The vices may (or may not) be different for young women, but this trenchant overview describes the confusing path that all young people have to walk at this point. We need honest-broker clearinghouses - administered by human beings - for housing, dating, and employment. High schools, community centers, and colleges could be places where seekers and finders come together - we need investment funds to train workers in vital skills (anyone see that video about court reporters and escalator repairmen being in short supply?) and yes, laws to prevent corporate buyers in the private housing market. Thank you for the great post!
The problem with corporate buyers is entirely a symptom of insufficient housing construction (touched on only briefly in the essay). If we smash the NIMBYs' power, the housing shortage is solved.
I value Commonplace, but this article started out with so many overstatements that it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I have never heard a liberal say "men are trash."
There are about 2500 four-year colleges & universities in the US. About 100 are highly selective, accepting less than 1/3 of applicants. The vast majority of students go to colleges that admit 50% or more of applicants. The experience of applying to these schools is not one of "randomness." The elite's perception that Harvard and Yale are the only place to go is utterly distorted, as Commonplace writers should certainly know.
From my perspective, I have definitely heard the “men is trash” sentiment - sometimes in exactly those words, sometimes just expressed. There was (is?) a recent trend online where it was fashionable for young women to question whether it’s embarrassing to even have a boyfriend. (Of course, a lot of women also pushed back on that!)
I think your point on colleges is valid. It’s not really difficult to get into college. The “elite” ones do make you stand out in the faceless online application process though, and can make tuition feel like less of a gamble in a way that second-tier colleges don’t, and acceptance into those kinds of colleges I think *can* feel random. Lots of people can develop “perfect” college applications on paper over their high school years, and many will still not be accepted into the elite schools they were aiming for (in other words, they won’t be rewarded for their efforts). I think that is the dysfunction John was getting at.
Of course liberals call men “trash,” or words very much like it. Read articles in any liberal publication and you see it: The Atlantic (“Oh, How the Men Drone On,” Jan 2025), The Guardian (“Men Seem to Make Life for Women Worse,” Sept 2025), Washington Post (“Why Can’t We Hate Men?,” June 2018), etc. etc. These and other publications shape public perceptions until their rhetoric becomes part of the social conscience.
And it’s reinforced by misandrist rhetoric from liberal politicians, e.g., Hilary Clinton’s repeated comments demonizing (white) men.
Virtually every (liberal) woman I know dislikes, even hates, men. It’s no wonder many young men are distancing themselves.
“Men are trash” takes so many forms, who needs men, men are useless, the patriarchs time is over.
For Pete’s Sake, we couldn’t have Boy Scouts without women demanding first entry and then morphing the organization to where boys don’t want anything to do with it.
Schools started a myriad array of special programs to help girls succeed at stem with college entrance processes using DEI agendas to pick up where high schools left off.
Upon graduating women with an engineering degree were promoted at 2-3 times the speed that their male peers were. Women had careers, men had jobs.
So, yes, young men suffer from the removal of a social structure that provides direction for “success” in today’s society. Even worse, they’ve come to see how the game was intentionally rigged against them and their simply opting out.
Very real problems, and with each issue I recognise how much considerably easier it was back when I was young a long long time ago.
Low cost housing was ubiquitous. A cheap room could be had for a week by working day labor half a day, and sucky jobs paid much more. A guy could be self supporting immediately, and a college degree, any degree, from any college would move you up the ladder quickly at any company.
I often read articles by young economists. They look at statistics and figures. They weren't around then. The whole story doesn't get told. They can't see beyond average or median. Pre aids there was more sex, a lot more sex.
Often young economists and thought leaders see only the view from a good college grad. They want affordable new 4 bedroom houses, and foreign vacations, a fancy car. They never look at the world normies lived in back then, or now.
I'm building a tiny house right now, it will probably end up costing me $30K. Tiny bedroom with loft, small kitchen, bathroom, AC, washer dryer, porch across the front. Around me in this town are many houses not much bigger that people used to raise eight or ten kids in while working the mines. Young folks these days need cheap places to live above all else.
We control how things go in our economy a lot more than free marketeers would like to admit. We need to structure things such that a 20 year old feels comfortable starting a family. While still in college if need be. As a society we need a much more attainable floor, a point below which no people can fall. A way to make it to the bottom rungs of the ladder.
It is hard to get back to a lost world. A lot of what is talked about is symptoms rather than causes. Life is a bell curve and we need to figure out a way for people 1.0 SD below median to have a decent life. We used to do that. I think that unions were part of the answer back then. I refer to private sector unions as public sector ones just make things worse. The private sector unions did get over-mighty for a while and contributed to the exodus of manufacturing from America.
Now a lot of 1.0 SD below median are having a hard time of it. Many things I find to be a royal pain are probably impossible for someone 1.0 below median to even figure out.
Used to work. Tech was different so we need to figure out a way to make the tech work for them instead of against them. Having half the population on welfare is unsustainable regardless of what Elon says. Even having the 15% that is >1SD below is hard. From the time records started being kept (Romans) it's been 5 to 10 percent can't function on their own.
Someone with “skills” is already three steps ahead of the game. I spent the past two summers renovating two old homes, the average all-in cost of each house was $70,000.
That’s a new hvac, electrical, plumbing, insulation, Sheetrock, flooring and insulation. Each house is around 1200 sqft. It was hard, dirty work and the end product was not perfect but nice and I benefited from a local economy in North Dakota that valued seeing a couple homes become viable tax generating properties more than over the top building inspections and permit requirements.
