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

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.

Why is the American Public becoming so Reactionary?

Between the 30s and the 80s, America was moving toward the Left. Social Security, Medicare, the welfare state, Civil Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism, and other left-like movements were all either established or became mainstream in that time period. And many, many things improved during that time period. The economic security and freedom of the average American improved dramatically. Everyone's lot in life was improving, no matter who they were. The whole country was booming and improving in every measurable way.

Then, ever since the Reagan revolution in the 1980s, America has been slowly drifting ever-more rightward. The lot of the average American has slumped. Costs of things like education and healthcare are insane, because they were not allowed to reach their natural conclusion of full government funding. Basic female rights like abortion and contraception are being threatened. Men are exposed to harsh and punitive regimes in the areas of divorce, child support, sexuality, and law enforcement.

Ever since Reagan, every president has had to work within a small "box" that has drifted slowly rightward. Even Clinton was not able to break out of this box, and had to triangulate with a reactionary House of madmen led by Newt Gingrich. Clinton was nearly hanged for getting a BJ (compare this to countries like France, where political leaders are almost expected to have lots of sex on the side.) After that, Bush II pushed all kinds of bizarre crap like abstinence education, which kids like me fell for. Now that Obama is in office, people are complaining that he is too far to the right, and that he is breaking his campaign promises in areas like Marijuana seizure and corporate pandering. The problem is, he too is confined to that little box that's almost impossible to break out of. There was a brief period of respite when the Democrats controlled congress, but now it's back to the rightward drift.

There are numerous political and economic reasons for this rightward drift, such as the 1970s oil price shocks, fears of Communism, and fears of Japanese dominance, but they themselves do not explain why America, and America alone, drifted so far to the right. After all, western Europe was exposed to all these risks as well, even more so due to its proximity to the USSR, but it didn't go all Reagan (the UK did a little bit with Thatcher, but it's still far to the left of the US).

So what caused this? Well, one major culprit is religion. You'll notice that in western Europe, many countries have state-supported religions. In fact, clergymen are actually government employees! There is a natural, deep-seated suspicion of religion in Europe due to all the shit that it caused over the past few 800-plus years or so, and this reflects in religious attendance rates, which are abysmal. Put simply, religion doesn't have much sway over Europeans. As a result, they are very unburdened by religious baggage.

Contrast that to America, where there never was a state religion. Religions basically had to compete with one another on the free market, and this led to a big battle to create captive markets. Since religion runs on fear, they amped up the fear to 11, keeping people hooked (and psychologically screwing people up, but that's beside the point.) It wasn't too difficult to stir strongly religious people into radical reactionary fervor.

Also, there is a demographic shift. In Europe, I don't think there is a strong dichotomy between people who are reproducing and those who aren't. In America, however, it's pretty clear that strongly religious people are reproducing like flies, while less religious (and importantly, more liberal) people are barely reproducing at all. So more and more people are raised with right-wing thinking; kids who barely have a handle on reality get this stuff basically shoved down their throat. I don't think this will be good for men because of the issues I discussed in "The War on Sex."

The War on Sex

In "The Prudes are Winning," Salon.com writer Tracy Clark-Flory interviews sex therapist Marty Klein, asking him how the mainstream views of sex have changed in America. He first mentions that Republicans have been quite successful at threatening rights that used to be a given, such as contraception and abortion. In fact, Arizona recently successfully passed several abortion restrictions. More - not fewer - things can put you on a sex offender list. Banning porn is becoming a legitimate topic of political discussion.

Why is this happening? Well, according to Klein, people have all kinds of sexual hangups because of the misinformation that is being fed to them. Due to the insane emphasis on extended abstinence that I mentioned earlier, people are growing up sexually fucked-up with a huge number of hangups and neuroses, because it's an unrealistic goal. How do they cope with this? There are two possibilities: 1) Confront the reality of their sexuality and deal with it out in the open or 2) try to deny it and sweep everything under the rug. Apparently, there is a big emotional desire for the latter:

We’re looking at people who are desperately frightened and lonely and sad and upset about their own sexual impulses and they’re turning to any place they can find to comfort themselves. Ironically, the religious right and the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party and Fox media, they’re offering a kind of comfort. It’s a Pyrrhic victory because the public doesn’t walk away feeling, “Oh, I have this wonderful sexuality and this wonderful body.” No, no, no. People get to walk away with, “Phew, I dodged a bullet, here are the sexual restrictions that alleviate my guilt, lower my anxiety about my neighbor’s sexuality, that make me as a parent feel less anxious.” People walk away with their sexuality diminished but they feel less anxious about the complicated world in which they live.

