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Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

The article claims the effect of varying employment levels on society are different depending on gender- lower male employment means lower marriage rates. Lower women employment means higher marriage rates. Lower marriage rates imply higher numbers of children born out of wedlock. Children born out of wedlock are more likely to have disadvantaged backgrounds. But increasing number of single mothers reduce the stigma of being a single mother, and allowing single mothers to "soldier on".

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Civilization is built on monogamy. People might not like the sound of it, but that's the reality of the situation. This is why all successful cultures and religions promote marriage, while tagging everything else as 'degeneracy'. You can't build a society if 90% of men are frustrated, disenfranchised and blow things up, and children are raised by single parents. You need a social contract that gives men a purpose and a legacy (sex), so that they can focus their efforts toward the development of the tribe.

EDIT: To clarify, I do NOT condone violence toward non-traditional arrangements. Sorry if I came off that way.

At this point the men you discuss are sitting around playing video games and doing oxy. They don't seem to be threatening society in any way.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21...

Both of which are inventions by very skilled people that can only exist in an industrialized society.

Those skilled people are still working and are still marriageable.

Speculating about a scary future dystopia works less well when we already live in that world and it's not so bad.

The phenomenon is way too recent. A few more decades of this, and let's see.

Except dystopia isn't "everyone lives in a bad, mean world". It's societal dislocation. For some, the dystopia is real, right now. For others, it never will be.

Unless they go to syria. Or vote for a populistic president?

As someone who's always been employed, this confuses me. How do the permanently unemployed afford video games and drugs, in addition to rent and food? Sponge off their parents? Their partner? The state? I'd love to see a real study.

If you are permanently unemployed, you don't pay taxes, you get subsidies for food, for rent, for health care, for heating, and for a plethora of other services, if you know how to game the system properly. You may be on "disability", and if you're smart about it, you probably work a little bit off the books, cash-only.

There's a whole system of perverse incentives and interacting welfare programs that produce income cliffs where it is suboptimal to work more and have greater income, because that small increase in wages results in a much larger loss of services.

It is discussed in this article:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21...

These are often not kids of the lower-classes, who are more likely to end up on the streets caught up in crime than in their bedroom playing video games. It's the middle or even upper middle class children often doing this, not just for economic reasons.

Take away their video games and drugs, and see what you end up with. Their video game addiction is obviously a sign of deep, fundamental and overwhelming distress. I think you're going for the "they're victims too, not violent inhumane monsters" which is true, but doesn't take away from GP's point that they're potentially volatile and therefore a threat to stability.

Uhm, monogamy is just one way to ensure offspring survival in times of strife, and reduce Std transmission.

That said, infedility is also a corner stone of our civilisation.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/210277.php

http://bit.ly/2n1QoVx

Antibiotics are some 90 years old. Before then, STDs were a death sentence.

K-selection is civilization. r-selection is feralization. One of the goals of religion was to tame r-selected behaviors and to encourage K-selected behaviors.

I should read more about k/r-selection

You needn't bother because it is an outmoded biological theory that holds more sway amongst white supremacists than actual biologists.

what superseded it ? i'd like to read up on both and see how it evolved!

Interesting that you mention "the tribe" as basic unit of society. We have abandoned the concept of tribalism gradually in favour of (1.) feudalism, (2.) absolute monarchy and finally (3.) the nation state. Today, we don't have to deal with "the development of the tribe", because the greater family has become utterly unimportant [wich is a good thing IMO, because we can focus on more important issues].

Moreover most tribal societies in Western/Central Europe up until the 7th century -- in Scandinavia until the 10th century -- were polygamous. Some of these societies were highly successful. The Vikings for example weren't just barbarous brutes and pirates, but also tradesmen and farmers with highly sophisticated technologies like metallurgy, coinage and shipbuilding.

So no, I don't think that "Civilization is built on monogamy". If anything, monogamy as a family model is built on the roman church, and it's the heritage of the roman church our society is based upon.

Eh, the nation-state is a tribe? Feudalism was a tribe? monarchy is a tribe with a soap opera? Todays tribes are companys, soccer clubs and nation states?

What? no of course not. I just tried to illustrate that the social contract evolved over a very long time period, and that the greater family -- ie the tribe -- plays no part in the social contract of todays society.

Yes, the human species gets updated and advanced every Friday. A completely new species, new ethics, more cultured and well behaved. Not just a ape bribed with a banana to be quiet.

Never before has it happened, that those wishing for this to be true, just plugged there ears and eyes, hoping for dreams to become true by wishing and praying, slammed into the ugly reality of old meatware (Weimar).

I agree with the goals in general, but is it really so tough, to accept what is, and work within the limits of the brittle, old mangine you got, instead of dreaming up a "new human" and singing loud enough to not hear the flying gears?

PS: The Vikings are a nice example of non-islamic jihadism, aka dumping of excessive youth in violent campaigns in the neighbours tribe backyard?

Why would one think "the nation state" is the "final" form? Can our society not adapt further?

With "finally", i just meant, that it is what we arrived with in the here and now. It is by no means final, it's just our current form of social contract. It is also far from perfect, but I consider it better than most forms of government we came up with.

Historically, I don't think there is any more volatile demographic than unmarried young men with no prospects.

Indeed :(

>> The article claims the effect of varying employment levels on society are different depending on gender- lower male employment means lower marriage rates. Lower women employment means higher marriage rates.

That's not a claim, it's a fact. You need to study evolutionary psychology. Women seek a man to provide and protect. Period. Other qualities are in play too, but I'm talking about an evolved need. You take away the ability of a man to provide and protect and he becomes shit to a woman. You take away the womans ability to provide for herself and she becomes more dependent on marriage to get by. Why does this gender difference exist? Because being pregnant and caring for children both make women more vulnerable and detract from their self preservation ability. Hence the evolved family structure that works.

Are you implying that the nuclear family is a result of natural selection?

Do you have any idea what the social structures of paleolithic humans were?

strawman argument

> But increasing number of single mothers reduce the stigma of being a single mother, and allowing single mothers to "soldier on".

Is that a good thing? Is it something we should pursue?

http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequen...

It's much more complex than "we need to accept everybody! Every arrangement is just as good as any other!"

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