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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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The issue here is that the low status men aren't dependable, they are losers in every sense of the word, otherwise they wouldn't be low income. Getting a decent income (and keeping it) is piss easy and if you don't then there is something seriously wrong with you, and why would women want to date that? And even in this case you can easily get a mail-order bride, I know people who have. It's not hard and you don't need even a median income.

Moderately successful men on the spectrum with poor social skills that fail in the dating market is an entirely different issue.

The issue here is that the low status men aren't dependable, they are losers in every sense of the word, otherwise they wouldn't be low income. Getting a decent income (and keeping it) is piss easy and if you don't then there is something seriously wrong with you, and why would women want to date that? And even in this case you can easily get a mail-order bride, I know people who have. It's not hard and you don't need even a median income.

This is ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of work that is done to maintain and perpetuate civilization, is done by men who are "low status," on the lower end of the middle class, marginalized and almost never get respected or acknowledged for the work they do. Unless you consider engineers, garbage men, clergy, abused IT workers, overworked nurses, underpaid professors, unpaid researchers (need I go on?) as not contributing to the upkeep of society, then this argument holds.

Moderately successful men on the spectrum with poor social skills that fail in the dating market is an entirely different issue.

I think you've confused low status with being a 'deadbeat', the latter of which earn men a higher status with women in virtue of them being an 'outlaw' and disregarding society's rules. Which is part of the problem.

Sorry, I meant low income (and low status) men.

It followed from talking about 'underclass men' and then 'dependable men'. I only used low status once and then talked about low income.

I agree that much of society depends on the labour of low status men, but that isn't poorly compensated and these people aren't underclass. The criminals don't come from the economic middle/lower middle class or working class, they come from the underclass.

Well, my apologies then if I misunderstood. If that's how I was meant to understand you, then I agree with you.

Sorry for being unclear.

Well, yes. In a post-patriarchal welfare state, low-status, average midwit men are less likely to be dependable (i.e. eligible to become responsible husbands and fathers), because the incentives are meager. In a patriarchal society, they have every conceivable incentive to be so. Everything is interconnected, and incentives matter.

There are low status and low income men who aren't especially criminally inclined and are relatively more stable and dependable. There may be relatively fewer of them than historically, but they still exist. Welfare makes them less desirable, and on the margin incentivizes more short-term mating preferences and competition from everyone.

Have you actually interacted with these men at all? They are not dependable. At some point people become a negative value proposition for anyone that isn't desperate and it isn't the welfare state thats making women not desperate, its being able to work.

Yes I have. Have you?

I could tell any young woman coming of age in high school what her dating prospects should be, as far as finding a decent young man go, with a single datum. Let me see the suitors report cards and I can tell you which one probably has the better future ahead of him. You think that kid has a lower or higher 'status' than the football star who'll end up beating her and who's been a serial cheater from day 1?

Now tell me which one has more real 'value' to society?

Yes, half my family is working class or lower middle class. Some have fallen down to be underclass adjacent. I have also lived in underclass areas and worked jobs with the underclass.

You think that kid has a lower or higher 'status' than the football star who'll end up beating her and who's been a serial cheater from day 1?

Compared to what? The intermittent pizza delivery or Uber driver? The guy that has issues holding down a job as a hospice care giver? The guy occasionally cleaning subway cars at night? The part time gas station attendant? Almost all of them drug users and video game addicts? This is the underclass, not the construction workers or guys employed in the manufacturing industry. Those guys don't end up single or criminal either by the way, they're doing fine.

The football star that beats her might very well be the better option. And what's to say the other guys dont beat their spouses as well?

Neither of the groups have any value at present but one at least did something at some point in his life. There is some capacity there that might transfer to a kid.

Yes, frequently. I live embedded in a very poor region of the deep south. In fact, by the standards of most people here, I am a poor lower class blue collar guy.

If you're in a poor part of the US, it seems like a complication in the trend that American welfare laws effectively pay poor women not to get married.

What?

The US welfare system is most generous for single mothers to the point of effectively incentivizing poor women to do their childbearing out of wedlock. It’s called the marriage penalty.

Yes, and it also incentivizes them to indulge in short-term mate selection. That was also my original point.