I think that the heart of the issue is that more men nowadays feel that they just don't matter. Not to society nor to anyone else. This leads to a situation where they will simply sacrifice less and try to enjoy more.
So why would men feel that way?
My initial thoughts were that perhaps it is due to the recent demonization of men and the removal of some of their privileges, while the burdens (selective service, unfair family court) remained. While I think that these could be contributing (accelerating) factors, I don't think this is at the heart of the matter. We see similar trends in other countries, where lots of (young) men are essentially checking out from society. Japan is an example of a country where this problem has likely progressed further than in the US. My initial thoughts don't fit, because they couldn't explain why this same process would happen in countries with a pretty different culture from the US.
I'm stumped. Perhaps it's somehow linked to the falling testosterone levels in men that we have observed?
I'm willing to bet very few of these social dropouts just lay in bed like vegetables all day, they're playing games, consuming media, doing something. And unfortunately that has a better, quicker mental payoff than going to work.
I think the problem is that in older societies you didnt have much else to do but work outside of certain hours because of strict social taboos. Work was the fruit of exploiting men's simple behavior of looking for something to keep busy. Now video games and YouTube are accessible all day long as long as you have a computer or phone and internet, which benefits can provide. I sont think there's any complex civilization level social phenomenon, we just gave men something better to do and the means to do it
What your comment reminded me of was Sebastian Junger's book Tribe. One of the central tenets of that book is that people need to feel valued by their tribe/family/society. Lack of this can lead to mental illness. Possibly manifesting as the type of malaise outlined in the article.
Maybe one way to address this is to collectively start valuing those jobs that we've denoted as "low status" for the last decades. The jobs like plumbers, linemen, etc. that help make society work.
We automated away manliness. It's worth less these days. The least valued men are now valued even less. Frankly, I think these disaffected men should go back to the countryside where it's still relatively cheap and grown their own food and drugs. It's not economical to grow your own calories the old fashioned way, but neither is collecting welfare. And it'd be a heck of a lot gentler on the psyche to create something with your own hands. I remember Richard Feynman talking about researching topics that already had been written about just for the joy of discovery. It wasn't needed, but was done recreationally.
Most of the jobs that nobody wants are outsourced to illegal immigrant labor -- the housing boom of the 2000's was built on their backs and their hard word.
Most of the tradies are pulling $50-80k USD, and that's a lot of hard work. That's good money if you're 20 year old, but a Network Engineer with a CCNA, some kinda degree, and 5 years experience will pull $105k USD in a big US city, all while at an air-conditioned desk. And those are the well paid tradesworkers; basic labor and less in demand trades often pays like shit, and doesn't provide benefits.
I ain't saying you can't make good money doing it -- I knew a carpenter who was like #1 ranked on Angie's List and pulled well north of 6 figures -- but those are the exceptions.
I can't help but feel that this belief is understandably motivated by a desire to see oneself as belonging to the bottom 80%, rather than belong to the bottom 20%, or worse.
An in the online tools, physical attractiveness and the first impression matter much more, vide https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11469834.
Isn't everyone feeling this? Maybe men are feeling the ways that others have felt for a long time?
I agree that the loss of privilege is definitely happening, which is honestly a good thing imo, but I'd tie this back to greater cultural unease about one's economic future more than anything else. Most of the folks I know are in their 30s and don't believe they'll ever retire.
If the system is squeezing every ounce of your labor out and you're only seeing a small return on it, what's keeping you motivated?
>If the system is squeezing every ounce of your labor out and you're only seeing a small return on it, what's keeping you motivated?
But by any metric you choose these things were worse in the past. We didn't have safety nets for the elderly. You worked in a factory and not only were the wages bad but the work was dangerous. I don't see how these variables explain the problem now since they had a worse value in the past.
In periods of increasing wealth inequality, I'd expect less class mobility and increased anxiety and hopelessness.
Combine that anxiety with climate change, political gridlock, loss of privilege, a sense that retirement will never happen, and generally feeling like your parents generation had it better... I can see why people might check out. All these things seem so systemically inevitable.
Where? In the US?
Post-WW2 saw the rest of the world blown to bits, and the US and USSR being the only two powers left standing. Incomes shot through the roof for the average USA-ian because everyone else who could have done cheap labor was dead or busy rebuilding.
Pre World Wars there was plenty of deep, deep poverty in the US, and there was much labor unrest (e.g. the Pullman Strike, etc.) because of it.
