choices. Then demands that others help her deny reality. Related.

When good intentions and narcissism trump reality.

The fecklessness of the UN.

Never trust the MSM. I mean it: don’t.

A feminist argues that taking care of children is not real work unless they are not your own. Related. Although, they’re are right: a real feminist would not depend on a man and would not stay home with their children. I think that’s more a condemnation of the feminism than anything, but that’s just me.

(H/T: The Captain, Maggie’s Farm, SDA)

White Male Privilege and Identity

I previously wrote about white privilege, but Apocalypse Cometh and a few others have brought up a university white privilege campaign, and I feel like commenting again.

If you’ve seen “anti-sexism” and “anti-racism” propaganda, you’ve probably noticed something: it is always males that are sexist and it is always whites that are racist.

The white male is a free target to be sexist and racist against, because if it’s anti-white male it’s not discriminatory because he has “privilege”.

Another thing you may notice, is that most white males don’t care, they accept this. When they do care (such as in the manosphere/alt-right blogosphere) they are usually driven to either analysis (such as Steve Sailer) or anger (such as AC above).

What you almost never see is the white male be personally offended. Occasionally, they may be “offended” on behalf of the group, but more as an abstract concept of offense. Very rarely do white males have a personal emotional reaction.

The white male does not generally take attacks on his gender or race (or attacks on him because of his gender or race) personally.

On the other hand, females and, to a lesser degree, other races often take extreme personal offence or become emotionally pained to non-personal things they deem sexist or racist.

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Test this.

Next time you’re around a group of mixed company friends, make derogatory jokes about crackers or rednecks (or some other group of white people) and males.  Later make derogatory jokes about females and other races.

I can almost guarantee you no one will be offended by the jokes about males and rednecks. Someone (or multiple someones), most likely a female someone, will be offended by the jokes about females and non-whites.

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Why is that?

The primary reason would be identity. The white male doesn’t usually identify himself as a white male foremost. He’ll generally define his identity through his nationality, his “the old country”, his religion, his job, his relationships, his politics, his hobbies, etc. well before he’ll identify himself as white or a male. People who use “white” as a primary identity are rare, and only a few extremists politically organize as whites. When identifying as male, it is generally a statement of fact, rather than a point of personal identity and no one politically organizes as males (despite the attempts of the MRA’s).

On the other hand, females, in particular feminists, and non-whites have their femaleness or race as one of their primary identifying characteristics. They will also often organize politically as females or their race.

So, when white male are insulted, the white male doesn’t care because he doesn’t really identify himself as a white male anymore than he identifies himself according to his hair colour or eye colour. He is a white male as a point of fact, but it’s not really something he emotionally connects to.

On the other hand, females (particularly feminists) and non-whites identify and emotionally connect with their femaleness or race. So an attack or insult on their identity is seen as an attack or insult on them.

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Communists call this identification consciousness. In marxist analysis, for the workers to revolt they have to identify themselves as workers; they have to develop class consciousness. Only when they see themselves as proletariat can they come together as a class and overthrow their capitalist overlords. Any other identity the worker may have, such as his religion, race, or nationality, are a false consciousness which distract him from his true identity as a worker.

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The problem with anti-racism, anti-sexism, white privilege, and all that other crap is that it creates the identity of whiteness or maleness in the white male. It raises the consciousness of the white male.

Generally, the white male doesn’t emotionally identify himself as a white male, he has other consciousnesses. Anti-racism and anti-sexism require the white male to become aware of his white privilege or male privilege. By becoming aware of his privilege he also becomes aware of his identity as a white male. He is raising his own race consciousness.

This is dangerous and it should be the last thing that any person who dislikes white racism or misogyny should want.

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Why?

It’s simple, as the white male’s consciousness of of himself as a white male rises, he will be more likely to identify himself as a white male.

That means he will be more likely to organize himself as a white male.

When white males have organized themselves as white males, it has almost always gone badly for everybody else.