Good essay and excellent diagnosis. Many of the proposed solutions are communal; where communal institutions work to provide employment, marriage and social interaction support. Local churches are an established institution offering communal support especially with regard to marriage. The fact that more young men are attending a church is an encouraging development. How a local church or network of believers helps a young man gain employment may take some thought and consideration.
I enjoyed this thoughtful article but believe a glaring omission is encouragement of trade skill training as a legitimate career path for High School seniors. This would seem to be particularly important as some degree of manufacturing will be returning to the U.S. in the coming years.
"a polity cannot write off 90% of the population as losers unable to compete"
We've been doing exactly that for over 100 years. Successfully navigating the 21st century world requires far more cognitive and social ability to its early 20th century counterpart. It's not an rural/urban thing -- 50%+ of all Americans were living in cities 100 years ago. But in that century, we made it harder and harder for the IQ<100 to succeed. (That's half the population.)
The 2-tier society is mostly cognitive, as the smarter and more social get university degrees which are mostly just markers to advertise their genetic endowments and catapult themselves into what we now call "the laptop class." If you're in the laptop class, this world is great. Oh, it's still lonely and atomized and difficult to find meaning or connection... but you've got lots of cheap stuff to distract you from the meaninglessness of your life and job. Everyone else lacks those distractions, so they create their own: porn, video games, drugs, etc... And that everyone else today is about 70% male.
Fundamentally, modern America doesn't need men, at least not American men. It needs consumers (women are good at that) but not producers (which is what men are). Our production comes from overseas. Women are legally equal and it turns out they don't like having babies when given the choice. So how, exactly, is your average 100 IQ, good with his hands, watch the game on Saturday kind of guy supposed to be a man in this world?
I don't have the answers, and those given here aren't bad. But remember Patrick Deneen's diagnosis in Why Liberalism Failed? Great book and many were all looking forward to his answers, but Regime Change flopped because his solutions were so obviously and woefully below the level of the problems he had identified. I feel the same way about the solutions presented here: not bad ideas, but far too little to matter.
The idea that only dumb people end up in "non-cognitive" trades is so wrong and shortsighted. You'll find plenty of very smart people working shit-tier, retail jobs. And often times their superiors/managers are functionally illiterate. The "invisible hand" doesn't select for anything, the job market is mostly about nepotism and social engineering, not intelligence and talent. There are even cases of literal super-geniuses who were expected to redefine entire fields and got free rides through the most elite universities based on their IQ quitting and deciding to work bottom-tier jobs because they liked it more.
Life isn't fair. It is also very random. Through no fault of your own, and having nothing to do with your intelligence or lack there-of you can end up in a dead-end job or unemployed. And that's assuming in the first place that the job market was designed to filter for the best people to reach the top--it very much isn't. At least, not anymore.
I certainly wasn't implying that everyone who works a crappy job is dumb.
I'm a Mensa member, a genius. All that means is my neurons are slightly closer and my neurotransmitter levels slightly higher; the combined effect makes me able to take in new information and act on it faster than 98% of all humans. That's all intelligence is: faster pattern recognition and decision making. I've spent a lot of time around very smart people; I know first hand just how foolish they (and I sometimes) can be.
However, since the 1950's, raw intelligence has been highly correlated with university education, starting with the rise of "meritocracy" (via standardized testing) instad of social standing for admission to Harvard. While college graduation != economic usefulness, the college-income-premium has risen sharply since the 70's. In short, the smart (a purely genetic endowment) are using universities to accrue wealth and status to themselves, while engaging in policies that hurt everyone else. Unlike the older aristocracy though, they believe they've earned their position by merit and thus the "everyone else" is morally beneath them.
As an economic progressive, I'm very happy to read this kind of thinking from "conservative" writers. I've become more wary of defaulting to left-right labels as this new source of economic thinking emerges and dovetails with existing (ok, progressive) thinking. That's because it doesn't matter what one calls the policy on that spectrum. What matters is the policy gets implemented. Exacerbating entrenched left-right knee-jerks is the opposite of helpful. Welcoming our brothers and sisters to join in uniting against corporate control, oligopoly, legal political corruption, and for worker and voter agency is the attitude that can form a genuine movement. If those issues somehow become the legitimate platform of the republican party, I'll become a (progressive) republican. Same if the democratic party legitimately adopts that platform. But, since both are so thoroughly owned by the financial elite, I see a third party as the best option. To form that, social issue neutrality has to be enforced to keep the economic agenda front and center.
The sort of populist fusion you describe is the best hope. I think I can identify leaders on the right side of this like Vance, Hawley and maybe Rubio but I am having trouble identifying left populists to join them. I once had hope for Warren but she joined up with the culture warriors and is now too old. Bernie is even older. Any ideas for younger ones that are focused on those issues? Watching Mamdami but he is too NYC to have much of an impact elsewhere. Plus he has some seriously crazy ideas like depolicing and public grocery stores. If I could figure out how to imbed pictures, I would add the one of Boris Yeltsin in an American supermarket. If the Republican establishment succeeds in retaking the party after Trump, I think you will see a 3rd party. Lots of institutional barriers to success but the Republicans went from zero to total control in 6 years starting in 1854.
“Metacrisis” is right. I won’t dispute your assessment of the economics behind my generation’s predicament—expensive housing, AI-driven job loss, the gig economy, etc.—but I’m absolutely convinced that culture is fundamentally to blame. I’ll use some anecdotes to elaborate.
