So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
Probably similar to the reason a gambler would keep playing even when they're way up and the odds are not in their favor going forward. They could walk away from the table, stick the money in an index fund and enjoy the benefits of it for years to come, or they could go another round and maybe double or quintuple their money!!!
More directly, people in general are bad at considering the long term costs of an action when they perceive a short term benefit that would remove what they perceive as a source of discomfort.
I also think that women, in particular, when they've grown up being showered with male attention, and the had their pick of suitors, they expect that they'll still be a hot commodity once they're out of their marriage. They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.
I don't know how to get across to a woman whose recollection of the dating world is "I went on fun dates with hot guys who paid for everything" that if she tries that now she'll find herself rejected more often and her pickings will be much slimmer.
(This doesn't explain why college educated women are more likely to initiate divorce, I suspect that has more to do with sheer social status)
IMPORTANT EDIT: college educated women are not 'more likely' to initiate divorce than other groups, only that college educated women who get a divorce are the ones initiating it 90% of the time, and husbands 10%. College educated women are less likely to be involved in a divorce either way.
This is not to say that no women end up happy after initiating divorce. My own mother seems to have ended up being quite happy after divorcing and remarrying (my dad is doing alright too). Just that you would have to take claims that they're happy with a grain of salt because they will be VERY vested in projecting the appearance of happiness and retroactively justifying their decision even if from the financial side of it they are OBJECTIVELY worse off.
Like seriously, how many people would you expect to pull the divorce rip cord, find themselves alone and relatively poor (compared to their previous status) and just as unhappy as before, and would then openly proclaim "I made a big mistake, it was all my own doing, and I have irretrievably worsened my quality of life!"
Does the ego even permit that sort of open admission?
While I think these positions are unstable I’m not sure the right could move the country to the stable positions. Which would be widespread knowledge that a great deal of disparate outcome is from hbd and on pride matters getting the country to agree that lgbtq lifestyles are not desirable (which was the world pre-2008)
A GOP candidate could probably tread out a policy platform that mostly bridges the gap between the idea of libertarianism for adults but paternalism for children by focusing in on the family unit as a core, fundamental, and necessary component of the nation's future success, on a purely pragmatic level, rather than falling back to religious arguments. And thus government is as a purely practical matter going to treat family formation and the creation and raising of children as paramount matters of concern (the Constitution says "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" after all), while ultimately leaving any person who opts not to form such families alone.
That is, with a looming demographics crisis, the only way that there is a guaranteed future for the country is kids, who will go on to raise their own kids, etc.
So pushing Marriage to the forefront as a fundamental social institution again, and creating a legal framework for giving [married] people who produce AND raise children incentives, protections, and stability to bolster their social status and social capital. AND emphasizing that it is not the job of teachers, bureaucrats, or pundits to instill values in the children, and thus there should be near-zero tolerance for parties that interfere in that relationship between parent and child, doubly so if they hold positions of trust bestowed upon them by government. And in exchange, marriages are harder to unilaterally terminate.
This leaves a gaping hole as to WHAT values 'ought' to be instilled in children, and at least requires us to ask if there are any values that emphatically should not be instilled in children.
But for my purposes, I'm happy to say that parents should have the ability to raise their kids according to the values the parents, themselves, support AND ALSO that kids shouldn't be undergoing irreversible procedures that they lack the philosophical and psychological ability to consent to, even if they're given legal ability to consent.
A hard line drawn in the sand, "leave the kids alone" but also "leave the gays alone, too!" is probably enough to build a winning national coalition on, conditional on all the other policies that get clustered in. Especially if backed by the well-founded premise that "children raised in intact biological families universally have better outcomes" and therefore the good of the children is best achieved by privileging intact families.
And here's the more wacky proposal that might ruin the ability to build a coalition, but might be key to making this whole thing work:
I think that rather than a blanket age at which someone transitions to adulthood and is emancipated from their parents... there should be some kind of more literal rite of passage (not literally this one, mind) that, upon completion, triggers said emancipation. So children who are precocious and 'ready' for adulthood earlier can get their freedom, and those who are, let us say, "stunted" may remain the ward of their parents for several additional years, possibly into their early twenties.
