I mean, no one's forcing anyone to use dating apps
What I find more insidious is the way people on HN deal with such statistics.
The HN typical person is a relatively well-off suburban CS employee. The rhetoric on HN when markets are talked about, e.g. the labour market, often revolves around free markets being good -- because it favors this typical HN's user position. They have never experienced any precariousness.
Now, comparing dating apps to a market is very slimey, but the analogy work to the extent where the focus is the HN user's expectation and how prevalent the market discourse seems to be here: like the worker offers their labour force to a company, a pretendent offers their social time and skills on a dating app. Except that the HN's user is experiencing the precariousness in the latter -- an unacceptable thing, apparently.
Except one is not owed this attention, time or privilege. Thinking the imbalance is unfair is a mark of expected privilege as they have in other space. It's a bit bonkers.
Thinking of it -- dating -- as a market is a bad thing, morally, ethically, and psychologically, but it remains the underlying tone I see in this thread.
Care to explain? I'd imagine that something along the lines of unionization wouldn't hurt the salaries of tech workers.
> Thinking the imbalance is unfair is a mark of expected privilege as they have in other space
I find it interesting to refer to labor exchange value as a "privilege", as if it were something arbitrarily bestowed from some higher authority. Wage is the result of adversarial relationships between demand and supply and not one of some arbitrary authority doling out favors left and right with strings attached
Except there are:
- systematic biases in access to the skills needed for this contest - systematic asymmetries of information/social capital/access which skew access to high earning professions - outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment
All of which means current remuneration is in part (not wholly) a reflection of privilege.
How do you know that demographic differences are significantly linked to wage differences and there aren't other factors at play? For example, a mother may want to spend time with her children and work part time instead of full time. Would you consider this discrimination? Do you think the mother should be paid a full time salary for working only part time? If the husband of the mother works full time and earns more because of it, would you consider this difference in compensation to be a product of privilege? I'd love to hear your thoughts
Funny also how nobody is looking at the expense gap, if women are making the same money as men, then obviously they should share expenses 50/50 as well. How many couples actually do that?
Women are underrepresented in the top level of society, but always turn a blind eye to the fact that they are underrepresented in the bottom of society as well.
Women should get the same share of rewards as men, but not take any of the risks? How does that make any sense?
If women are taking place in the boardrooms, are they also going to increase their share in prisons? Among homeless? Premature death?
And self actualisation is having children anyway, so women are already at endgame. The reason why men work so hard with careers, is because it enables them to have children and start a family, not because it's just fun to play around with money and power.
And the answer to this? Trying to shame men into liking something else instead of being honest and admitting women are sabotaging themselves listening to the "work is life" mantra.
Yeah it's as if it's been decided suddenly that men are attracted to highly educated high earning women, which really doesn't work. Men are attracted to the prospect of having children, which means youth and health, and there are very real practical matters that have limits to their flexibility.
No there isn’t.
Purported wage gaps for women have never been on a peer basis and always about aggregate earnings — which fail to reflect the realities (such as the fact men die 10x as often in the workplace).
You’re spreading myths.
Or maybe there's the idea that some groups of people are more willing to do certain jobs than other groups of people and money isn't the only factor? Take investment banking for example: it's incredibly stressful and also predominantly male. Is it possible that more men than women choose to do investment banking because they value the money more than having low stress? Money isn't the only factor in evaluating inequality.
Your line of reasoning assumes that there are no other factors at play and each person is just a bag of demographic categories and nothing more. Also (more importantly) it assumes that everyone prioritizes money to the same degree, but we both know that this is wrong and certain demographics are more money-obsessed than others. But hey, maybe we can fix things by guilt tripping everyone to worship the dollar in equal quantities, maybe that will fix our ails as a society?
When I say privilege, it is less about the value of the work itself, and more about the overall stability (and of course wealth) that CS jobs have guaranteed over the past 20 years. As you mentioned it, adversarial is a good term here. A lot of HN people have not experienced how adversarial and imbalanced the labour market really is (think people stuck in the poverty trap working retail jobs in the US for instance).
So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.
Hoping this clarifies my point.
I don't know why it would, but you did also say it was just an idea. I have a hard time believing that an SWE union wouldn't be able to improve compensation and wlb
> So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.
Yeah I wholeheartedly agree with this because it's essentially the commodification of relationships, which makes me sick to my stomach
> one is not owed this attention, time or privilege
I thought this[0] was a really good piece about this kind of framing
[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n06/amia-srinivasan/does...
There is also the possible point that Tinder, for instance, isn't an app to create "meaningful" social relationships, only hook ups.
I get that the "market" framing is not very endearing, for a lot of people, and maybe not very healthy. But I don't think it's wrong. Worrying about your position in the labour market also isn't particularly healthy or endearing, but I don't think it's wrong. How are you supposed to ununderstand what you've understood?
This "worry" as you purport it to be can only exist in a system that makes it so. The worry of >tfw no gf is not comparable to the fear of losing one's job and health insurance, and the utter lack of opportunity to bounce back, meaning a job is a matter of survival. But since a lot of people on HN don't experience this latter situation, it's easy to see dating as a market where goods and services should be easy to get. The market analogy breaks down in more than just this aspect.
So, it's not wrong per se, sure, you can say that, but it's deeply, even inherently, flawed in my book.
I don't understand you ending rhetorical question.
Take a statement like "Not many people want to date Steve, so it's likely Steve will have to work harder to find a partner". Is that incorrect? If it isn't, how would you suggest I go about not believing it?
Edit: I don't agree with your second paragraph's suggestion that relationships aren't important (relationships and jobs, or the lack of them, can both have huge impacts on people's lives), but why does that matter here? There are markets for both important things (eg. jobs) and unimportant things (eg. baseball cards). There are also markets for things that are easy to get and things that are difficult to get. Those considerations aren't what makes something a market / not a market.
Sorry I re-edited the edit quite heavily after writing the first version.
> It's not like people are putting dollar values on their dating prospects, from what I've seen.
People (women) are putting dollar values on their dating prospects, from what I've seen, and I don't blame them, it is important. Sure it's not everything, but love is hardly a mystical force completely detached from economy.
People from all perspectives regularly do this, but it's only considered seedy when it's used to point out a way men are disadvantaged.
No one is owed a partner who contributes equal work in the household; no one is owed a partner who cares about their sexual pleasure; no one is owed a partner who performs certain types of emotional labor. But we consider these things as Important Issues (which they are!) because they disproportionately disadvantage women. But there's nothing wrong with doing the same on the other side of the divide.
Which is why it's so arrogant to say participating is optional. You have to go where people are, unless you're OK with being lonely for a long time.
'Cause I ain't got a car
I can't get a car
'Cause I ain't got a job
I can't get a job
'Cause I ain't got a car
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car
Don't you know where you are
Which sucks because smartphones have net negative effects imo.
You're not forced in the same way you're not "technically" forced to get a job - the societal pressures are all 2nd order.