I’ve already written of how the human male is the apex predator.

The white male in particular has shown himself to be particularly destructive when organized, or even on his own.

When the white male identifies himself as a white male he will organize and take action to advance the interests of his identity.

As the last few centuries have shown, when white males organize to advance their interests, they “win”, usually violently.

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Won’t knowing his white privilege prevent him from being racist?

Sure, when a white male examines his privilege, he may become an Uncle Tim, but the thing about Uncle Tim’s is that they do not identify as white males they identify according to their “anti-racist” ideology. They may talk about being aware of their white male privilege, but the emphasis is on the privilege, not the whiteness or the maleness. They are not aware of being white or being male, they are aware of their self-identified ideological “privilege”. They do have white male consciousness, rather they have ideological consciousnesses.

This is unlikely to happen for most. Identity is a powerful thing. As one becomes conscious of being something, one begins to identify with this something. By examining his identity as a white male, even in the context of “anti-racism” or “anti-sexism”, he begins to identify with being a white male.

His white maleness becomes an in-group. An in-group necessitates an out-group. In this case, that would be non-whites and non-males.

The very act of becoming aware of white male privilege creates within most white males an identity in opposition to non-whites and non-males.

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North American society has spent a long-time destroying the racial and gender awareness of the white male. They have pushed it under other identities, in particular civic religion and nationalism; the end result is that the white male consciousness is that of an American, not a white male (prior to thinking of himself as a white male he though of himself an Englishman or WASP;whites of non-Anglo descent were in the out-group). Non-whites and non-males can become American, they can never become a white male (or WASP).

Keeping the white male thinking about himself as an American is essential to the continuing functioning of America in relative non-racism and peace.

“Anti-racism” and “anti-sexism” though are in danger of undoing this; they are causing white males to think of themselves not as Americans, but rather as white males.

The choice is either colour-blindness or white male consciousness.

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The majority of modern white males are unused to identifying s as white males. The alt-right blogosphere, including the manosphere, is the beginning of the rise of white male consciousness.

Currently, the alt-right blogosphere is fairly benign as even here, white males still, mostly, think of themselves primarily as Americans (or whatever country they are from) and decry the collapse of America or Western civilization. Most have not yet internalized their white male consciousness.

Hopefully, they will not internalize it.

For if white males develop white male consciousness, they will act on their identity as white males.

Feminists can act on their identity as females with only moderate consequence, as females do not have the violent will to power males have.

Non-whites can act on their identity as their own race with only moderate consequence, as they are limited in number.

White males though are the majority and they have the violent tendencies of males. If they organize based on their identity of being a white male, the consequences could be disastrous.

If “anti-racists” and “anti-sexists” continue to push their ideological thesis on white males, white males will develop their own antithesis of identity, and the synthesis could be unpleasant.

The New Left vs. The Old Left

Will S. writes about the bizarre decision of governments to allow expatriates to vote as their own riding. In the post-script he notes:

Regarding Mrs. Lemaire’s victory, isn’t it odd that a ‘riding’ consisting of many employed by the financial sector (i.e. the private sector) would end up going Socialist?  Of course, it wasn’t just the French living in London or elsewhere in the U.K. who elected Mrs. Lemaire, but also ones living in Ireland, and the Scandinavian and Baltic states, too, so perhaps that’s how it happened.  On the other hand, I note that the North American riding was also won by a Socialist candidate, Corinne Narassiguin, who apparently is a New York banker!  What strange times we live in.

I do not find it all that odd. This is the difference between the old left and the new left (or liberal-left).

The old left was a movement of blue-collar workers out to get a better deal for themselves. It was a heavily unionized movement and, in the West, was mostly white. It was not overly radical on social issues, as blue-collar workers don’t generally tend towards that direction.