And parents, as part of that legal framework mentioned above, will be given various legal privileges based on how many children they raise who successfully achieve emancipation.
This would give the parents some additional incentive to actively prepare their children to become independent adults, but also ensure that kids who aren't really ready are kept under a watchful, protective eye a bit longer. I think there are a number of goals this achieves, but one is that it does help prevent the risk of 'grooming' wherein older adults will target immature teens who are on the cusp of reaching the age of consent by exploiting their immaturity, since now the legality of having sex with them is no longer based on them hitting an arbitrary date.
I dunno, the whole issue is that the changes that will actually work almost certainly have to come as a package, and it would be hard for a GOP candidate to achieve that whole package without a 'mandate' from the voters and the will to stand ground, so it is probably more than can be achieved in a single term or even two terms.
But does overturning the ban on domestic abusers getting guns really do a lot to aid that original purpose?
Unless I'm misremembering, the actual ruling was regarding domestic violence restraining orders. (PDF WARNING). Which is to say, people who have not been tried for or convicted of the crime of domestic abuse/battery, but rather where there's someone who can convince a judge that they are in danger of violence from this person, and thus an injunction to keep that person away is a necessary remedy.
So a person against whom such an injunction is granted is NOT a convicted criminal just because the injunction was granted.
I think this is an important distinction, as it also brings up the need for due process protections. The standards for proving a domestic violence injunction are much lower than for obtaining a criminal conviction, and they're usually considered a civil matter (i.e. it is the person acting on their own behalf, not the state acting on behalf of society, no prosecutor is even involved). An individual can request that a given person be forced to stay away from them if they're a threat, but it makes much less sense for a person to demand that that someone else must sacrifice additional rights in their entirety.
So a law which removes ALL of a person's firearm rights on the sayso of a single person is a pretty serious restriction to impose on somebody who has not been arrested, much less convicted of a crime.
In terms of protecting people's rights from infringement without some proven criminal conduct I think it does help that original purpose, yes.
Indeed, an injunction that takes away a person's gun rights doesn't provide much extra protection to the alleged victim. If that person wants to ignore that restriction and hurt someone, doubtful that piece of paper will stop them. So I don't think victims' safety is hampered much by the firearm ban.
If the state can convict the person of domestic violence crimes, then we're in the world of violent criminals, and all kinds of punishments, including prison and removal of gun rights are on the table.
Any suggestions?
At the broadest, I could see there being some set of standardized tests that try to capture the would-be adults' actual understanding of the world and the implications of entering certain kinds of contracts and relationships. Do they understand how compound interest works? Do they get that sexual activity can lead to pregnancies, STDs, and emotional entanglement? And do they have enough understanding of their own biology to get that certain medical procedures are irreversible and certain drugs are inherently addictive and 'harmful?' If they meet some threshold of understanding, then they get their official 'adulting license' and can be permitted to enter the world as an independent individual.
This is basically how we handle driver's licenses, just expanded out to other privileges of adulthood.
This is, broadly speaking, how we could tell that someone possesses the psychological prerequisites to engage with other 'adults' as equals and can truly consent to various contracts that they'll be entering into.
Now, in an ideal world, "graduated from high school" SHOULD be sufficient to qualify someone as a Level One Adult. I don't think I need to argue the point that it is, demonstrably, NOT enough to prep someone for adulthood in the modern world.
I do think there would need to be some practical/skills based element to it. The thing I like about the Ant-Glove test in that link I posted is it directly checks the mental fortitude of the person subjected to it. Can they endure extreme discomfort without complaint or having a complete mental breakdown. Babies will cry at the slightest feeling of pain. Adults can endure hours of suffering if they believe it will improve their lives or their children's lives.
So what sort of tests are there that someone who is mentally stable and mature would pass handily, but would tend to filter out those who are unable to control their emotions and are repelled by discomfort and are too impulsive to endure painful experiences for later rewards?