I graduated in the top 1% of my high school GPA-wise, earned a National Merit Finalist scholarship (top 1% of PSAT test takers), and graduated from a public university with zero debt. I worked a series of fun and colorful seasonal jobs in various outdoor gigs: volunteered with the Fish & Wildlife Service on remote islands, killed invasive plants in California, collected seeds for a federal seed bank, surveyed seabirds in Hawaii, etc. Every job paid a little more money than the last, I lived frugally and saved as much as I could (55 cents on the dollar collecting seeds!), and maxed out my Roth IRA contributions. It was a great work-life balance, in that I could make ends meet, save for the future, see a new corner of the country, have fun, and take time off between seasons to travel. The economy seemed to be working, at least when you have no debt!
I worked my most recent assignment, the seabird survey job, for three seasons. It paid reasonably well, had decent benefits (employer-matched SIMPLE IRA, affordable healthcare, 7 hours of vacation per two-week pay period), and let me take two months off a year to travel. Awesome! But after three years of living in Kauai, I went on exactly one date. Turns out you have to go where the women are, and many of them (in Hawaii, anyway) are online these days, or spend their time drinking and getting high on the beach, or else don’t want to be in committed relationships. No thanks.
One of my coworkers dated a woman for close to ten years. She wanted to work in Hawaii and he didn’t, but he dragged himself out there for the sake of their relationship, moved in with her, and eventually got a good job as a natural resources manager making easily $80,000 per year. They’re both in their 30’s. But guess what? He wanted kids and she didn’t. This guy made a tremendous sacrifice by moving out to be with her, he got a good job, and he shared hobbies, interests, and temperaments with his girlfriend. To this day, they get along great. But because she doesn’t want a family, there’s yet another able and willing man—a guy who wants to become a father—who’s back to the drawing board.
I ended up getting baptized a year ago and joining the LDS/Mormon Church. (Long story.) I know multiple men in my current ward who are by all accounts productive citizens: they’re educated, they’re gainfully employed (some of them with great careers), a handful of them own their own homes or small businesses, and many of them have gone on missions, meaning they’ve set aside their egos for two years in the service of something other than themselves. I assume all of them are temple-worthy, meaning none of them drink, smoke, or use porn, they tithe 10% of their income to the church, and they volunteer their time and energy serving the congregation. In a previous generation—back when women supposedly wanted good husbands/family men—they would’ve been the cream of the crop, so far as character and values are concerned. A productive, selfless man! But to the best of my knowledge, very few of them can get dates, even within the church. I’ll be the first to admit that some of them seem to lack social skills, which is obviously important… but I stand by my assessment that the fundamental issue here, so far as this cohort is concerned, is that too many women judge the men in their lives only skin-deep. All the good behavior and family-based values won’t make a difference if he can’t get her attention, and he can’t get her attention unless he passes through an elaborate and ever-changing set of internet-derived filters that have little bearing on what makes for a good husband.
I’m 34 years old, yet I’m writing this from my childhood bedroom. I want desperately to become a husband and a good father. I was a high achiever academically, and I ended up pursuing a career that paid the bills and let me do what I enjoy: being outside and seeing the world. I did the whole “self fulfillment” thing, yet I’m as lonely as I’ve ever been because I can’t find anyone to share my life with. As a man, I’d like to focus on skills I can cultivate within myself (one could always work out more, or get fancier clothes, or delve deeply into a new hobby) rather than bitch about my lack of romantic life to strangers on the internet. But I’m utterly terrified I’ll throw myself into a thankless, soul-crushing job to signal that I’m a provider… and that it won’t make any difference. That no matter my sacrifice or efforts, the average woman will just scroll past me because the internet has convinced her that if a man can’t provide a dopamine rush on command, he’s not worth having. It’s deeply frustrating and it’s driven some of us to despair.
Sorry for the ridiculously long and personal post. I’m just not convinced the “metacrisis” is primarily economic. Yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty of men who’ve proven themselves to be deadbeats—on welfare/food stamps, doing drugs, playing video games ad nauseum, etc.—but I’ve met far too many who are productive, selfless, and on their best behavior, yet have no dating luck whatsoever.
Men and women are supposed to need each other—men can reign in the emotional impulses of women, women can help tame and harness men’s productive energy, etc.—but we live in a culture that prizes autonomy above all else. Should it surprise anyone that most young adults would rather finance a vacation to Santorini—replete with drinks and one-night stands—than raise children together? Our values are what’s been messed up, and until we return to something approximating the recent past—incentivizing marriage, manhood, and productivity, disincentivizing mindless consumption and random hookups, and finding ways to make us need each other instead of constantly promoting independence and autonomy—we’ll always have the “metacrisis” in our midst.
Go to South America or Eastern Europe for an extended vacation. The LDS are active there, use local connections and you’ll find that the reception you get from women is far different and all of the attributes you listed will be respected.
If I were a young man looking for a lifelong partner I’d go in a heartbeat.
I’m 34, so I’m on the edge of YSA eligibility anyway. If nothing picks up in my romantic life in the next few months, I’ll almost certainly entertain the idea of long-term travel abroad. I vacationed years ago in Peru and women actually cat-called me, lol. Being a foot taller than many of the men and having an American passport were assets held in high regard.
You don't,say where you live at. Not kn owing that, being young(er) with some resources I would say move to somewhere were the values of women are different. Not the east or west coast, not the big metropolis. What do you have to lose?
Being in a long-term relationship is hard and messy and most people prefer to avoid that nowadays. Everyday life is messy enough. Buying anything together could mean a costly divorce down the line, having children could mean causing harm to the ones you love the most if climate continues to worsen and nothing gets done to address it. Capitalism encourages individualism. Most media has taught us that a simple life is a thrown-away life as there are plenty of pleasures to seek and if we want to remain relevant, we should keep up with Instagram and have fun. My advice: learn to really enjoy being alone and relax. One day, out of nowhere, you will find someone to spend some or all your life with. Until then, enjoy friends and acquaintances, quaint chats with strangers and look outside identity groups for companionship. Most importantly, happiness should not be defined by a formula and you seemed to have lived quite a nice life until now so be thankful. If all that fails, volunteer in some very poor country for a while. That did the trick for me. I suddenly realised how wonderful my life has been and how LUCKY I am.