Please don't spread misinformation. Take an study like Sex differences in addiction (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286725/). If anything the propensity of the female psyche is more likely to become dependent on dopamine, but its an effect that only impact around 10-16% of the population.
> the main impetus for men to seek status of any kind is to impress women and provide a legacy for families.
Games provide an readily accessed environment for status competition among men. Women also gained a similar environment, called social networks. In both environments the objective is less about impressing the opposite sex and more about dominating the same sex. Unsurprisingly, if we look at what young men and young women spend their free time we see similar mount of excess from men choosing to play video games and women play the social network game.
With women reaching equality in the work force it seems that men are also moving closer to equality in free time, especially at younger ages.
There are a lot of similarities at least on the surface, definitely an interesting one to think about.
>men choosing to play video games
is just an extension of this
>status competition among men
and this
>With women reaching equality in the work force it seems that men are also moving closer to equality in free time, especially at younger ages.
is not necessarily an axiomatic good because of the above mentioned points.
> Enabled by the preponderance of easily accessible government money, drugs, etc, these men...
The benefits we're talking about here are disability benefits, and the intended outcome of those is that some people will be able to stay at home all day.
"Fixing" this problem by curtailing the benefits would not fix anything, but rather just reintroduce the problems that the benefits solved (like increased economic burdens on loved ones, homelessness, etc.).
Another way to address a partial fix is to decriminalize getting a job after previously being on disability. Currently that is used as evidence that there was no previous disability and can lead to prosecution for fraud and attempts to claw back those previous benefits.
Warning: There's probably a bunch of mathematical errors ahead.
This example does not take other assistance programs into account like snap/EBT, fuel assistance, cars for low income families, Medicaid benefits, etc. Snap/EBT can be $200+/mo iirc, fuel assistance 200-1k/yr, Medicaid for a family is $600+/mo. Assuming 100ebt/mo, 500 fuel/yr, 600/mo Medicaid that's an additional 8.9k.
6000 housing 1200 ebt 500 fuel 7200 Medicaid ~15k ×1.3 for taxes = 19.5k in benefits that cap if you make 1k more. 25+19.5=44.5k
The parent earning 25k would need to nearly double their income to fill the gap between left by benefits they no longer qualify for.
This didn't consider health care deductibles, dental (children get dental on Medicaid), or out of pocket expensive covered by Medicaid.
My health insurance plans max out of pocket is 8k. Add that.
Low income Families are also eligible for school lunch assistance, subsidized day care/after school programs.
School breakfast and lunch at my school was 5.5/day/180 days. ~1k.
Day care, summer programs,holiday programs, and after school programs can add 20k/yr.
Add another 29k. (37.7)
Which brings us to 78.2k
This parent who smartly took advantage of every opportunity they could recieves 200% their take home in assistance. Now after filing hundreds of forms to take advantage of these programs how much time do you think they'll have to spend towards tripling their income?
How much time will they even have to spend with their children between the constant battles with bureaucracies for benefits and their job to spend with their child?
Those partly able bodied had a much more diverse array of employment/living arrangements that society accepted. i.e. you could be partly disabled and get yourself a live in job as a domestic or farm hand. This ensured your room and board was covered and that daily you worked with a group of people who understood your needs. But it virtually guaranteed you'd never have a home or family of your own.
The able bodied shirkers who didn't feel like working would do a few siffert thingsb, bum off family, work as cons or professional criminals, or find themselves a sweet job with a group of like minded shirkers or lackies that would cover for them.
This changed a bit with the middle of the 20th centuury needing so many workers but then the U.S. unleashed women into the work force. The vast majority of them were bound to outshine the bottom 11% of men easily.
Is that actually the case?
The article takes issue with the narrative that supply and demand are involved ... but I don't think this article proves this idea that folks are enjoying government benefits and that results in them not working. The article certainly mentions it, but is pretty short on evidence.
Plenty of US states have been cutting benefits, and they're not seeing people go back to work.
The government benefits certainly make it easier to not work, but the article does pain to say that correlation is not causation - it is a multi-factor phenomenon. Government benefits may enable the behavior but it isn't a cause.
What really had my brain going is why is this not the case in the Western Europe? Social benefits are just as generous and marriage rates are lower than in the United States.
According to the article in the US marriage and children were the strongest statistical differentiator between men who stop seeking work and those that do.
All I could come up with is that in the US it is the pain medication and the fact that it is easier to isolate yourself and hole up in your home.