Based on my personal preferences, I might suggest some kind of demonstration of martial prowess. Fight 10 different guys in a row, five minutes per round, with 5 minutes of rest in between each round. No need to win, just prove you can push through pain and discomfort and can at least keep your damn hands up by the end of it.
Or how about tying it to your first point and make it necessary to have raised a child who graduates high school?
... funny enough there's an element of sense to this, with the argument being that one doesn't fully understand what it means to be an adult until you've been on both sides of the child-rearing equation.
Yeah, there's a particularly nasty tendency recently for these videos that kick off rage mobs to involve people who are literally just trying to live their lives and suddenly they find themselves in a forced dilemma with a camera shoved in their face with no warning or prep.
For instance, some guy on the NY subway who is just trying to get to a destination unscathed.
At least in the situations with, e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse or George Zimmerman (remember him? over ten years ago!) they were arguably inserting themselves into situations where a conflict and confrontation were likely, so there's a certain amount of risk assumption there.
But this trend of depicting ordinary people, probably dealing with various other stressors, just trying to go about their normal days and not intentionally interfering with others, forced into a standoff where they either back down and allow themselves to be trod upon, or they stand their ground and get mobbed by an uncaring internet posse for their 'racism'... it is antisocial in the extreme, if you ask me.
And there's no obvious way to restrict it other than, perhaps make it broadly illegal to publish videos taken of other people in public places, which is surely going to be impossible to enforce at the end of the day.
Interesting point.
I've argued elsewhere that martial arts gyms/dojos are pretty much the last bastion of healthy male masculinity that hasn't been invaded by woke culture. Because end of the day, there is simply no amount of social maneuvering that will make up for the strength differential between men and women, and you can't 'fake' martial arts skills without willing participants, which makes entryism nigh-impossible.
But yeah, despite pressure from both sides of the political spectrum, strip clubs and various other sex-adjacent spaces where men can pay to skip the formalities and just get to the T&A do a pretty good job filtering as well.
Implicitly, the females in these spaces are there to look pretty and be quiet (unless it is part of the tease) and this is 'enforced' when they rely on earning tips.
Lefties have given some cover to these places too, by being 'sex-positive,' 'pro-slut,' and 'anti-christian' to the extent they like that dens of vice piss off a certain segment of the right, and (probably) provide a wedge to bring in LGBT matters.
But yeah, the fact that guys can use these places to form reliable partnerships and create networks that aren't so legible while filtering out guys who have hangups that might turn into liabilities later makes them useful.
I would definitely say I prefer the Dojo as the healthy alternative, but if it works and persists across decades, hard to say its doing something 'wrong.'
Excellent post, I'll just add my 2 cents (earned from my legal career) on this question:
But if you can swap in virtually any attorney into the slot without affecting the outcome, how would any individual attorney stand out from the rest?
I have been on both sides of the equation at this point. Both a public defender and handling private crim defense for, among others, DUI cases. My experience may not be particularly applicable outside of my state or even county, but I think there's a lot of basic ideas that are near-universal.
The one factor that can actually allow you to 'stand out' is earning the reputation as the guy who absolutely can and will go to trial and give the prosecutor a run for their money regardless of the true merits of the underlying case. Who is never afraid of the hard work and showmanship required in jury trials.
Because when so much of the job of criminal defense is just keeping the client calm (and out of custody) and negotiating a plea deal, the attorneys can reliably coast for years without ever being forced to pick a jury and try a case. They get in a mode in which trials are a serious inconvenience and this effects how they handle clients, indeed they may even try to persuade them to take plea deals to AVOID trial risks, even on very winnable cases!
And those who haven't flexed that muscle in a while are generally KNOWN to be less likely to push a case all the way through to trial. Maybe it's even rumored that they're scared of actual trials, where the consequences can be unpredictable.
And I genuinely think that's the factor that makes any meaningful difference. All attorneys have access to the same legal databases, they attend the same CLE classes and seminars, and generally speaking every new development in the law is easy to locate and digest. Some attorneys may be more... creative about how they apply a new development (think Saul Goodman-esque arguments, but dialed back a bit to pass the sniff test) or be able to present their arguments in a more majestic style. Some may excel at motion practice and have top notch paralegals prepping their filings.