I appreciate where you’re coming from re: gratitude. I nearly died in a workplace accident two years ago, and I’m grateful to be alive and healthy. I attend all sorts of church events and volunteer at a food pantry, so I’m doing what I can to cultivate community. It just seems to me that the things that should matter most in a long-term relationship—financial stability, lack of destructive/addictive habits, good character, etc.—don’t really move the needle for many people. The irony is, complaining about something that’s obviously true (social media scrambling everybody’s brains) doesn’t actually make you more attractive. Young men have to put our heads down, improve ourselves, and quit moaning about how unfair and erratic the dating scene is. Just grin and bear it and pray that you’ll meet the right person via random chance? That last bit feels too much like a form of surrender…
"...just walk into an office with a firm handshake and a copy of your resume, and ask to see the manager—is infuriating not because it’s nonsense, but because at one time it was true."
This is bullsh$t. It's a myth. Another 'boomers suck because XXX' myth.
This is a good article that properly articulates the loss of agency young people currently experience. The sadness is that their agency now resides exclusively with those who benefited from it over previous generations and who can now buy single family homes they do not need to get even more pennies they do not need. At which point the only hope is for local | state | federal governments with agency to declare the behavior predatory and end it. Which will not happen because the levers of authority are in the hands of those who enjoyed said now lost agency and mistake it for superiority, and thereby, an entitlement to charge it forward.
Spot on article. The traditional paths to success have gotten harder and harder. And social media has distorted our views of success - it seems there is an endless supply of people getting rich off very little work on our screens.
I believe we either need to collectively accept our views of success are distorted (hard to do considering human evolutionary tendencies) or just go down this path of elite consolidation. While the rich get richer, the floor drops out for everyone else.
The primary cause of 'elite consolidation' I think is capitalist monopolization. There are huge forces under capitalism that directs an enterprise towards monopolization, which is closer to socialism than capitalism. Capitalism must be saved from itself.
Yes, agreed. The people with capital seem to be dropping the pretense more and more these days. Also giving the accrued benefits of this capital to the people closest to them - which is also historically how societies functioned.
Monopolization brings their assets a lot of security, and they can get richer faster while small businesses find it more and more difficult to compete. Any surprise that the top 5% are getting richer while the middle 50% are getting poorer. There can be no other reason for this. Note that technological complexity and government regulation assist in monopolization.
Mike Rowe has an excellent take on the jobs that will need doing and these jobs will provide a huge opportunity for the young men astute enough to see the opportunity and to get in early.
Men built performed the backbreaking labor to build this society and all the required infrastructure that makes it work and men maintain it.
Technological innovation will do away with a wide swath of traditional white collar jobs, it’s already happening and it’s going to get worse, for most a university degree is a suckers bet.
The real opportunities will be in the interface between what used to be blue and white collar jobs, for example think of a locksmiths job, it used to be cutting keys, jimmying locked car doors open, installing door handles etc. today’s locksmith is programming keyless biometric locks, using technology to determine computer coding of smart automotive keys so duplicates can be made and programmed. Etc
Electricians are installing whole-house smart systems that control lighting, heating and cooling, security, power usage, back-up generators that start and stop automatically etc.
There’s a role and a pathway for young men that will easily lead to $100,000 a year jobs buts it’s evolving and part of that evolution is removing the stigma assigned to these jobs.
Meh. Things will work themselves out, they always do despite all the gloomsaying in this piece. To whit, look back in history - to the mechanization of the textile industry, agricultural mechanization, the deskilling of manufacturing work with the assembly line, telephone switchboard automation, personal computers eliminating administrative roles, robotics in manufacturing. In all these cases , new roles and jobs were created, but yes, some groups got left out in the interim as things re-adjusted. For those left out, moving to where the work is, physically and mentally, will be required, but often few do, waiting for a new job to come to the community where the old job no longer is.
The problem with corporate buyers and general lack of home affordability is entirely a symptom of insufficient high-density housing construction (touched on only briefly in the essay). If we smash the NIMBYs' power, the housing shortage is solved.
Credentialism and hence the oversupply of college graduates is a symptom of Griggs v. Duke Power and hence antidiscrimination law.
I have enjoyed this article and the comments, that seem mainly thoughtful and respectful. I am old enough to remember when the pathway to adult life seemed a lot simpler, although it was definitely not as simple as walking into an office with your resume! And getting into an Ivy was not the obsession that it has become. The many opportunities to self-silo (even without trying, in the age of the algorithm) is one big difference that I notice, which seems to keep people apart, as well as the growing focus on the preferences and priorities of the wealthy, in many areas of American life. I do note that this forum skews male, and hope that a wider range of voices will join and enrich it. 'Men are trash' is mainly click bait on media sites, since the financial model thrives on agitation on both ends of the spectrum. Most women I know have fathers, brothers, husbands and sons and love them all. Harassers are out there, though.
The vices may (or may not) be different for young women, but this trenchant overview describes the confusing path that all young people have to walk at this point. We need honest-broker clearinghouses - administered by human beings - for housing, dating, and employment. High schools, community centers, and colleges could be places where seekers and finders come together - we need investment funds to train workers in vital skills (anyone see that video about court reporters and escalator repairmen being in short supply?) and yes, laws to prevent corporate buyers in the private housing market. Thank you for the great post!