Can you explain? Western Europe by and large suffers from the same problem. According to Brookings (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ccf_201...), while the US has a faster rate of male labor de-participation, the UK, Canada, and France are experiencing similar issues (Figure 2). No idea about the cause though.
Many male, high-school dropouts have decided it's a better deal to just coast by on disability and money from friends/family then to work for $10/hour at McDonald's or similar.
The way to bring them back into the workforce, IMO, is to offer them a better deal. If low-wage jobs in the U.S. were as good as they are in Eastern Europe, maybe more men would take them.
"In America (USA) you ARE your job; it defines you. The American Way is to be hard working and self sufficient. If you can't do that, there are tremendous psychological effects. You can't blame these men for giving up."
It is absolutely true that worth and career are highly correlated here in the US. Most of us talk about work even when we aren't at work. I think this is probably the big difference between US and Europe having read it.
FWIW, the same is true in Europe. Rich people define themselves by the method in which they get rich.
> Most of us talk about work even when we aren't at work
People on hacker news are mostly upper middle class.
Are you saying low wage wage jobs are good in EE? I can assure you that's not the case. Millions of low wage workes from EE left for Western Europe upon joining the EU. They still do low wage work, but the pay is so much higher in the UK, Germany, Norway etc.
https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/EN/Leistungen... (under "Invalidity pension")
More details in German: https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/DE/Rente/Allg...
Maybe in the state in which you live. I am currently on state (CA) disability.
[1] https://ca.db101.org/ca/programs/income_support/sdi/faqs.htm...
I'd argue that this isn't inherently bad, but ultimately this can amount to "eating one's seed corn". In the long run, twenty-somethings that do this risk a financially more perilous life and a lower chance of being able to give their kids a good start in life.
as for what you can do for your friends, there's probably not much. the best you can do is to live well yourself and be a good example for them. also, be careful. there is some truth to the saying, "you become the average of your five best friends." if you get too involved in their day-to-day, you will experience friction when it comes to accomplishing your own goals.
I'm betting on housing cost and low quality of life for youngs, but well, I do have very little evidence to substantiate it.
the common thread I see is that living with their parents simply offers a higher standard of living than they could have if they moved out. I live in a relatively low COL area, so they would certainly be able to make ends meet if they cut the cord. but they would eat worse food, have a smaller room, and little money left over to save or go out. I imagine it's hard to find to motivation to work harder just to move out and decrease one's standard of living. I was very fortunate to land a good job straight out of college where I was actually able to increase my standard of living after moving out (although I do miss my mom's cooking).
Playing video games is monumentally boring after a short while. I just can't understand people who disappear into them.
Even the game I wrote for myself ( classicempire.com ) I rarely actually played, I'd spend my time trying to make the computer AI play better.
My day to day work as a programmer just doesn't push me mentally very hard. The kind of deep, exhaustive thinking I needed to get through difficult CS classes is unnecessary in most of my work (and the pacing is rather languid, most of the time).
Shhh - need to keep us compiler devs' salaries up!
Just hang out in the forums forum.dlang.org for a while and you'll get sense of what's going.
If you're ambitious, internally motivated, don't need to be micro-managed, and are a crackerjack programmer, you'll be welcome.
I’m not sure where the games narrative comes from. From the image on top of the article?
When every attempt at success is multiple times less likely because of those factors it's easy to get lost in games which are designed to feed that sense of achievement.
Women did not exist the job market after internet access became widespread. It is thus hard to see any relation between access to pornography and employment rates outside of any gender stereotyping regarding both men and women.
Why do some people go see therapists when they could just read self help books? It's the same thing right?
Where is this from, sounds interesting?
Interesting. This anecdotally appears to be the case. Is there anything to back this point up?
On the other hand, consider the woman who's still single with no kids, maybe living at home with her parents, with no job. I suspect there'd be a lot less demonizing. Maybe even less so than towards the men, who are "supposed to be providing for a family".
How so? You were given no anecdotes in the parent comment, so I don't understand why you think this is anecdotally demonstrated.
https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/m#/faq/what-current-poverty-rate...
Do you have evidence for this assertion? Curious
The big open question here is what exactly should these people doing instead? 'Getting a job' is meaningless in itself - it isn't an end goal like 'secure my family's future'. If someone can survive comfortably without working then that is exactly what they should be doing; work isn't especially fun unless someone is a bit lucky with what they enjoy. The obvious 'solution' to me is to find a way to make these men more attractive to women so they can all start a family too; but the big problem there is there might not be enough women and they might not be interested in families so that is another dead-on-arrival idea.