So you see how such neuroses drive unhinged policy, but policy is not the only area where damage is caused. Women are strongly driven by emotion, and this feeds into their treatment of men. If women see sex as disgusting, they will tend to see men as disgusting. Every man suffers somewhat as a result, especially men who end up in relationships with such women. I have not met a religious woman who was not somehow sexually hung up in a weird way, and who didn't see natural male sexuality as predatory and perverse.

This manifests in ways such as the following, where a man is unwilling to admit that he goes to strip clubs to supplement his sexual appetite:

As long as you have homes where Joe goes to strip clubs on his lunch hour and his wife doesn’t know, because if his wife knew she’d kill him, as long as you have a home like that, Joe is not going to want to go to a city council member or his county board of supervisors or his state assembly member and say, “Excuse me, I go to strip cubs, cut it out.” Joe’s going to have to say to his spouse: “Honey, don’t take this personally, but every once in a while I go to a strip cub. It’s really a lot of fun. If you want to come that’s great, if you don’t that’s OK with me, but I just want you to know that I go to strip clubs.” Believe it or not, that would be a building block toward political action on the legislative level. Because right now, people can’t go to their legislators because they’re not willing to come out.

If the average American guy today admitted that he went to a strip club, his wife would crucify him. She might even divorce him (note that the traitorous churches support divorce based on such premises). So due to the ruination he risks, he doesn't push to maintain strip clubs and other male sexual outlets, and they end up being restricted/dismantled by legislation. I think a similar thing is going on with the (almost literally) Puritanical war on prostitution.

So you see how this stuff is directly relevant to Men's Rights. Abstinence brainwashing makes women sexually frigid. They see men as disgusting, which probably means that they need harder "gaming," and less-aggressive guys are left out in the cold. Men are seen as sexual predators, which leads to severe sexual harassment laws, child porn hysteria, and porn hysteria in general. Divorce laws are made extremely pro-woman, and sex offender lists nearly include sneezing in public. Low-status men are seen as dirt and scum even more so than they otherwise would be (probably one reason why the prison system is so draconian).

And men who try to relieve themselves from their sexually frigid wives are punished harshly (viewed porn? went to a strip club? DIVORCE TIME!) Men who try to get action outside of "sanctioned" methods are punished because sex is seen as dirty and sinful (see: severely-enforced prostitution bans.) They then become mentally fucked-up themselves and become more likely to commit sex crimes. See how this stuff feeds back on itself? In the end, everybody is less happy.

Barry Goldwater was right when he said that the dominance of the Religious Right would be one of the worst things to happen to this country. And Dalrock is right in that social conservatism and feminism are practically linked at the hip. "You hold him down while I rob him" indeed.

Mike Stone and the Traditionalist Oppression of Low-Status Men

Last month, a kid from a Minnesota high school named Mike Stone made national news for successfully asking out a porn star to prom. Apparently, none of the girls in his area accepted his simple invitation to be his prom date, and so he got the idea to ask out hundreds of porn stars on Twitter. Megan Piper, a young starlet, accepted his invitation because she had never been to prom herself. Amid the fanfare,  the school board found out, and promptly banned her from attending.

Megan Piper (19) and Mike Stone (18).

Now this post wouldn't be complete without an analysis of the societal reaction to this kid's breaking out from the shackles of rejection. Many bloggers in the manosphere, yours truly included, have documented the harsh treatment low-status men suffer from all corners of society. We have also noted how psychotic and panicky some people, mainly women, become when a low-status man acts "out of key" with his status.