In the first half of the century, most Western nation began to put in place the beginning of the welfare state (pension plans & employment insurance), workplace safety laws, minimum wages, and other such regulations to protect workers, this eased the impetus of the old left. As long as blue-collar workers had jobs that provided them decent comfort and didn’t have to worry that an accident would leave them destitute, they were mostly politically content.

Enter the new left. This was a political movement focused on social issues: feminism, environmentalism, peace activism, anti-racism, etc. Economic issues were still of some import, but were pushed to the back.

In addition, the radical anti-capitalism of the old left began to melt away as the Communism began to demonstrate the horrors that occurred when you eliminated capitalism. It was replaced by a desire for an economic system of Keynesian-regulatory state superstructure based upon a capitalist substructure.

In the US, this takeover of the Democrat party by the new left occurred following the McGovernite rift in 72. Under the new left, liberal/left-wing parties began to shed their traditional base of the white working class, and created a new base, an alliance of academics, technocrats, white-collar bureaucrats (and their unions), and a bought-off underclass. The union movement began to trend towards white collar government work from blue-collar industrial work, until today where unions are primarily made of government workers.

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So, what does this have to do with the financial sector?

The first is that new left/liberal parties are strongly based on the ideologies held by the educated upper-middle class (the underclass doesn’t really contribute to ideas overly much anymore, they just vote reliably as long as state benefits flow). These ideologies tend to be based on post-materialist values (environmentalism, feminism, etc.) rather than material values. In economics, they are “pragmatic” (read Keynesian), as they generally benefit from the current economic order, but feel guilt about inequality that they want the state to relieve.

One of the Keynesian beliefs central to the new left economic platform is avoiding deflation and keeping steady mild inflation (ie. printing money) to keep people employed.

Who benefits from inflation? Whoever gets the money first. The financial sector. This mild inflation is printing money for the banks.

In a economic bust, what does a Keynesian party do? Stimulus (ie. print more money).  Who benefits? The financial sector.

When the government creates bonds (ie. debt) to finance further spending who benefits? The banks and financial traders who buy the bonds. It’s a license to print money.

Who benefits the most from complex government contract bidding? Large corporations (you think, Jack the small businessman with 3 employees can figure out the complex government bidding process and win them against Halliburton?)

Who benefits the most from government regulations? Large, established corporations (ie. banks).

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What?

I know, it seems weird, that large corporations benefit form regulations, but hear me out.

Large corporations are generally (Koch aside) not ideologically libertarian or capitalist, they are “rational” organizations pursuing profit.

The most damaging thing to a large, established corporations profits is radical change. Large corporations are generally very bureaucratic and can’t respond rapidly to change. If left alone, upstart companies can introduce radical changes to their industry quite rapidly and hurt the profits of large corporations (or occasionally destroy them entirely). So, the corporations go along with new regulations. Sure, their profits might decrease a small amount, but they can afford it. The small, upstart company generally can’t.

For example, let’s take access for people with disabilities. McDonald’s can easily afford the thousands of dollars to put into place a wheelchair ramp and handicap washrooms. Joe’s Diner, which makes a profits of 40k a year, won’t have such an easy time coming up with the thousands of dollars necessary for renovations.

So any financial regulations may hurt the large banks and traders some, but you know who they hurt more: smaller banks and trading companies, their competitors and potential disrupters.

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As we can see, modern left-liberal Keynesian economic ideology helps the financial sector more than almost anyone else. Those in charge of the parties know this (hence, Obama’s strong ties to Goldman Sachs), the useful idiots (ie. those anti-capitalists who still vote for these parties) follow along, because the parties know how to sound anti-capitalist (although, the banks know this is just a show) and to think otherwise would challenge their whole ideology and political allegiance.

The financial sector are also generally graduates of the (left-wing) academic system, so they mostly (more or less) agree on the basics of liberal-left social policies.

That’s why the financial sector will often vote for supposedly leftist parties and why I am not surprised that they do.

Lightning Round – 2012/06/19

Another long Lightning Round today.

