The Obamacare Ruling and Associated Hysteria

Many are upset about the Obamacare supreme court ruling, claiming that it paves the way for the government to force any type of purchase on its citizenry. The manosphere is no less shrill in its dire warnings. WF Price believes that it sets the stage for various future anti-male laws, such as a mandated extension of child support to age 26, or even a Rome-style bachelor tax. Are such concerns valid, or overblown?

Clearly, the purchase mandate is shaky from a legal perspective. I'm not sure I agree with Roberts' idea that it constitutes a "tax," either. In the case of healthcare, though, there really is no other way to spread out costs and keep them under control. Would you rather instead risk losing your house and life savings when you get sick?

It really depends on what your priorities are. If you're fine with a shaky system that allows insurers to jump out and leave you with a huge bill the moment you get sick, then, I suppose something like Obamacare is a bad idea. If, however, you want some semblance of normalcy and predictability in your health care costs (and health care period), then Obamacare is a good thing.

This "bloated bill," as WF Price puts it, has many good things in it. Things that honestly should have been implemented decades ago. Yes, there are (minor) aspects of it that grate on my manosphere sensibilities, such as the requirement to charge men and women exactly the same (women cosume more in health care costs.) But people with cancer cost more than the average person, and if we're going to flat-line costs for them, then we might as well do the same for women.

The requirement to cover kids up to age 26 helps young men who are struggling to find a job immensely.  The manosphere comments on this particualr aspect are extremely exapserating, but revealing, and warrant a dedicated post.

See Also
Health Care, the Lack thereof, and how it Impacts Young Men

Is Cad and Bitch Culture Intractably Horrible for Everyone?

Commenter fschmidt brought up a good point in response to a previous post:

What the average woman experiences in the feminist world is being hit on constantly by players. The feminist world is bad for both decent men and decent women. The feminist world is designed for sluts and cads (players). Women in feminist societies have a bitch shield because they need one to discourage constantly being hit on. Women can't be particularly blamed for this, the whole society and culture is rotten to the core.

Once I spent a short amount of time in a bar with some women who were not used to the scene. They emerged completely distraught, almost as if they had been violated. Apparently, they were constantly being hit on in the short time span we were there. They were not immodestly dressed, either.

The only women who seem to voluntarily enter such establishments are the bitchy, conceited types. You can almost feel the bitchiness radiating off of some of them. One wonders if they were originally "good girls" who ended up ruined by the environment.

As far as I can tell, this problem is not so bad if you avoid the nightlife (nightmare?) scene. How long will that last, however? PUAs are already promoting "day game," which threatens to bring this monstrosity out onto the streets in broad daylight.

I just wonder how it is possible to have a long-term relationship lasting more than a few years with this kind of social climate. If a woman is hit on all the time, even if she's modestly dressed, how is she going to remain bearable in a relationship? How will she resist cheating with so much temptation? Just like I'm tempted to eat a whole bag of chips if the bag is right next to me, I think even the most self-controlled woman is tempted to cheat if guys are constantly coming on to her. Especially if her partner is not really high-status.

I see almost no way out of this aside from transplanting yourself out of the current culture to somewhere isolated and leading a self-sustaining pastoral lifestyle of some sort. The Amish seem to have figured this out, and will probably fare better because of it.

"Guys only want one thing"

How often have you heard this line from women? Aside from the fact that it's a smear, and arguably dehumanizes men, it fails to recognize reality. Imagine you were surrounded by a bunch of very hungry people. Would you exclaim in exasperation, "all they want is food!" Of course not.

One of the problems with today's society is that women have zero concept of male sexual needs. If men aren't sexually satisfied enough, you'll start seeing widespread sexually desperate behavior. Women fail to see how they contribute to this problem via hypergamy and other self-imposed barriers. Apparently, most guys (variably the bottom 50-80%) should just shut up and keep their dick in their pants. Problem is, it doesn't work that way. Guys can't just "shut it off." And so you're going to see more yearning and desperation from those men.

This is one of the reasons why the whole "nice guys suck" narrative from women is so cruel. They fail to see how they created this problem of sexual desperation among men. The average guy no longer gets married at 18-22; that system was scrapped, for better or worse. In its place is a sexual "free market" that disproportionatly rewards naturally skilled and attractive men, and leaves most others stewing in varying levels of desperation.