But end of the day, the one thing that the prosecutor doesn't want to do is work. And trials mean LOTS and LOTS of work.
And it means the possibility of a hung jury (MORE WORK) or a not guilty. So this means rather than take the first plea offer that comes along, a lawyer with established trial rep can play the game of chicken with the prosecutor as the trial date looms nearer and nearer and suddenly some truly generous offers come on the table, which might not be easily obtainable if there wasn't a credible threat of forcing a trial.
Incidentally, as a Public Defender I once took three separate cases to trial over the course of three consecutive days, mostly just to show the prosecutor that I would. I called it my 'trialathalon.' Unfortunately that reputation doesn't persist much outside of the county in which the cases occurred.
faceh
6mo ago
Tentatively, I can maybe chalk it up to "If it bleeds, it leads." A hospital blowing up and killing 500 people is a hell of a story regardless of which side caused it, you get a lot of clicks/eyeballs publishing that.
And my priors are that Israel's weaponry is MUCH more likely to cause that sort of devastation than Palestine's.
In fact, I remember thinking "it's pretty freaking implausible that a rocket just happens to blow up a hospital and kill hundreds RIGHT when Hamas needs a massive PR win."
But I also couldn't imagine a Hamas rocket leveling a building even with a direct hit.
Turns out the simple explanation was the true one: It didn't.
I like this framing of it.
Even if Maslow's hierarchy isn't strictly scientific I bet most people would generally agree that despite living in a world of material abundance, there is a dearth of purpose, of higher calling, 'meaning,' or actual prestige to be found. So the material abundance makes us comfortable but fails to fulfill our utility function, and our leaders have ceased to be inspirational and aspirational and the entire point of becoming wealthy seems to have become the end in itself.
At least in a world where you're not 100% certain where your next meal is coming from, you can focus on the 'purpose' of acquiring food to keep on living, which is to say you have a reason to act, to be, to live.
Now we live in a world where it is virtually impossible to miss even a single meal, and so our focus is on 'higher pursuits,' but it turns out that is mostly just other people trying to sell us things which will fulfill us, trying to convince you that it's a higher pursuit when really it is just a way to spend our material abundance on distractions while waiting on... what? What are we here for anymore?
Self-fulfillment seems just as distant as ever, and nobody seems interested in helping you actually achieve it, but by golly they'll try to convince you that they can if you just turn over your money!
faceh
11mo ago
No, it's pro-social. It's teaching them (and others similarly situated) their place.
I simply do not believe that the overall utility of society is increased by these actions, nor the individual utilities of the people involved.
If I wanted to pick apart 'social fabric' to make it impossible for people to trust each other and make it harder to peacefully resolve conflicts and de-escalate violence, this is exactly the sort of behavior I would want to encourage. All-or-nothing zero sum games, mediated by completely anonymous groups of strangers with no skin in the game and selected specifically for their preferences for malicious retribution.
Not sure what you're getting at in your post at all.
faceh
1d ago
I wouldn't bet on that.
If they can play the "exploiting vulnerable minorities" and "objectification of women" angles they can attack from that side if they want.
Or they can start pushing the "healthy at any size" and "trans women are women!" angle to force said clubs to accept... less enticing employees.
Now, prostitution will continue to exist in spite of any and all attempts to thwart it, but I do think they can make it impossible for such 'third spaces' to exist easily.
The Dojo has the unavoidable barrier to entry of physical fitness, and I've yet to see anyone who can undermine any martial arts/combat system other than by producing a better system (i.e. how BJJ took over MMA for a long time).
faceh
15d ago
The final issue is that if it is common and good then it will alter the very things it is trying to predict. Does predicting it make it true when we trust predictions at a 99.9% confidence ratio? Is there then a rebound effect where they become worthless and you need a meta meta meta meta meta prediction market to determine the accuracy of the prediction market you're trusting to verify the accuracy of prediction market that you're using to make the initial prediction?