In addition, I think that America, at present, is set up as an anti-fun society, and this is the result of a weird combination of ancestral Puritanism and middle-age-bitch feminism. Just check out this screed from Ms.  district superintendent:

"This prom date will not be allowed to attend the Tartan prom as her attendance would be prohibited under Tartan's standard prom procedures and would be inconsistent with two school district policies," Phillips writes.

Notice how there isn't even a hint of happiness or, "this is cool, but we can't allow this" in the writing. It's just an emotionless, mechanical rejection, oh-so-similar to the rejection he faced at the hands of so many of his female "peers." The reaction of his parents was one of embarrassment and shame, instead of support. The only people backing him up were his male peers, because they know how hard it is to get women, and are much more in touch with things.

So you see how society is setup to be against male liberation, and especially low-status male liberation. This is part of their whole hysteria against porn- it frees men of some of their desperation. Traditional society is set up to step on low-status men as much as possible, which is why I'm against it.

Where is the outrage at the women who rejected him? Where is the "embarrassment" at the community for providing no woman was willing to go on a prom date with him? He's not a bad-looking guy. As usual, none of the blame is heaped on the women, but this guy suffers all the ill effects of not having a date. He turned to Twitter because no one in his community was giving him a break. They should be embarrassed at themselves, not him.

Here's his twitter. He's hosting his own prom with the girl on May 12, and is having some sort of fundraiser for it. Of course everybody's jumping on board now that he's famous. Kid could use a different getup and maybe lose some weight, but otherwise he's okay.

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

This may not be something solely affecting young men, but it does affect them and their health outcomes.

In a word, the health care system in America is insane. The resources are completely mis-allocated. From a wealth standpoint, there should be no problem providing health care to everybody. Yet there are literally tens of millions of people who are uninsured, and are one serious accident away from bankruptcy.

A lot of young men I talk to seem afflicted with a combination of youthful indiscretion and frankly far-right-wing beliefs. Many don't have any health insurance at all, because they don't think they'll need it. What will they do if they, God forbid, get in a serious accident and require hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgeries? This insane level of recklessness is only one side of the coin, though. The other is the far-right-wing belief that if you can't afford health care, you deserve to die.

Why do I call this far-right-wing and not simply right-wing? Because condemning people to death for a weakness is a far-right idea. They couch it by claiming that someone who cannot afford health care must not have their shit together, but that's basically saying the same thing. It's not even a true retort because in many cases, the people who can't afford health care are upstanding members of society, and do have their shit together. They got in an accident, or suffered cancer, and their insurance company decided to cut them off because it deemed the treatment too expensive. Such people have to declare bankruptcy to fund their treatment, and that's if they're lucky.

I guarantee you that VERY FEW young guys today can afford to treat themselves for cancer, or after an accident. Many are saddled with huge amounts of student loan debt to begin with. If they want to get married, buy a house, etc. they don't have the money to pay for extremely expensive medical care! Heck, it's doubtful they'd be able to afford it even if they lived in a trailer. Yet many adhere to insane far-right-wing ideologies that could condemn them to bankruptcy and ruination at a moment's notice.

Now is not the time for far-right-wing ideologies in youth. Young men are already being impacted by the harshness of these ideologies - in addition to the heavy student loan burden, their jobs are being taken away from them by less expensive H1-Bs. Snickering twits like Eric Cantor threaten to destroy their Social Security and Medicare guarantees. In a word, they're being screwed, and screwed badly.

Now I say that these ideologies are far-right wing, and not right-wing. Why am I making that distinction? Because I don't think that any decently sane conservative would support the current system, or a "You can't afford it? You die" system. A sane conservative would recognize that things like the Hippocratic Oath don't only apply to the rich, and set up a charity to guarantee health care to everyone.

It could be very simple. Have a means test. You can't afford insurance? Health insurance drops you because you're too expensive? You get care. Why hasn't something so simple been set up?

There is the argument that such a charity would make it more palatable for insurance companies to just drop people, but it's not like they aren't doing it anyway. No, the simple fact that such a charity doesn't even exist reveals a serious gap between conservative ideology and reality. Then they to normalize this absence with far-right justifications.