Women who complain about men coming on to them should realize that they can't have it both ways. They can't have sexual freedom into their early 30s or beyond and then just expect most men to be tame and docile, and not come on to them (or employ less aggressive ways of coming on to them like the "nice guy" stuff). Want men to leave you alone? Then make sure they have somewhere to put it!

The demands of the modern female are just totally unreasonable.

Problems with the Mainstream PUA Prescription

When a woman complains that there are no good men out there, my rebuttal is simply:

They are right in front of your face, but you refuse to see them.

In other words, there are legions of sexually invisible men that would long to be with a woman. This is proven by the hordes of "forever alone" men on the internet, and the extremely high male-to-female ratios on dating sites.

Women believe that most single men out there are just out for hanky-panky, but I dispute that. Is it really the case with most men? You see PUA forums chock full of guys who want to improve their game. But do they really want to bang one chick after another endlessly? I don't think so. I think most men just want a loving relationship with a woman.

In a way, I blame the PUA crowd for perpetuating this myth. PUAs, by and large, emphasize hookup and bedding a large number of women. Most men who try to do so fail miserably if they weren't already somewhat attractive. Bottom line, subtle sexual overtures just don't work if you're not considered attractive, end of story. Hitting on legions of women will simply end end in failure and further reinforce the myth that men just want sex.

This is part of why PUA forms a major component of the "Misandrist Dating Advice Distraction."

1. It blames men for their problems with dating.
2. It distracts male attention from pro-male causes and diverts it into female pussy-begging.
3. It reinforces the stereotype that men are desperate and just want sex through its prescription to hit on large numbers of women.

A recent BP post questions if non-misandrist dating advice can even exist in the current cultural climate. It's a good question, because all "advice" presumes that there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. What if the real problem is that womens' priorities are screwed up? Should you mold yourself to those screwed up priorities? In my opinion, hell no. Sex is not worth selling yourself out, violating ethical principles, or butchering your personality to the point of being unrecognizable.

Don't take this the wrong way. I believe that there are still a fair number of women out there with decent personalities and priorities. And people (both men and women) should always work on making themselves as attractive as possible. But beyond that, it gets very murky, and that's where a positive environment (read: shaming hypergamy/adultery) can make a huge difference.

The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 2

In The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 1, I wrote about how the alt-right prescribes regressive solutions to problems like college costs, essentially arguing for a drastic reduction in scope, and a return to IQ-based employer screening. What I did not mention is that this is based in a sort of hereditarian, elitist argument.

Unlike mainstream conservatives, alt-righters believe that well-adjusted, functional behavior is biologically ingrained, and that some groups of people (particularly blacks) are notoriously poor at it due to some kind of biological shortcoming. The alt-right's "objective" means for claiming this is the one-standard-deviation difference in IQ between whites and blacks.

The problem is that, as Robert Lindsay and others have pointed out, IQ scores are not a reliable means for predicting maladaptive behaviors. Yes, the White->Hispanic->Black hierarchy holds, but once you start throwing other races in, the picture gets much murkier. And then when you compare the IQs of, say, middle easterners to that of American Blacks, the latter actually score higher. Yet middle easterners commit far less crime.

This leads me to believe that the IQ theory of alt-righters is another just-so story that doesn't come close to explaining the full truth. It is true that blacks suffer more social dysfunction than whites, which is reflected in crime rates and the rates of single motherhood. But they should be doing far better if one takes their IQ into account.

I have an alternate explanation: Many of our problems in society are caused by underinvestment in infrastructure and other public goods. Blacks, who tend to be quite poor, suffer the most from this deficiency. How easy is it for them to get from point A to point B? How intellectually stimulating is their environment, or is it just a run-down ghetto? How good is their health care, and the quality of their food? By many objective measures, these areas are in dire need of improvement.

There is also the cultural aspect. How are the relations between the genders, and parents/children? Are kids seen as a society's future, or just something that a babymomma takes care of? Do women select for intelligent, caring men, or do they just go after thugs? This is all stuff that can be fixed with the right attitude (read: shaming.)

So while some black problems could be due to genetics, I think the vast majority of them are because of 1) a poor environment and 2) poor cultural attitudes, both internal and external. Alt-righters are not helping in this regard. They want to starve the state, which will cause poor black areas to crumble even more. They also promote the idea that most blacks essentially "deserve" their status, instead of it simply being a consequence of unfortunate coalescing forces.