Nah, I think the issue that precedes and largely supercedes this is the oracle question. Do people trust that whatever entity is reporting the final results is doing so accurately and isn't fudging numbers to give an edge to its allies or to cover up some other outcome that TBTB are trying to disguise?
Do we trust that ambiguous results will be resolved in good faith and correctly more often than not?
Who do we actually rely on to be the final arbiter of 'truth' such that these markets can continue to settle reliably where there's incentive to capture such institutions to divert them from the purpose of accurate reporting.
In other words I personally doubt we'll ever reach 99.9% confidence in prediction markets if only because we can't reach that confidence in the platforming hosting the markets or the entities producing the results which are deemed as 'truth,' and I don't believe these are easily tractable issues.
faceh
2mo ago
you can go to whichever one you want
Hahaha right except there's also admissions processes that very much filter for the exact types of people they want to attend. Let us ignore affirmative action putting its thumb on the scale.
And many colleges have removed the one requirement that at least tried to be objective.
And you can get your admission rescinded if they find your behavior as a youth undesirable
So yes, its always possible to take your student loans elsewhere, but let us not pretend that there is equal bargaining power on any level, where the market is relatively frictionless.
And that leaves aside that whatever remaining value there is in the universities mostly comes from the prestige attached to the credential or, perhaps, the social connections it allows you to make, so WHICH university you go to absolutely matters.
So really, you're hiding behind the fact that the decision to attend university is 'voluntary,' while ignoring that getting into a university is influenced by factors beyond individual students' control, that their funding is usually coming out of public coffers, and they don't need your consent to revoke your admissions, scholarships, or suspend you for behavior that is neither violent nor illegal.
So perhaps the issue isn't quite what you're suggesting it is.
Not that the former is bad, it's important and has its place, but to only do that is, in essence, having great sex but no children.
Not for nothing, I would bet there's a HUGE crossover in the types who want to accumulate a ton of wealth as fast as possible then coast off the interest and those who declare they want to live childfree. Both kind of speak to the same sort of core mentality "life is for me to live, and any constraints that require me to do things at the behest of other people (a boss, or a child) is unacceptable."
Also, as I've gotten older I've REALLY soured on the idea of 'traveling' in the abstract as a hobby. Because I've begun to notice that most locales that are 'worth visiting' start optimizing into tourist traps, well designed to extract as much money from the average person as they can while returning minimal/ephemeral value.
Like the OP is pointing out, owning an asset that benefits from heavy tourism means you can coast off other people's labor. Owning the asset makes you money. Visiting and spending money there makes you a bit of a sucker, therefore.
As you say, if I could instead spend that time, effort, and money building something, I think the fulfillment will greatly outweigh that of being the billionth person to, e.g. photograph the Grand Canyon or hike Mount Fuji.
That said, for purposes of human happiness, some environments are definitely more conducive to comfort and pleasant feelings than others. Places that are beautiful and comfortable in the summer can become frozen wastelands in winter, and the there's a similar issue with places that are pleasant in Winter.
And moving yourself around to exploit the benefits of different locales is sensible from a purely Hedonic perspective.
I don't think that anyone who purports to be team blue can sufficiently convince me of their conviction to the cause for me to believe they're ALWAYS going to choose blue in an actual scenario where actual death is on the line.
Add in an enforcement mechanism and maybe.
faceh
9mo ago
The thought experiment literally posits colored pills, which implies this isn't just a button on a screen, as presented.
So I'm imagining a person who has two pills in front of them, and has it explained to them what each one does. And, magically, knows for certain that these explanations are 100% truthful.
So I can not imagine someone thinking "I'm picking the red pill!" and then somehow, just completely brain farting and grabbing the blue one.
And believe me, if misclicking meant living or possibly dying, I'd be pushing that mouse around with the slowest movements possible.
I think to me, the 'problem' is the increasing dissonance between the signal that young women seem to be intentionally sending, and the actual reaction they have to anyone whom responds to that signal at 'face value.'
Throughout most of history, okay, being precise I'll limit it to the last century, wearing clothing that showed more skin than the average person in that area was almost universally a sign of sexual availability. It was considered, largely, an invitation to approach (politely) and engage in a repartee that had a nontrivial chance of ending in sexual contact, or at least a peek at the goods and a pleasant mental image to store in the spank bank.