Roissy talks on post-scarcity; he’s not positive on it.

Aurini exposes the idiocy of mainstream discussion on demographics.

Patriactionary has a great list of quips.

Athol explains why men running the MAP have power.
Vox explains why most wives shouldn’t worry about that power and why it’s tragic when older women divorce; it’s kind of touching.

Dicipres finds a couple neat studies.

Dogsquat has a good post on the starter version of the approach attitude.

Forney points out the obvious; game’s pointless if you’re a loser.
The Last Psychiatrist explains how self-loathing protects you from stopping being a loser.

The Poet argues against “enjoying the decline”. Wonder how the Captain will respond?

Frost has a post on his father that is both touching and heartrending.
Related: Walsh shows very clearly how important fathers are.

Glorious Bastard asks what is a women?
Meanwhile, Wintery Knight discusses how feminists want to dominate men.
Related: If a feminist makes poor choices and regrets them the next day, the man should be punished.

A feminist admits there’s no war on women because, get this, not all women are the same. My question: why haven’t anti-abortionists started a “war on babies” meme? It seems like it could be effective.

Gender “equality” creates economic “inequality”.

Britain takes a pro-fatherhood stance on family law. Seems MRA’s have had some impact.

The atrocity you’ve never heard of; when the allies forcibly migrated  conquered foes and forced them into slave labour.

Fox has some good news on the black community. If more of them escape the hell of public schooling, there might be some improvement in their lot.
Related: Bribing the natives not to destroy their own homes.

When diversity hurts those it supposedly helps.

A discussion on measuring happiness. It’s good if you can get over the overly flowery language.

Mainstream economists discovers the obvious.
Some (only some?) mainstream economists are stupid.

The young are the new helots. If they knew what was good for them, they’d join the Tea Party.

The pathologizing of grief.

A libertarian wishlist.
Related: A nice bit of libertarian satire.
Related: Some people do not understand libertarianism at all.

If you want to remove the influence of money in politics, remove the power from politics.

(H/T: SDA, IP)

Economic Costs of Children

Here’s another installment of  my economic analysis of marriage. This time we’re calculating the cost of children.

Conveniently,the USDA has done a study, and it costs $235,000 to raise a child (in a family of two) through age 17 for a middle-income family, about the price of a 2012 Ferrari.

So the question is, over time, which do you think would bring you more utility, a Ferrari or Junior (or a medium sized house, or 4 years off work if you make $60k, etc.)?

That’s that.

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But that doesn’t really make much of a blog post, so more in-depth analysis of the study.

annual expenses ranged from $8,760 to $9,970 for families with a before-tax income less than $59,410, from $12,290 to $14,320 for families with a before-tax income between $59,410 and $102,870, and from $20,420 to $24,510 for families with a before-tax income more than $102,870. (p. 10)
….
As can be seen, total family expenses on a child through age 17 would be $212,370 for households in the lowest income group, $295,560 for those in the middle, and $490,830 for those in the highest income group. In 2011 dollar values, these figures would be $169,080, $234,900, and $389,670, respectively. (p. 20-21)

Here we can see that a lot of the cost of child rearing is likely optional. Low income people can do it for $170,000, so they could only get a 2008 Lexus instead.

If we look at page 26, there’s a complete breakdown of the numbers. Low income people made on average $38k, medium made $80k, and high made $180k. So, we can calculate that, low income people spent about 1/4 of their yearly income on a child, medium income spent about 1/6, and high income spent about 1/9. Because this number is based on having two children, it means you average poor 2-child family would spend half their income on a child, medium would spent a third, and high would spend about a quarter. So, as you get money, you spent a smaller proportion of it on children.

