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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30536 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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I'm a doomer on the U.S., and I want to know what you guys think, in general, will be the trend for the next decade or further on. Here's my theory for how all this ends:

  • Politically, conflict theory has totally won. Extremists from both parties keep trying to outdo each other. This can lead to outright civil war or government breakdown down the line. Democracies all around the globe host more and more unhappy populations that, no matter which politicians they vote in, never seem to get what they want, leading them to vote in more and more strange and radical candidates.
  • Government spending will never recede. Too many groups need to stay satisfied with their welfare, otherwise the party that cuts them will never win an election again. This will lead to an eventual collapse, someday, with more and more economic pain as time goes on and as less productive people exist to support the invalids and growing number of leeches.
  • Dating sucks and gender relations are likely going to get worse as the social media experiment continues, to South Korea levels. It can only get worse from here.
  • As someone mentioned downthread, I could easily see status becoming harder and harder to get, as the players in the game optimize towards the most awful way to live: constant striving in every arena. Anyone left playing the game is a tiger mom. This is the one I'm least sure about, but it could change rapidly as economic circumstances shift.
  • I have no idea if the country will fail slow or fast, but it will likely decline in the next decade by a noticeable amount.

My friend is more of an optimist. Here's his theory on the first one:

  • Eventually, one party is going to realize their extremists never win races. They elect a moderate. Things normalize, politically.

Unfortunately, I didn't quiz him on all the rest of it. But now, somehow, it is making me wonder about the outlook of most of the Mottizens. I certainly see the doomer take on things pretty often.

I see a factoid sometimes that says conservatives are happier with their lives than liberals. Maybe that's a factor of rural living, maybe that's a factor of less thinking about serious issues, and less reading. I am pretty sure that conservatives on this site, on average, do not live in rural areas and, on average, think a lot more about serious issues, and read more. So maybe some bad, anecdotal science testing on The Motte is in order.

Are you a doomer, or a "bloomer"? What are some factors that lead you to your conclusion that the country is trending downwards or upwards? Please explain yourself, and please fight it out with everyone who thinks you're wrong.

Dating sucks and gender relations are likely going to get worse as the social media experiment continues, to South Korea levels. It can only get worse from here.

I disagree with the parallel (not with your general argument). It's not sociologically possible. South Korea is a rather particular greenhouse in that regard, ethnically homogeneous and largely insulated from external trends, with distorted Confucian and cyberpunk tendencies taken to social extremes. None of that applies to the US or Western Europe either for that matter. I believe in the law that that which can't continue indefinitely, won't, even if it gets worse short-term. The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.

The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.

Why can’t it last? Sure, over timescales some groups will have more children than others, but liberalism is a powerful identity package that has a lot of ability to convert people from conservative backgrounds.

A female-to-male ratio of 3:2 among college graduates means that one in three college-educated women remains childless and single or intentionally becomes a single mom or marries a working-class man. I doubt any current Western society is prepared to normalize such prospects.

A female-to-male ratio of 3:2 among college graduates means that one in three college-educated women remains childless and single or intentionally becomes a single mom or marries a working-class man.

Yes, and I'd say that almost all of them are going to be the first (childless), with a few taking the second option (intentional single mom, likely via artificial insemination or, given aging, IVF). It doesn't matter whether we're "prepared to normalize such prospects" or not, it's what's going to happen.

Have you ever heard of a society where this happened and it yet endured?

First, are there any societies where this happened at all? Secondly, are there ones where it happened with our level of technological sophistication and state capacity?

And third, sure, in the long enough run it probably won't endure — for "in the long run we're all dead" values of long run. There's a lot of ruin in a nation, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

And for the closest examples I can think of, the usual way it was resolved was conquest by higher-fertility (and more patriarchal) "barbarians" with enough military force to impose their social system on (the women of) the newly-conquered people.

But that sort of conquest doesn't look like a thing that's happening much any more — the GAE does a good job of suppressing it. And most of the "barbarians" aren't really doing all that better themselves. Basically, it looks like what a commenter at Jim's said recently:

If you want the truth, the truth is that right now all of mankind is about to go up in one big fire. Without any use of nukes, bombs, or guns, billions of people have already disappeared from the Earth… by not being born.

So what awaits our world-wide South Korea? Probably an Afghan Goat Herder, making his own journey to the west to investigate ancient ruins and whatever trinkets he happens to find (god forbid he thinks we were all funkopop hooligans).

Expect this situation to last (and get worse) for the rest of our lives, at the minimum.

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