So in other words, wearing a skimpy bikini in contexts where a bikini is not standard attire (so contexts other than the beach, pool, strip club) is basically saying "please pay attention to me, and if you find me sexually appealing I am open to being approached."
You can of course have guys that read that message into almost ANY clothing a female wears, I'm not trying to pretend that the messaging mismatch is the sole fault of the sender.
There are other messages that could be mixed in there but I daresay they're completely dominated by THAT one in terms of how men will interpret it.
Except that if you were to take that message at face value and approach, you're not just more likely than not to experience rejection, you're probably going to get ridiculed if you don't match some arbitrary criteria, and in the absolute worst case you'll get dragged on social media.
Dave Chapelle said it best: "You are wearing a whore's uniform." Actual prostitutes wear these outfits specifically to attract clients, and they aren't engaging in false advertising, you CAN get sexual contact with them if you approach. And have money.
But increasingly, especially with the way dating apps currently work and the seeming prevalence of Onlyfans, women are sending out messages that are, I'd guess, intended for reception by a very small subset of the actual male population, and while they're willing to accept attention from the remaining contingent, it'd be better if they had fullish control over who they were required to interact with, and can accept material support from ones they aren't interested in and pursue the ones they are.
And in a world where women are empowered to wear whatever they want and control who they can respond to at will, then there's literally no reason for them not to send out the LOUDEST, MOST BLARING signal they can even if it is to the detriment of the vast majority of onlookers.
That's about the most sane take possible, to be quite honest.
The reason 'tech' has gotten so far without being regulated is simply because Gov't doesn't understand it, and it moves/changes so fast that they can't get out ahead of it to put down serious roadblocks before its already jumped to the next big thing. They've only JUST NOW sort of caught up with Social Media tech with this recent TikTok bill.
Also the general gridlock and incompetence that's accumulated lately.
Now that the tech sector is becoming more centralized, it is more legible to government actors since they can identify the chokepoints to control to bring the industry and customers to heel.
So expect it to keep getting worse, but slowly, and in fits and starts, even if there is no grand central conspiracy.
Perhaps the even more blackpilling perspective is that this is just how things naturally trend when there's a 'commons' resource that manages to elude being exploited and enclosed by existing entrenched players. Free Software is a somewhat nonclassical example of a 'commons' that throws off tons of benefits as externalities. Lord knows I've used dozens upon dozens of free, open source, and other non-commercialized programs over the years. I hate hate hate the idea of subscribing to a piece of software I'd only use intermittently and, even after paying, could lose use of at any time.
VLC, Windirstat, 7zip, GIMP, LibreOffice and Coretemp, just off the top of my head are some of my favorites that each have a very specific role and do it very well (or well enough) so I can thumb my nose at commercial alternatives.
But unlike a 'classic' commons, the software well can never 'run dry' since as long as someone, somewhere is willing to eat the (trivial!) cost of hosting the software download, then copies can be distributed endlessly without ever depleting the supply, and the marginal cost of each additional copy rounds to zero.
But every other player in this system aside from the cooperative users sees this commons as an opportunity. And what they always want to do is enclose the commons, exclude free-riders, parcel it up, and then sell access to it. If you can make people pay even $1/copy for something they were previously getting for 'free,' you've diverted part of that that huge 'surplus' into your pocket.
You already see the low-grade version of this with sites that will re-host free software but bundle it with something else that they can use to make money, or at least have ads on the download site.
So whether it's governments cracking down, OSes limiting the code that can be run to an approved list you have to pay to get on, or Software companies buying up the licenses to open-source software and shutting down the free distribution of same (apparently the VLC guy has turned down sizable offers), eventually this commons WILL be enclosed, and you WILL be made to pay to acquire and use it on your own machine. For now, at least, you're allowed to fork projects before they sell out.