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housing accounted for the largest share across income groups, comprising 30 to 32 percent of total expenses on a child in a two-child, husband-wife family. For families in the middle-income group, child care/education (for those with the expense) and food were the next largest average expenditures on a child. (p. iv)
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Food was the second largest expense on a child for families in the lowest income group, accounting for 18 percent of total expenditures. Food was the third largest expense on a child for families in the middle income group, accounting for 16 percent of total expenditures. Transportation made up 13 to 15 percent of total child-rearing expenses over the income groups. (p. 11)

Housing is the biggest expense. The study calculated housing by the cost of adding extra bedrooms to the price of a house. You could save money by buying cheaper real estate or jamming or making your kids share rooms or change the basement into the room (both strategies my family used at various times).

If we look at page 26, you can see that costs vary a lost, although, food, clothing, and healthcare vary less, while child care, miscellaneous, transportation, and housing vary by a much larger proportion. This suggests you can only save (or overspend) so much on eating, clothes, and health, but a lot of housing, transportation, and miscellaneous costs are optional. Child care varied the most, so this could either be optional, or simply be that higher income people used proportionately more of it to gain those higher incomes.

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Overall annual child-rearing expenses were highest for husband-wife families in the urban Northeast, followed by families in the urban West and urban Midwest; families in the urban South and rural areas had the lowest child-rearing expenses. (p. iv)

So, choose where you live when you want a family to save on housing costs. If you live in a lower cost area, it costs less. Pretty self-explanatory. Steve Sailer wrote an interesting article on this kind of thing before, give it a check.

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For all three income groups, food, transportation, clothing, and health care expenses on a child generally increased as the child grew older. As children age, they have greater nutritional needs so consume more food. Transportation expenses were highest for a child age 15 to 17, when he or she would start driving. Child care and education expenses were generally highest for a child under age 6. (p. 12)

Interesting, I though babies would be more expensive. Kids eat more as they age and young children use more child care. Makes sense. Learning to drive increases transportation expenses, probably due to buying your kid a car, so tell your kid to get a job and buy his own car.

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Compared with expenditures for each child in a husband-wife, two-child family, husband-wife households with one child spend an average of 25 percent more on the single child, and those with three or more children spend an average of 22 percent less on each child. (p. 17).

So, as Bryan Caplan pointed out, children get cheaper the more  you have of them. For the middle income family, a single child would cost $294k, 2 children would cost $470k ($235k each), and 3 would cost $550k ($183k each). For a lower income family, one would cost $211k, 2 would cost you $338k,  and 3 would cost $395k.

For a middle income family: the first child costs you $294k, the second costs you $176k (60% of the cost of the first), while the third costs you only $80k (27% of the first).

For a lower income family: the first child costs you $211k, the second costs you $127k (60% of the cost of the first), while the third costs you only $57k (27% of the first).

So if you decide to have children, have three or more. Your third child has a 73% discount on the cost of the first, a steal. You can also save a lot by adopting a lower income lifestyle.

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Conclusion:

Kids cost a lot, about as much as a Ferrari, but which would add more value to your life?

A lot of child rearing expenses are optional as evinced by the fact low income families can raise kids on less costs than other families. Housing is the biggest expense and a lot of the costs are optional. Children can be a lot cheaper if you buy less house, squeeze the kids in, and buy in a cheaper area.

Your first kid costs a lot of money, your second costs a fair amount, but your third kid and beyond cost very little, so, if you do have children have a lot. The marginal costs of the additional children after the second are very low.

Happy Father’s Day

To father and all other fathers.

When I was small
You took me by the hand
Father you should know
I finally understand

You taught me wrong from right
And how to live
You gave the greatest gift
That one could give

You never let me down
You made me strong
When I made mistakes
When I was wrong

Some days we’d laugh
And some days we’d fight
Somehow you knew one day
I’d say you were right

You’re with me
In every word I say
In every hour
Of every single day
In all I do
I’m just a part of you

You lived your life for us
That was your plan
Those hands that never take
They worked the land
Hands that never take
Can only give
And because of you
I know how to live

You’re with me
In every word I say
In every hour
Of every single day
In all I do
I’m just a part of you

Father just one thing
You always knew
Every word you said to me was true

Discussion on Game

I posted a review of Bang yesterday and this prompted me to think on if I will apply game in my own life.