The problem with corporate buyers is entirely a symptom of insufficient housing construction (touched on only briefly in the essay). If we smash the NIMBYs' power, the housing shortage is solved.
I value Commonplace, but this article started out with so many overstatements that it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I have never heard a liberal say "men are trash."
There are about 2500 four-year colleges & universities in the US. About 100 are highly selective, accepting less than 1/3 of applicants. The vast majority of students go to colleges that admit 50% or more of applicants. The experience of applying to these schools is not one of "randomness." The elite's perception that Harvard and Yale are the only place to go is utterly distorted, as Commonplace writers should certainly know.
From my perspective, I have definitely heard the “men is trash” sentiment - sometimes in exactly those words, sometimes just expressed. There was (is?) a recent trend online where it was fashionable for young women to question whether it’s embarrassing to even have a boyfriend. (Of course, a lot of women also pushed back on that!)
I think your point on colleges is valid. It’s not really difficult to get into college. The “elite” ones do make you stand out in the faceless online application process though, and can make tuition feel like less of a gamble in a way that second-tier colleges don’t, and acceptance into those kinds of colleges I think *can* feel random. Lots of people can develop “perfect” college applications on paper over their high school years, and many will still not be accepted into the elite schools they were aiming for (in other words, they won’t be rewarded for their efforts). I think that is the dysfunction John was getting at.
Of course liberals call men “trash,” or words very much like it. Read articles in any liberal publication and you see it: The Atlantic (“Oh, How the Men Drone On,” Jan 2025), The Guardian (“Men Seem to Make Life for Women Worse,” Sept 2025), Washington Post (“Why Can’t We Hate Men?,” June 2018), etc. etc. These and other publications shape public perceptions until their rhetoric becomes part of the social conscience.
And it’s reinforced by misandrist rhetoric from liberal politicians, e.g., Hilary Clinton’s repeated comments demonizing (white) men.
Virtually every (liberal) woman I know dislikes, even hates, men. It’s no wonder many young men are distancing themselves.
“Men are trash” takes so many forms, who needs men, men are useless, the patriarchs time is over.
For Pete’s Sake, we couldn’t have Boy Scouts without women demanding first entry and then morphing the organization to where boys don’t want anything to do with it.
Schools started a myriad array of special programs to help girls succeed at stem with college entrance processes using DEI agendas to pick up where high schools left off.
Upon graduating women with an engineering degree were promoted at 2-3 times the speed that their male peers were. Women had careers, men had jobs.
So, yes, young men suffer from the removal of a social structure that provides direction for “success” in today’s society. Even worse, they’ve come to see how the game was intentionally rigged against them and their simply opting out.
See, e.g., Men on Strike, by Helen Smith.
https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/men-on-strike-why-men-are-boycotting-marriage-fatherhood-and-the-american-dream-and-why-it-matters/
Very real problems, and with each issue I recognise how much considerably easier it was back when I was young a long long time ago.
Low cost housing was ubiquitous. A cheap room could be had for a week by working day labor half a day, and sucky jobs paid much more. A guy could be self supporting immediately, and a college degree, any degree, from any college would move you up the ladder quickly at any company.
I often read articles by young economists. They look at statistics and figures. They weren't around then. The whole story doesn't get told. They can't see beyond average or median. Pre aids there was more sex, a lot more sex.
Often young economists and thought leaders see only the view from a good college grad. They want affordable new 4 bedroom houses, and foreign vacations, a fancy car. They never look at the world normies lived in back then, or now.
I'm building a tiny house right now, it will probably end up costing me $30K. Tiny bedroom with loft, small kitchen, bathroom, AC, washer dryer, porch across the front. Around me in this town are many houses not much bigger that people used to raise eight or ten kids in while working the mines. Young folks these days need cheap places to live above all else.
We control how things go in our economy a lot more than free marketeers would like to admit. We need to structure things such that a 20 year old feels comfortable starting a family. While still in college if need be. As a society we need a much more attainable floor, a point below which no people can fall. A way to make it to the bottom rungs of the ladder.
It is hard to get back to a lost world. A lot of what is talked about is symptoms rather than causes. Life is a bell curve and we need to figure out a way for people 1.0 SD below median to have a decent life. We used to do that. I think that unions were part of the answer back then. I refer to private sector unions as public sector ones just make things worse. The private sector unions did get over-mighty for a while and contributed to the exodus of manufacturing from America.
Now a lot of 1.0 SD below median are having a hard time of it. Many things I find to be a royal pain are probably impossible for someone 1.0 below median to even figure out.
Used to work. Tech was different so we need to figure out a way to make the tech work for them instead of against them. Having half the population on welfare is unsustainable regardless of what Elon says. Even having the 15% that is >1SD below is hard. From the time records started being kept (Romans) it's been 5 to 10 percent can't function on their own.
Someone with “skills” is already three steps ahead of the game. I spent the past two summers renovating two old homes, the average all-in cost of each house was $70,000.
That’s a new hvac, electrical, plumbing, insulation, Sheetrock, flooring and insulation. Each house is around 1200 sqft. It was hard, dirty work and the end product was not perfect but nice and I benefited from a local economy in North Dakota that valued seeing a couple homes become viable tax generating properties more than over the top building inspections and permit requirements.
Good essay and excellent diagnosis. Many of the proposed solutions are communal; where communal institutions work to provide employment, marriage and social interaction support. Local churches are an established institution offering communal support especially with regard to marriage. The fact that more young men are attending a church is an encouraging development. How a local church or network of believers helps a young man gain employment may take some thought and consideration.