Of course, I also worry that they're going to remove consumer access to hardware altogether, allowing you to only purchase gimped, centrally controlled machines and most of the programs you run will be on an Amazon Web Server somewhere such that if they DID decide to lock out certain software, you wouldn't even be able to futz with the machine itself to hack it into compliance.
Because whenever the market sees some kind of consumer surplus, the incentives ultimately push it to attack it from every possible angle until it wiggles in and can consume said surplus, returning us to the 'efficient' equilibrium it really wants to maintain. And since you can't really get rich by advocating for open-source software, few are likely going to man the wall to defend the surplus against these attacks.
The reason the feel of this economy is off is because people can still remember how things were going Pre-Covid, and they have a keen recollection of how much was 'lost' during the Covid period, and one can easily argue that we have not yet 're-established' the baseline from before, and with the current interest rates, we might not be able to anytime soon.
What is absolutely fair to say is that we avoided a serious recession resulting from Covid and the attendant restrictions.
But if you're an average American, you've likely depleted most of your personal savings., you've got a high car payment ("affordable" used cars aren't a thing anymore), and may be in default on the loan, your rent has increased around 30% since 2019.
Of course with savings depleted, more people will start financing purchases/using credit cards. In a rising-interest-rate environment.
Oh, and Student Loan payments just resumed after a LONG hiatus.. It's hard to feel good about higher wages if you can directly observe that most of the extra money is going to service debt and you can't actually put much of it away for later. It feels even worse if your overall debt continues to rise so you're treading water rather than making actual headway towards reducing your indebtedness.
So if you were motivated to convince people they were doing well, economically speaking, you could isolate the variable declaring that wages are up so you can say "stop complaining things have reverted to the pre-covid norm!"
But if you were to ask a simple-ish question: "Are you materially better or worse off today than you were in 2019?" I would hazard a guess that most people are 'struggling' to maintain their standard of living more than before, and this feeling comes through.
Now, my own personal concern is that we've already used up a bunch of economic 'slack' during Covid times, Putin started further troubles, and oh golly gee the Middle East is now acting up again. So at some point we have to start rebuilding our reserves for some possible future shock, and few seem interested in doing that. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was depleted to historic lows and, as of yet, has not begun to be refilled.
It is nowhere near empty, mind, I just find this illustrative of the situation. We burned a lot of spare capacity and we still seem to be teetering on a precipice, what else can we deploy if we actually tip over the edge?
The women I know best wouldn't dream of setting up an OF account.
How do you know this?
Would you expect them to admit it if they did?
Regardless of the answers, the fact that this is a question that gets asked suggests these girls and women who put themselves in that marketplace are not the norm, despite how it seems.
I'm really no longer sure what "the norm" is, other than all indications are that its trending towards running an Onlyfans being a relatively acceptable practice.
And more to the point, it means any female who wants to figure out how to satisfy male sexual preferences need only check into what some of the top content producers are putting out.
Women now have no real excuse for being unaware of men's sexual preferences.
And guys now get the impression that females are willing to satisfy those preferences even if they claim to find them disgusting and crude.
An equivalent would be normalization of, say, fighting and violence for men.
AH, but I don't think that is equivalent.
Sexuality is often idealized as something to be shared with solely your committed partner, and seeking sexual gratification outside the relationship is considered adulterous.
Hence why having a sexually explicit OF might be a violation of that relationship.
I don't think a man's capacity for violence is something that has the same level of "sacredness" where he is expected to express it solely to his partner.
Although I see your point that we have a social interest in restraining the male tendency to violence.
If feels almost like a truism, when it comes to 'free market' economies, that assets/wealth and money will tend to flow to those who are best suited to manage them productively, and away from those who aren't.
The guy who takes out a mortgage on his house to go to the Casino and bet it all on black might win some % of the time, but on average, over the long run, he'll lose his money, the house gets foreclosed and sold, and thus both his money and his house get shuffled off to somebody who will be better at managing them productively.
So it isn't inherently surprising that families with the discipline and patience to accumulate wealth over time will generally maintain that wealth whilst others that don't have such time preference will probably bleed wealth and never have a point in time where their accumulated wealth outstrips their overall consumption.
