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.

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

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."

Feminism and the Something-for-Nothing Mentality of Humans

Humans, by and large, are driven by a desire to get something for nothing. This is reflected in all advertising, which is designed to make people feel like they're getting a "good deal" (for less than it's worth).

I believe that this attitude is reflected in social movements as well. People support social movements in part because they believe they will come out on top if the movement is successful. And that is the attitude that feminism is increasingly representing.

When feminists started out, they wanted to achieve equal access to employment, freedom from sexual harassment, and other noble, practical goals, but I don't believe those things in themselves gave feminism the "kick" it needed to truly become popular among women. Plenty of women wanted to remain homemakers; plenty dreaded the workplace for legitimate reasons (office work sucks). Plenty wanted to keep their feminine charms. There had to be some other motivating force to get them to support the movement, and that was the desire to get something for nothing.

If you look at the modern-day legal system, hiring system, university system, benefits system, economic system, and just society in general, you'll notice that it's all geared toward women.

• Legal system: Women are given automatic benefit of the doubt in custody (default mother custody.) Women are recipients of both formal (Title IV) and informal (boss wanting to fill up his office with hotties) affirmative action. Women are given the benefit of the doubt in rape accusations. creating a perverse incentive to inflict suffering on innocent men, even if the charges are eventually thrown out.
• Hiring system: As stated, the soft affirmative action. Women and feminists are constantly pressuring various industries to accept more women in their ranks, despite the fact that many women just don't match up. Women are often fast-tracked to managerial positions quicker than their merit warrants.
• Benefits system: Women receive arbitrary child support awards that are often disconnected from the economic realities of the father. Men who discover that their child is not theirs are left few options once they are determined to be custodial. More on why child support is so punitive in another post.
• Economic system: TV and a large majority of consumer goods are marketed and geared almost solely toward women. Women have ancient foraging instincts and this leads to a compulsion to go shopping and buy things, and businesses have long been aware of this. It's interesting to note that if anything, feminism has magnified this female tendency by giving women direct economic power. Women never shamed other women for compulsively shopping; men were the only restraint.
• Society in general: Women are just given the benefit of the doubt. Not only that, but they have a strong lobby as they are 50% of the population. Anyone who runs afoul of the opinions of the female horde, or criticizes the excesses of female behavior, is practically crucified (see: the Slutwalks.) Women have also gained an enormous number of privileges that used to be the sole domain of men, but have acquired few of the responsibilities expected of men. For instance, women don't have to register for selective service, and are not expected to approach men to achieve romantic happiness (if a woman is single or not approached by men, it is blamed on men.)

This setup sure looks like women getting "something for nothing!" In fact, many of these "gains" came at the expense of men. How many of them are legitimate? In my opinion, very few. A lot of this stuff is very questionable if looked at from a neutral perspective. I won't deny that women have difficulties in the current system, but a large number of their gains are ill-gotten, and seriously degrade the quality of life of many innocent men.

I doubt all these freebies and benefits are an accident, since they were required to get women on board with feminism. Or, less politely, they were required in order for feminists to ram through their agenda in a society that was skeptical of their aims. Now we have a system that's biased towards women, but is everybody really better off? Or has society become more atomized and ruthless?

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.