I enjoyed this thoughtful article but believe a glaring omission is encouragement of trade skill training as a legitimate career path for High School seniors. This would seem to be particularly important as some degree of manufacturing will be returning to the U.S. in the coming years.
"a polity cannot write off 90% of the population as losers unable to compete"
We've been doing exactly that for over 100 years. Successfully navigating the 21st century world requires far more cognitive and social ability to its early 20th century counterpart. It's not an rural/urban thing -- 50%+ of all Americans were living in cities 100 years ago. But in that century, we made it harder and harder for the IQ<100 to succeed. (That's half the population.)
The 2-tier society is mostly cognitive, as the smarter and more social get university degrees which are mostly just markers to advertise their genetic endowments and catapult themselves into what we now call "the laptop class." If you're in the laptop class, this world is great. Oh, it's still lonely and atomized and difficult to find meaning or connection... but you've got lots of cheap stuff to distract you from the meaninglessness of your life and job. Everyone else lacks those distractions, so they create their own: porn, video games, drugs, etc... And that everyone else today is about 70% male.
Fundamentally, modern America doesn't need men, at least not American men. It needs consumers (women are good at that) but not producers (which is what men are). Our production comes from overseas. Women are legally equal and it turns out they don't like having babies when given the choice. So how, exactly, is your average 100 IQ, good with his hands, watch the game on Saturday kind of guy supposed to be a man in this world?
I don't have the answers, and those given here aren't bad. But remember Patrick Deneen's diagnosis in Why Liberalism Failed? Great book and many were all looking forward to his answers, but Regime Change flopped because his solutions were so obviously and woefully below the level of the problems he had identified. I feel the same way about the solutions presented here: not bad ideas, but far too little to matter.
The idea that only dumb people end up in "non-cognitive" trades is so wrong and shortsighted. You'll find plenty of very smart people working shit-tier, retail jobs. And often times their superiors/managers are functionally illiterate. The "invisible hand" doesn't select for anything, the job market is mostly about nepotism and social engineering, not intelligence and talent. There are even cases of literal super-geniuses who were expected to redefine entire fields and got free rides through the most elite universities based on their IQ quitting and deciding to work bottom-tier jobs because they liked it more.
Life isn't fair. It is also very random. Through no fault of your own, and having nothing to do with your intelligence or lack there-of you can end up in a dead-end job or unemployed. And that's assuming in the first place that the job market was designed to filter for the best people to reach the top--it very much isn't. At least, not anymore.
I certainly wasn't implying that everyone who works a crappy job is dumb.
I'm a Mensa member, a genius. All that means is my neurons are slightly closer and my neurotransmitter levels slightly higher; the combined effect makes me able to take in new information and act on it faster than 98% of all humans. That's all intelligence is: faster pattern recognition and decision making. I've spent a lot of time around very smart people; I know first hand just how foolish they (and I sometimes) can be.
However, since the 1950's, raw intelligence has been highly correlated with university education, starting with the rise of "meritocracy" (via standardized testing) instad of social standing for admission to Harvard. While college graduation != economic usefulness, the college-income-premium has risen sharply since the 70's. In short, the smart (a purely genetic endowment) are using universities to accrue wealth and status to themselves, while engaging in policies that hurt everyone else. Unlike the older aristocracy though, they believe they've earned their position by merit and thus the "everyone else" is morally beneath them.
I'm certainly happy to benefit from that man's labor doing practically anything.
As an economic progressive, I'm very happy to read this kind of thinking from "conservative" writers. I've become more wary of defaulting to left-right labels as this new source of economic thinking emerges and dovetails with existing (ok, progressive) thinking. That's because it doesn't matter what one calls the policy on that spectrum. What matters is the policy gets implemented. Exacerbating entrenched left-right knee-jerks is the opposite of helpful. Welcoming our brothers and sisters to join in uniting against corporate control, oligopoly, legal political corruption, and for worker and voter agency is the attitude that can form a genuine movement. If those issues somehow become the legitimate platform of the republican party, I'll become a (progressive) republican. Same if the democratic party legitimately adopts that platform. But, since both are so thoroughly owned by the financial elite, I see a third party as the best option. To form that, social issue neutrality has to be enforced to keep the economic agenda front and center.
Anyway, this is exciting to read.
The sort of populist fusion you describe is the best hope. I think I can identify leaders on the right side of this like Vance, Hawley and maybe Rubio but I am having trouble identifying left populists to join them. I once had hope for Warren but she joined up with the culture warriors and is now too old. Bernie is even older. Any ideas for younger ones that are focused on those issues? Watching Mamdami but he is too NYC to have much of an impact elsewhere. Plus he has some seriously crazy ideas like depolicing and public grocery stores. If I could figure out how to imbed pictures, I would add the one of Boris Yeltsin in an American supermarket. If the Republican establishment succeeds in retaking the party after Trump, I think you will see a 3rd party. Lots of institutional barriers to success but the Republicans went from zero to total control in 6 years starting in 1854.
Left-right is an over-simplification. Check out Horseshoe Theory and other axis such as libertarian/authoritarian.
“Metacrisis” is right. I won’t dispute your assessment of the economics behind my generation’s predicament—expensive housing, AI-driven job loss, the gig economy, etc.—but I’m absolutely convinced that culture is fundamentally to blame. I’ll use some anecdotes to elaborate.