But if your wealth is all dependent on holding assets and earning 'passive' income that is downstream of some other productive activity, you are actually absorbing quite a bit of risk that those assets/income sources could unexpectedly go to zero. Or possibly worse, go negative. This is what happens to banks that make too many bad loans. ON PAPER they've got thousands of income streams and 'assets' worth millions. But too many of those go into default, the books become unbalanced, and people get antsy and you can see a bank run happen real quick.
There are obvious steps you can take to mitigate risk. Own homes that are geographically dispersed so they won't all be impacted by the same natural disaster. But what do you do about black swans that cause the entire real estate market to come crashing down at once? There's never a 'foolproof' investment that doesn't present some downside risk, even if unseen.
The risk of living solely off your accumulated wealth is that said wealth is subject to fluctuations in economic conditions entirely beyond your control. And there's always a chance that you take a hit that you can't easily recover from.
Even if you have a doomsday bunker filled with gold bars, ammo, and stockpiled food, you still risk some other event happening that cuts off your access to it, rendering it valueless to you.
If you work for a living, you will always be able to earn money via your particular trade, unless that entire trade gets obsoleted, and even then you can retrain and keep rolling.
If you think you've accumulated enough wealth to immunize yourself from the need to work... perhaps you should think long and hard about what sort of events or series of events could wipe out that wealth hoard all at once.
faceh
8mo ago
Is there any precedent, particularly in the past 50 or so years, where any sitting Governor got arrested for Federal Crimes without resistance from the State the Governor presided over?
I'll go ahead and give you the one I can think of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich#Impeachment,_removal_from_office,_trial
And in that case they had no support in their own legislature and had indeed violated the state's laws as well.
Do you think Texas would impeach Abbot over such an arrest?
You don't really think the state police are going to try to fight the military (or a nationalized Texas National Guard for that matter), do you?
I think the downside for the Federal Government taking such a step is so vastly disproportionate to the upside that it would be absurd to imagine them attempting it. So the State police aren't going to 'fight' the military, but what do you expect the Federal Government to do if state forces merely 'obstruct' their attempts to arrest the governor, say by erecting roadblocks and refusing to stand aside for the arresting officers.
Who fires the first shot?
"Putting him in Federal Prison" entails giving him some measure of due process and a chance to have a hearing and thus isn't going to be a quick fix to the alleged issue.
faceh
11mo ago
Ding ding.
Consider the possibility that the elites living in Washington aren't actually in tune with the true interests and preferences of people they never interact with and live entirely different lifestyles.
This would work if they were advertising some new or returning product that I wasn't aware of previously.
And with fast food, there's a lot more aggressive competition for consumer dollars than I'd say there is with Coca Cola. Getting someone to pick Burger King over Taco Bell over Chik-Fil-A does actually involve messing with their preferences in that instant, I'd guess.
Not to say there's not competition in the beverage sector, but Coke's presence there is fundamentally secure. At least, secure in a way that can't be easily unseated by a competing marketing campaign.
I'm more surprised by advertisements for Toilet Paper and such other everyday items where there's minimal variability between the products. Is there enough spare money to be seized by keeping a particular brand of shit tickets on people's minds?
If I, as a male, want to be a bit cheeky, I can actually agree that a random bear is less dangerous to an American woman than a random male.
Statistically speaking, if the male is chosen COMPLETELY at random from all living males, then the odds are more likely you're getting a middle aged guy from Asia (esp. China), India, or Africa. I really have no direct frame of reference for what I expect such males to do in this situation, but the stereotypes are concerning.
Cursory Google search shows there are about 200,000 brown bears in the world, and around 800,000 black bears. Then presumably negligible numbers of Pandas, Koalas, and Polar bears, along with more exotic types.
So odds are that the randomly chosen bear is a relatively less dangerous black bear vs. the "will attack you instantly" brown bear.
So playing the odds, I might say yeah, a given woman is better off with a randomly selected bear in most cases, vs. a randomly selected male human.
But if we restrict the question to American males, and we specify that the bear WILL be one of the more dangerous varieties, I think the answer is clear.
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