The only concerning part of the picture is the rise in suicides and the likely fact that the experience is lonely and unpleasent. The not-working part could be construed the silver lining in the story.
As someone planning on retiring early, I completely agree, but these men are dependent on government benefits, which, being taken from my paycheck, are lengthening the amount of time I have before I can retire.
I mean, you're not technically wrong, but that accounts for a minuscule amount of the excess value you create. Unless you're your own boss/running your own business (I'm assuming you're not since you're talking about your paycheck), most that excess value is taken by the company owners you're working for. But it doesn't show up on your paycheck, so I guess its out of mind, and its certainly easier/safer to blame those with less power than you.
when I got put on disability by my doctor, you weren't paying for me to not work. I was, because I've been paying into the fund for my entire career just like you have
The system works because most people never draw a dime.
Sure, as long as they are able to afford this on their own dime. Why should others have to work so some can stay at home all day?
they don't have to, they can stay at home too but stay at home can be very depressing.
Also, if society is so plentiful that it can handle a certain percentage of people doing nothing but living for pleasure, why not let them? Work is not valuable except for its product, and if its product is not needed, the work is worthless.
If you are using work to bend adult people to a specific ideology (making the worker the product of his/her own work), you're being inefficient - it's not the job of a profession, company, etc. to provide social or moral training.
Your comment seems to indicate a serious hatred of pleasure.
I don't mind working hard, but if we don't have to, there's no point in it.
On the contrary. My comment indicates a serious love affair with pleasure, but not a particular fondness for fleeting pleasure. The things I mention -- family, dependents, and responsibility -- are a pathway to long-term happiness, satisfaction, and ecstasy beyond the reach of so many.
> I'd rather the losers of society stay in their house, high and playing video games, rather than trying to impress women and provide a family legacy by engaging in gangster behavior to get money.
Well, no it's quite the opposite really. First of all, stop with the strawmanning. The men in this article are not 'gangsters'. They are otherwise law-abiding men. Secondly, you are employing a circular reasoning. You call these men losers because they are unmarried and play video games all day and don't work. You then tell me to not cast judgement on their idleness. I am not the one calling them 'losers'.
These men being married and productive would not see them engaging in any kind of 'gangster' behavior. That is not a typical way to marriage and productive family life.
> I don't mind working hard, but if we don't have to, there's no point in it.
Well that's the point. Hard work is a path to happiness, but it's not one the human mind is naturally oriented towards unless there's some point to it.
I really think ultimately this is rooted in trying to impose a transactional or "karma bank" nature on things beyond humanity. "If you are good, the world will be nice", but the world/God/what is beyond humanity doesn't obey human rules, because it isn't human. You'll impress other human beings with this mindset, and that's extremely useful and will definitely reduce anxiety if you are among a group of people that recognize that, but if you are dealing with something beyond humanity, it's invalid.
For example, someone gets cancer/murdered, and they/their loved one think(s) they are being punished, or someone knows someone else who has cancer/got murdered/suffered X great loss purely at random, and they try to live a good life thinking on some subconscious level they can avoid it. It's tempting, because no one likes to be scared or out of control, but it's false and doesn't even work.
For companies to swoop in and be allowed or even encouraged to advantage of that--let's soak a third of your precious free time on this planet so you can pay a guilt/fear debt imposed by others out of fear and uncertainity--is terrible.
I've known a lot of the sort of people described in the article over the years and one of the big factors that seems to dictate whether you love or hate the infinite free time lifestyle is what you do with that time. Doing nothing but consuming leaves you in a sad spot, while the full-time wiki editors, fansubbers, forum mods and guide-writers do a lot better in terms of self-respect and general mental state.
I think the phenomenon of the NEET is here to stay in rich societies, so I'm hoping that those affected are increasingly able to channel their energies into productive and rewarding outlets rather than drowning forever in vapid consumption.
I'm not sure that work is only valuable for its product, though, unless you expand the definition of "product" to include changes in the worker. There are certain forms of work we realize this about: we call them exercises or practice. But it applies to a lot of work whose point might be primarily understood as production.
That isn't the only issue at hand, though. The number of unsolved problems or things that could just use dutiful attention in the world isn't so small that we can just write off hundreds of thousands of people from engagement with them.
We seem to have a culture and institutions that increasingly leave a gap between some people and these attentions/duties, though. And that sounds like a problem worth reflecting on.
But there are people dying of hunger in the world, disseases that require funds to find a cure, infrastructure to be payed for and so on.
