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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.

Wow that’s quite a big stick. Surely we don’t need that much?

Yeah, OP's solution to {problem} just boils down to "make problems illegal, or more charitably unfeasible", which can be the default answer to any problem if you are sufficiently authoritarian. To be fair that might be the only thing solution that will "fix" the problem, not to sure about how likely it is to be implemented or not have other nth order effects, but constraints are for dummies anyways.

It's at least a concrete plan that would plausibly work, instead of endless ineffectual kvetching about the gender war.

Anyone can come up with an overtly authoritarian plan with no regard to feasibility or worse nth order effects, it doesn't take much creativity to suggest "make problem illegal". That's more of my gripe with such proposals.

They are certainly popular because at least something is being put forward and "doing something about it" is a winning move in many domains; E.g We certainly did something about covid, that's for sure, who cares if the cure is worse than the disease?

@DaseindustriesLtd proposal for example, aims to attain the same goal but is more thoughtfully crafted, aware of its shortcomings, aware of its constraints and just around more feasible/effective in the ways that would matter. OP even cites the same comment but ends up being a low-rung parody of it. Maybe I am being too harsh and am discussing things out of my depth but it certainly seems as much to me that @2rafa went on a diatribe about TFR when the parent post doesn't even mention it. (My model of the discussion is that the male disenfranchisement issue is a superset of the TFR issue, not the other way around.)