I’m still on the fence about game. I’m a Christian, so casual sex is not something I plan to pursue, this seems to take away the most immediate reason to learn game.

Right now I plan on being a patriarch, not a player, so I am looking for a wife, and do not want to ruin that prospect with the player’s curse.

On the other hand, I do want to be an alpha male patriarch, not a whipped beta schlub. So, MMSL-style marriage game is something I want to pursue when I get married to keep my marriage happy and my wife attracted to me.

But for the mean-time prior to marriage I’m not sure.

Mentu’s advice on Christian game creates a really convincing argument for Christian men to learn game.

On the other hand, I do not want game to be necessary to attract my future wife though.

So, the conclusion I’ve come to for now it to slowly learn the basics of game over time, in particular confident movement and posture, outcome independence, and social/conversational skills. The kind of basic, underlying attitudes that will enhance my life apart from picking up girls, and will not require me to continually monitor myself and my techniques to keep my wife I gamed from leaving me.

I also plan to get myself into shape.

Apart from that, I won’t meet a girl to be my wife if I don’t get over my approach anxiety, so I plan to practice approaching women, not really gaming them, but simply to get over the anxiety.

Next month I’m going out of the country for a few weeks with family. I plan to practice some approaches to get over the anxiety then, when I have opportunities, as there will be less, but still some, social risk to (awkwardly) approaching women from another country who I’ll never see again. We’ll see how that goes.

The goal is to have the base attitudes of game by 30. Then depending on what I choose for my life, I can add on to the base as necessary.

The Bookshelf: Bang

I just finished reading Roosh’s game manual Bang.

The writing style for the book is straightforward and explanatory. It’s competently written, clear, and easy to understand. The book is fairly short (155 pages) and filled with information on running game. Roosh doesn’t waste your reading time by padding the book with fluff. In other words, this is written in the exact way you are looking for a manual to be written.

Roosh doesn’t pull punches in the book. He’s very clear on how much work, disappointment, and rejection is necessary to learn game. He does not promise miracles and does not promise an easy time. It’s good to know he’s no overselling his methods; that kind of honesty builds trust. If you plan to learn game, knowing the costs and benefits accurately beforehand.

****

The book is divided into 5 main sections (and an introduction and appendix).

The first section is internal game. It’s short (10 pages), and is focused on the necessity of building confidence and what kind of attitude an alpha needs to maintain. This section and the first part of the second section (which talks of attitudes to approach) are probably the most fundamental parts of the book; without the attitude the techniques, routines, and advice in the rest of the book likely won’t matter much.

The second section, and the large bulk of the book, is early game.  He explains “the vibe”, how to approach, discusses venue selection, gives some routines, advises on conversations, discusses touch and escalation, and generally goes through all the basic game stuff for meeting and approaching girls to get either a venue change (ie. go back to her place) or a phone number.

The third section is middle game. In this, Roosh explains how to turn the phone number into a date with phone game and how to run a first (and possibly second) date with the purpose of getting into the girl’s bedroom.

The fourth section is late game. It’s describes how get sex from the position of being inside her house, with a small section on post-sex dating and relationships.

The fifth section, end game, is very short (4 pages). It’s a combination of encouragement not to give up, some advice on finding your niche to improve your odds, and some of the benefits of having game.

The appendix gives some nuggets of advice on a number of various situations such as “She Lives With Her Parents” and “You Forget Her Name”. There’s also a little cheat sheet of the six most important principles.

****

If you want to learn game this is the book to buy. It is clear introductory guide on game and how to learn it.

But because it is an introductory guide to game,  if you’re already proficient at game you’ll probably know most of this already.  Even if you aren’t proficient with game, but you’ve been around the game portion of the manosphere for a while, you’re probably familiar with most of the information in Bang. While you might learn some things here or there, the value of this book will likely be limited for you.