I graduated in the top 1% of my high school GPA-wise, earned a National Merit Finalist scholarship (top 1% of PSAT test takers), and graduated from a public university with zero debt. I worked a series of fun and colorful seasonal jobs in various outdoor gigs: volunteered with the Fish & Wildlife Service on remote islands, killed invasive plants in California, collected seeds for a federal seed bank, surveyed seabirds in Hawaii, etc. Every job paid a little more money than the last, I lived frugally and saved as much as I could (55 cents on the dollar collecting seeds!), and maxed out my Roth IRA contributions. It was a great work-life balance, in that I could make ends meet, save for the future, see a new corner of the country, have fun, and take time off between seasons to travel. The economy seemed to be working, at least when you have no debt!
I worked my most recent assignment, the seabird survey job, for three seasons. It paid reasonably well, had decent benefits (employer-matched SIMPLE IRA, affordable healthcare, 7 hours of vacation per two-week pay period), and let me take two months off a year to travel. Awesome! But after three years of living in Kauai, I went on exactly one date. Turns out you have to go where the women are, and many of them (in Hawaii, anyway) are online these days, or spend their time drinking and getting high on the beach, or else don’t want to be in committed relationships. No thanks.
One of my coworkers dated a woman for close to ten years. She wanted to work in Hawaii and he didn’t, but he dragged himself out there for the sake of their relationship, moved in with her, and eventually got a good job as a natural resources manager making easily $80,000 per year. They’re both in their 30’s. But guess what? He wanted kids and she didn’t. This guy made a tremendous sacrifice by moving out to be with her, he got a good job, and he shared hobbies, interests, and temperaments with his girlfriend. To this day, they get along great. But because she doesn’t want a family, there’s yet another able and willing man—a guy who wants to become a father—who’s back to the drawing board.
I ended up getting baptized a year ago and joining the LDS/Mormon Church. (Long story.) I know multiple men in my current ward who are by all accounts productive citizens: they’re educated, they’re gainfully employed (some of them with great careers), a handful of them own their own homes or small businesses, and many of them have gone on missions, meaning they’ve set aside their egos for two years in the service of something other than themselves. I assume all of them are temple-worthy, meaning none of them drink, smoke, or use porn, they tithe 10% of their income to the church, and they volunteer their time and energy serving the congregation. In a previous generation—back when women supposedly wanted good husbands/family men—they would’ve been the cream of the crop, so far as character and values are concerned. A productive, selfless man! But to the best of my knowledge, very few of them can get dates, even within the church. I’ll be the first to admit that some of them seem to lack social skills, which is obviously important… but I stand by my assessment that the fundamental issue here, so far as this cohort is concerned, is that too many women judge the men in their lives only skin-deep. All the good behavior and family-based values won’t make a difference if he can’t get her attention, and he can’t get her attention unless he passes through an elaborate and ever-changing set of internet-derived filters that have little bearing on what makes for a good husband.
I’m 34 years old, yet I’m writing this from my childhood bedroom. I want desperately to become a husband and a good father. I was a high achiever academically, and I ended up pursuing a career that paid the bills and let me do what I enjoy: being outside and seeing the world. I did the whole “self fulfillment” thing, yet I’m as lonely as I’ve ever been because I can’t find anyone to share my life with. As a man, I’d like to focus on skills I can cultivate within myself (one could always work out more, or get fancier clothes, or delve deeply into a new hobby) rather than bitch about my lack of romantic life to strangers on the internet. But I’m utterly terrified I’ll throw myself into a thankless, soul-crushing job to signal that I’m a provider… and that it won’t make any difference. That no matter my sacrifice or efforts, the average woman will just scroll past me because the internet has convinced her that if a man can’t provide a dopamine rush on command, he’s not worth having. It’s deeply frustrating and it’s driven some of us to despair.
Sorry for the ridiculously long and personal post. I’m just not convinced the “metacrisis” is primarily economic. Yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty of men who’ve proven themselves to be deadbeats—on welfare/food stamps, doing drugs, playing video games ad nauseum, etc.—but I’ve met far too many who are productive, selfless, and on their best behavior, yet have no dating luck whatsoever.
Men and women are supposed to need each other—men can reign in the emotional impulses of women, women can help tame and harness men’s productive energy, etc.—but we live in a culture that prizes autonomy above all else. Should it surprise anyone that most young adults would rather finance a vacation to Santorini—replete with drinks and one-night stands—than raise children together? Our values are what’s been messed up, and until we return to something approximating the recent past—incentivizing marriage, manhood, and productivity, disincentivizing mindless consumption and random hookups, and finding ways to make us need each other instead of constantly promoting independence and autonomy—we’ll always have the “metacrisis” in our midst.
Go to South America or Eastern Europe for an extended vacation. The LDS are active there, use local connections and you’ll find that the reception you get from women is far different and all of the attributes you listed will be respected.
If I were a young man looking for a lifelong partner I’d go in a heartbeat.
I’m 34, so I’m on the edge of YSA eligibility anyway. If nothing picks up in my romantic life in the next few months, I’ll almost certainly entertain the idea of long-term travel abroad. I vacationed years ago in Peru and women actually cat-called me, lol. Being a foot taller than many of the men and having an American passport were assets held in high regard.
You don't,say where you live at. Not kn owing that, being young(er) with some resources I would say move to somewhere were the values of women are different. Not the east or west coast, not the big metropolis. What do you have to lose?
I’m in the Central Florida suburbs for now. I’m very sympathetic with your suggestion, believe me.
I live in Omaha. If you don’t mind a little snow and cold, it’s a great place to look for a soul mate.