I think this is one reason why the alt-right disparages the manosphere. You see, the manosphere is trying to fix the problems of societal decay, which begin with environmental and familial decay. Some prominent manosphere commentators are black, and have come from broken families. Yet the alt-right sees them as "blacks" instead of "men."

I don't think there is much in the alt-right sphere for people for actually want to improve the general well-being of society as a whole. Their prescriptions are all backwards, and won't do a lick of good for anyone in the long run.

The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 1

You will note that some of the blogs in my sidebar are "alt-right" blogs. The alt-right is essentially an "underground" that sprang up in opposition to the cultural left's domination of mainstream discourse. Alt-righters reject political correctness of all stripes, and tend to strongly reject egalitarianism. They also tend to be highly skeptical of mainstream medical science, especially in the realm of nutrition.

Their opposition to the current orthodoxy is driven by the perceived failure of it to fix the problems that plague modernity. It is indeed true that many societal organs are in serious trouble, and headed in an unsustainable direction. Everywhere one cares to look, there are bloated systems that cannot possibly continue in their current state. The health care system is one. The military is another. The education system is yet another. All of these systems are in need of serious reform, or they threaten to topple the country.

The alt-right viewpoint is that this rot is the result of egalitarianism, excessively large government, and ethnic nepotism. For instance, they believe that the obscene cost of college is the result of both student loan subsidy and the banning of IQ tests as a legally valid measure of competence. Their prescription is to end student loan subsidy, essentially "starving the beast," which will supposedly bring education costs down. They also want to reinstate employer IQ tests.

The problem with these prescriptions is inherent in the reactionary viewpoint of those advocating them. People in the alt-right, much like those in the mainstream right, want to claw back to a time when certain "things" were not "foisted" on them. If only we went back to the way things were, they say, all of these major problems we now suffer will be solved.

It does not take much thought to see where such ideas are problematic. Generally speaking, people like education, and enjoy the broadened opportunity that comes with it. I have been around poor families, and one their greatest joys is to see their child with a college degree that they were not able to obtain themselves. Going back to some sort of IQ-based system seems horribly backward and inadequate given how technologically advanced the world is becoming. Engineers don't train themselves, and most employers will jump ship if they have to train their workers from step zero.

Of course, the reactionaries don't seem to grasp this. They see college as an institution of the cultural left that needs to be starved as much as possible. But one reason why college tuition is increasing so much is because state governments are continuously being drained of tax revenue. It's not hard to see how this hampers competitiveness, and why businesses are clamoring for skilled immigrants.

Compare our college attendance rates to, say, Europe. They're abysmal, and this directly due to the anti-education attitude in the country. I know people left and right who are more than smart enough for college, but can't get in because they can't afford it. This is horrible and needs to be reformed. And the direction it needs to go in is the direct opposite of what the alt-righters (and right-wing people in general) propose.

Today's Young Men Face an Uphill Battle

A recent Mangan's post on declining birthrates listed all the usual suspects, but one comment in particular caught my eye:

Subtle little things like seat belt laws make it difficult to have a large number of kids and be able to transport them around. Not to mention costs of food, clothing, health care, education and so on. Our society is designed for a low number of children per family.

That got me thinking. If you're a young man today, drowning in college debt, where are you going to get the money to pay for a kid, let alone two, three, or four? Even if you managed to graduate debt-free, your income is still likely to be lower than your equivalent in the "baby boom" years. In other words, kids are going to be put on the back burner in favor of more immediate concerns.

But that's not even the beginning of it. Insidious things like the non-dischargeability of student loans in bankruptcy look set to keep many kids in financial dire straits for a long time to come. And the cost of everything keeps going up like crazy. It's almost like it's by design.

I think there is a growing tide of resentment in young men against all this bullshit. Men now want to get married more than women, an exact opposite of how it was in the past. But they're more or less shut out, because women are at parity or above them in status. This can't last. Men don't like being crippled and emasculated, and eventually they're going to boil over.

We're probably already seeing some subtle effects of this. The gerontocracy is turning increasingly reactionary and unhinged, desperately holding onto its ways, oblivious to the fact that it is obsolete. Its actions can be seen in almost every entrenched rent-seeking institution, be it banking, academia, government, military, or the courts. On the other hand, there is room for reactionary thinking among young men as well, in the direction of dismantling feminism.

Which form of reaction will win out? Who knows, but young men must figure out a way to free themselves of their burdens. Their emasculation inhibits their emancipation.