On the other hand, to get most game information requires sifting through hundreds of posts on a number of blogs. Bang, due to its systematic nature, could function very well as a reference guide for the experienced player who needs to quickly brush up on a particular aspect of game.

Now the question you ask is, does the advice work? I can’t really tell you from personal experience, as I am not an alpha and I don’t really have game,  but it’s commonly accepted in the manosphere that game does work and that Roosh is one of the masters so, take that as you may.

****

The book is primarily aimed at Night/Club game. I’ve already explained my issues with club game (it just doesn’t seem fun), so I won’t go into them further. There’s some information for day game, but it’s definitely secondary.

I am more interested in Roosh’s Day Bang, but decided to read this first based on a different review. I plan to read Day Bang in the future in will review it here when I do. I’m sure I’ll get more out of that.

****

Conclusion: If you are looking to learn game or read an introduction to game, you should get Bang. If you are already proficient at game or have already boned up on game theory (pun intended), this book may not be necessary; you probably know most of it already, although the systematic nature of it can make it a good reference. If you are not interested in game, you probably already know that this book isn’t for you.

If you are looking for day game advice, look elsewhere. If you are looking for marriage game advice, look elsewhere.

Related: I have previously reviewed Roosh’s 30 Bangs.

Lightning Round – 2012/06/12

Welcome back to the Lightning Round, we’ve got a large one today.

The emotions and our genetic drives of red-pill nihilism are just as enslaving and meaningless as blue-pill delusions. In a somewhat related post, Roissy talks of how players lose the ability to find divine love in their quest for meaningless sex.

Feminism is the ideological justification for female childlessness. No matter how much utopian ideologies may ignore it; choices have consequences.

Apocalypse Nowish gives one of the clearest, most straightforward explanations of how the banking system and the government are colluding to rob you.

In surprising news, a study shows government size and economic growth are negatively correlated. The Captain had already pointed out what could have been.

In related news, it seems Americans lost 20 years of wealth  between 2007 and 2010, and everybody makes less except seniors. Related: We are becoming a rental generation and the government refuses to learn from past mistakes.

But, Fearsome Pirate has hope that progressivism can be smashed, while Zero Hedge calls us to have courage in the fight against the tyrants.

Some are not so hopeful. Noting that in fact, Canada is actively destroying itself.

Zero Hedge says bring it on, the solution to our problems is collapse.

The Captain asks “Is it me, or is there something wrong with everybody else?”, and concludes it’s everybody else. Red-pill thinking requires a certain amount of arrogance.

Wintery Knight points out that young Christians are abandoning the fight in an anti-intellectual compartmentalization of the faith. Will S comments. If Christians give up on changing the culture, what then do we have?

****

Much has been written on Christian relationships in the manosphere in the last week:

Athol notes that the Bible was written for when men were all alphas under the law, so it recommends beta behaviour, but when culture betaized men, this created hardcore mode for Christian men.

Dalrock points out that the celibate boyfriend is non-biblical. All Christian relationships should be geared towards sex as soon as possible, within marriage.

UMan coins the phrase girligious and notes that Christian marriage has the advantage of a “a rule book written thousands of years ago” in our battle to preserve traditional marriage.

****

I knew men committed more suicide, but I never knew it was quite this bad. One possible cause could be that boys are persecuted by the public schools.

Wintery Knight points out the lie that homosexual couples are as good for raising children as straight couples. Related: A homosexual Mormon enjoys a happy an fulfilling heterosexual marriage and family.

Some people still blindly defend the worthless university system and encourage the degree bubble.

Every time I doubt the Conservative Party (and voting in general), they do some small thing that encourages me.

Ummm… No. Chivalry is for ladies, and there are few ladies nowadays.

(h/t: Instapundit, SDA, Wintery Knight, Save Capitalism)