Then of course there's the triage argument of "oh we can't afford to treat everybody." That's obvious bullshit. Triage is only valid when there are literally not enough resources to treat everybody. Sorry to sound like a Leftist, but companies are making record profits, the richest have never been richer, and the wealth distribution disparity keeps widening. They have more than enough money to help people in need. I'm not advocating widespread redistribution of wealth, but I think there should be a minimum requirement, such as when a person needs health care.

When the health care act was signed in 2010, Republicans were in an uproar. All of them voted against it- both in the House and Senate. But even a cursory glance at the provision reveals how much safer health care will be, especially to young men, under the act. First, you don't have to buy separate insurance until you're 27. That helps a LOT and you can use the extra money to pay down student loan debt. Insurance companies can no longer drop you or refuse to take you up because of conditions that you have no control over. Yeah, you have to pay in. So what?

The Republicans just hate it because imposes a large number of regulations on insurance companies. They're not against forcing people to pay for something - see the huge military tax burden. In fact, a system similar to this was their idea. Somehow I don't think they really care about the young men they send to wars, nor do they care if a young man is ruined by college and medical expenses and lack of job opportunities. Fuck them, honestly. Not that the Dems are much better, but they at least pass things that help young men, despite their overbearing feminist tendencies.

Virginity and the Paradox of Modernity, Part I

Virginity is something that has a strange status in modern society. Not too long ago, it was expected that both men and women be virginal until marriage, but gradually that expectation has faded, with the sexual revolution accelerating it. Conservative-minded people tend to believe this was due to fading moral values. I used to agree with this, but am not sure anymore.

I've come to believe that everything is more or less driven by economics. Compare the average man in, say, 1650 to a man today. In 1650, a man spent all day laboring on the farm, glad that the land he tilled was finally his. He married early, at around 13 or 14 years of age, and had children soon afterward. It was ordinary and routine.

Doing something like that now would be considered not only absurd, but pathological. Teenage pregnancy is almost on par with a criminal record in how it ruins your life prospects. Having to work all year on a farm at 13 or 14 instead of going to school would be seen as child labor- a crime. What changed?

It's simple: Technology advanced, making old jobs redundant. Around 100 to 150 years ago, automated machinery started replacing jobs that previously needed a large number of farm hands to perform. The population did not go down; instead, it skyrocketed upward, and large numbers of children found themselves  unemployed. This advancement of technology resulted in increased complexity, which required more intelligence and skill. Hence, the public school system was born, and marrying at 13 or 14 soon became  history.

Fast forward to the 1940s and 1950s, where housewives found themselves increasingly redundant. In eons past, tanning hides, preparing meals, and washing clothes took all day, and were full-time jobs for a woman. With their children at school all day, and with the advent of factory-manufactured clothing, supermarkets, and washing machines, housewives found themselves with nothing to do, and became restless and upset. Enter feminism, women joining the workforce en masse, and an enormous demand for education.

And now we're in the present. You see what is happening here? Economic forces are coalescing to push the age of marriage farther and farther back. It's getting to the point where many people don't even have a decent job until they are in their early to mid-30s. More and more jobs require increasingly lengthy periods of education beforehand. How can people settle down and marry at some pre-ordained young age in such an environment? It's simply too much to expect of all but the most economically-fortunate people.

It could be argued that in the past, people were better at being chaste until marriage. That has to be put in perspective with the average age of marriage, however. It's much easier to be chaste if you're getting married at age 13 or 14- you've only been a sexual being for a year or two! By your mid-teens, your hormones are in full swing, and you want to have sex. A strong shaming culture can maybe keep the lid on things until you're about 16, but that's when it starts seriously breaking down.

People who are sexually mature need sex. It's not as urgent as food, but it needs to be sated in order for a person to be happy. The old, conservative ways of doing things - imploring people to be virginal for years, or even a decade or more, is unrealistic, callous and almost sadistic. People demanding extended chastitiy are basically stuck in time, not realizing that the train has left the station a long time ago. Their ideas worked in pre-industrial or pre-globalization times. But we live in an industrialized, globalized world of global competition.

People are adapting by engaging in premarital sex, which is also partly enabled by birth control technology. This has its major down sides, up to and including a potentially fatal one - the likely inability to form quality, lasting relationships. But such is the paradox of modernity.