Being in a long-term relationship is hard and messy and most people prefer to avoid that nowadays. Everyday life is messy enough. Buying anything together could mean a costly divorce down the line, having children could mean causing harm to the ones you love the most if climate continues to worsen and nothing gets done to address it. Capitalism encourages individualism. Most media has taught us that a simple life is a thrown-away life as there are plenty of pleasures to seek and if we want to remain relevant, we should keep up with Instagram and have fun. My advice: learn to really enjoy being alone and relax. One day, out of nowhere, you will find someone to spend some or all your life with. Until then, enjoy friends and acquaintances, quaint chats with strangers and look outside identity groups for companionship. Most importantly, happiness should not be defined by a formula and you seemed to have lived quite a nice life until now so be thankful. If all that fails, volunteer in some very poor country for a while. That did the trick for me. I suddenly realised how wonderful my life has been and how LUCKY I am.
Why do people nowadays prefer to avoid “ hard and messy” relationships?
I appreciate where you’re coming from re: gratitude. I nearly died in a workplace accident two years ago, and I’m grateful to be alive and healthy. I attend all sorts of church events and volunteer at a food pantry, so I’m doing what I can to cultivate community. It just seems to me that the things that should matter most in a long-term relationship—financial stability, lack of destructive/addictive habits, good character, etc.—don’t really move the needle for many people. The irony is, complaining about something that’s obviously true (social media scrambling everybody’s brains) doesn’t actually make you more attractive. Young men have to put our heads down, improve ourselves, and quit moaning about how unfair and erratic the dating scene is. Just grin and bear it and pray that you’ll meet the right person via random chance? That last bit feels too much like a form of surrender…
"...just walk into an office with a firm handshake and a copy of your resume, and ask to see the manager—is infuriating not because it’s nonsense, but because at one time it was true."
This is bullsh$t. It's a myth. Another 'boomers suck because XXX' myth.
This is a good article that properly articulates the loss of agency young people currently experience. The sadness is that their agency now resides exclusively with those who benefited from it over previous generations and who can now buy single family homes they do not need to get even more pennies they do not need. At which point the only hope is for local | state | federal governments with agency to declare the behavior predatory and end it. Which will not happen because the levers of authority are in the hands of those who enjoyed said now lost agency and mistake it for superiority, and thereby, an entitlement to charge it forward.
Spot on article. The traditional paths to success have gotten harder and harder. And social media has distorted our views of success - it seems there is an endless supply of people getting rich off very little work on our screens.
I believe we either need to collectively accept our views of success are distorted (hard to do considering human evolutionary tendencies) or just go down this path of elite consolidation. While the rich get richer, the floor drops out for everyone else.
The primary cause of 'elite consolidation' I think is capitalist monopolization. There are huge forces under capitalism that directs an enterprise towards monopolization, which is closer to socialism than capitalism. Capitalism must be saved from itself.
Yes, agreed. The people with capital seem to be dropping the pretense more and more these days. Also giving the accrued benefits of this capital to the people closest to them - which is also historically how societies functioned.
Monopolization brings their assets a lot of security, and they can get richer faster while small businesses find it more and more difficult to compete. Any surprise that the top 5% are getting richer while the middle 50% are getting poorer. There can be no other reason for this. Note that technological complexity and government regulation assist in monopolization.
Mike Rowe has an excellent take on the jobs that will need doing and these jobs will provide a huge opportunity for the young men astute enough to see the opportunity and to get in early.
Men built performed the backbreaking labor to build this society and all the required infrastructure that makes it work and men maintain it.
Technological innovation will do away with a wide swath of traditional white collar jobs, it’s already happening and it’s going to get worse, for most a university degree is a suckers bet.
The real opportunities will be in the interface between what used to be blue and white collar jobs, for example think of a locksmiths job, it used to be cutting keys, jimmying locked car doors open, installing door handles etc. today’s locksmith is programming keyless biometric locks, using technology to determine computer coding of smart automotive keys so duplicates can be made and programmed. Etc
Electricians are installing whole-house smart systems that control lighting, heating and cooling, security, power usage, back-up generators that start and stop automatically etc.
There’s a role and a pathway for young men that will easily lead to $100,000 a year jobs buts it’s evolving and part of that evolution is removing the stigma assigned to these jobs.
Meh. Things will work themselves out, they always do despite all the gloomsaying in this piece. To whit, look back in history - to the mechanization of the textile industry, agricultural mechanization, the deskilling of manufacturing work with the assembly line, telephone switchboard automation, personal computers eliminating administrative roles, robotics in manufacturing. In all these cases , new roles and jobs were created, but yes, some groups got left out in the interim as things re-adjusted. For those left out, moving to where the work is, physically and mentally, will be required, but often few do, waiting for a new job to come to the community where the old job no longer is.
A worthy analysis, but you left out worker power and unions, which will have to be part of any serious fix.
The problem with corporate buyers and general lack of home affordability is entirely a symptom of insufficient high-density housing construction (touched on only briefly in the essay). If we smash the NIMBYs' power, the housing shortage is solved.
Credentialism and hence the oversupply of college graduates is a symptom of Griggs v. Duke Power and hence antidiscrimination law.
I have no idea what to do about romance issues.
I have enjoyed this article and the comments, that seem mainly thoughtful and respectful. I am old enough to remember when the pathway to adult life seemed a lot simpler, although it was definitely not as simple as walking into an office with your resume! And getting into an Ivy was not the obsession that it has become. The many opportunities to self-silo (even without trying, in the age of the algorithm) is one big difference that I notice, which seems to keep people apart, as well as the growing focus on the preferences and priorities of the wealthy, in many areas of American life. I do note that this forum skews male, and hope that a wider range of voices will join and enrich it. 'Men are trash' is mainly click bait on media sites, since the financial model thrives on agitation on both ends of the spectrum. Most women I know have fathers, brothers, husbands and sons and love them all. Harassers are out there, though.