So if you pay your taxes, even if you consider your work "meaningless", your tax money, if spent well, is not meaningless.
Sure it's better than them joining crime, but its a sad state of affairs and not exactly optimal.
Some societies have been plentiful enough for a couple hundreds years to afford people not working/not net contributing, but those people would still be a burden, at least to missed development.
And, I'm okay playing hypothetical, but theorizing should be clear. You're theorizing and your theory is most likely wrong, and only minimally likely to be true. Due to the fact that for any issue, there are more theories that are wrong than right, those are the starting odds of theorization.
And now more directly addressing your partocular theory, why do you believe people would rather choose video games over a vocational activity given exposure, access, and training to both?
> You're theorizing and your theory is most likely wrong, and only minimally likely to be true. Due to the fact that for any issue, there are more theories that are wrong than right, those are the starting odds of theorization.
Certainly, if one picked theories at absolute random. Random theories would be things like 'men aren't working because elephants are gray' or 'men aren't working because a new sunspot occurred' or 'men aren't working because harry potter is really a chimpanzee'. On the other hand, if theories are picked in accord with the data presented in an article on the topic, and with an understanding of human nature, as well an understanding of the limits of causation (like, realizing the color of elephants does not typically cause changes in employment), then there is a much greater likelihood of theories being correct.
I would really recommend phrasing your comments better. Aside from being absolutely ridiculous (theories that humans formulate are very rarely picked at random, and you cannot pretend to understand the probability distribution of their truth value), your very comment is predicated itself on an arbitrary theory (that humans do indeed pick theories at random from the very large, perhaps infinite set of theories). Applying your own logic, your own theory is very likely to be wrong as well.
> And now more directly addressing your partocular theory, why do you believe people would rather choose video games over a vocational activity given exposure, access, and training to both?
Because video games are fun and I would rather sit at home and play video games if the government were paying me money and my parents hadn't made me afraid of going to hell if I defraud the government. Behind every man's opinion is his own assessment of his own character. I am not a saint, and I doubt most men are.
Thank you. I just wanted you to state that your comment was pure conjecture. It isn't always needed to be explicit about this, but on this particular topic, there is quite a lot of bias and opinions flying around, lots of judgement calls, lots of existing stereotypes, and lots of inherited beliefs. So I think it is exactly the kind of topic where there is a need of such transparency. Similarly, it is in such a topic that I will be much more critical.
Alright, back on topic to your specific opinion:
> Because video games are fun and I would rather sit at home and play video games if the government were paying me money and my parents hadn't made me afraid of going to hell if I defraud the government. Behind every man's opinion is his own assessment of his own character. I am not a saint, and I doubt most men are.
So is your opinion coming from a place where you feel like you can relate to these men? And that you'd choose that path as well, if it wasn't from social pressure and your ingrained moral values?
I personally can't, as I wouldn't choose to sit at home and smoke weed and play video-games. Given the choice, there are many more things I would rather do, and it isn't because of social pressure or morals that I would make those other choices. I know many men who, when they have a free weekend, do not choose to spend it smoking weed and playing video games, including myself, for example. I know some men who do though, most of them employed, except for one who isn't, it also happen he comes from the least privileged background.
So as you said and I agree, since we're at the phase where, in order to make a better than random assessment of the situation, we use the most accessible data point we have: our own life experience. I'm afraid that my data point contradicts yours. It isn't social pressures and imbued moral values that prevent me from choosing to smoke weed and play video-game while cashing in on a disability check, it is just that those aren't the activities that I'm most interested in.
So, maybe I'm the outlier, and the majority of men would all favor video games and weed, but I somehow doubt that is the case. In any way, it is clear to me at this point that we need much more than our personal life experience to understand this particular phenomenon.
Who can really blame them? For the vast majority of history, the main impetus for men to seek status of any kind is to impress women and provide a legacy for families. As the article mentions, men who are cut off from each of these simply stop participating in the kinds of behavior that make modern society possible. Enabled by the preponderance of easily accessible government money, drugs, etc, these men, lacking any legacy or dependents to speak of, would rather bide their time hedonistically. Some, realizing their situation, choose not to bide their time at all (look at the rise of middle aged male suicides).
Unfortunately, the two causes the article cites (dissolution of family structure and rise of single male households) are unaddressed. This is understandable as even mentioning these problems in high society today would be frowned upon. The article admits this, but, the writer, being part of the same society he's criticizing, falls into the same trap.