While Preachers Rearrange the Deck Chairs

I came across an interesting blog with an article on how Japan is handling its fertility crisis. What was noteworthy to me was this bit about the movement called MGTOW:

MGTOW is not an organization. It is not even a movement in the sense of the black civil rights movement — an organized series of events aiming for particular goals. It is, rather, a movement in the sense of a social trend. An increasing number of men are individually turning their backs on society. Rightly or wrongly, they have come to believe that their cultures have turned against them, so they choose to decrease their participation in those cultures. This fact is demonstrated not only by the marriage strike but also by males’ high rates of suicide and collapsing percentage of college and university students.

All the talk about what men need to do accomplishes nothing with regard to those men who have become jaded about participating in the social fabric of families, community, etc. Men are asking an uncomfortable question: Why should men protect a society that belittles them?

Another Observation

The blog I to which I have linked focuses on the demographic upheaval that comes from depopulation. I think the downturn in fertility has its parallel in the bust of the Housing Market Bubble. Call it the Marriage and Family Bubble, if you will. Our modern societies, like our modern economies, do not encourage savings and thrift, but consumption and waste. Just as a fiat currency becomes devalued as its supply increases in relation to commodities, so the actual value of labor becomes debased as its supply increases in relation to the wealth it generates. Our government, social institutions, commercial interests, etc. are all dependent upon an increasing supply of human beings to generate wealth to create a liquidity of sorts in our society. The problem is that like the Housing Market Bubble, the social structure takes the form of a pyramid scheme where the early players are dependent on the influx of the later players. Older generations pay the price of consumption on credit hoping that later generations will pay back in production.

There is a real reason why people are angry about immigration - it has nothing to do with an aversion to brown-skinned people. A massive influx of population does not create capital, but decreases the quality of life for everyone else. The cheap cost of picked lettuce and rickety houses built by immigrant labor is offset by the strains placed on hospitals, schools, jails, etc. Wealth in a consumeristic society depends on value, and value depends on a scarcity of goods in relation to number of people who want them. If money grew on trees, then it wouldn't be money (The Fed seems to think that it can continue to make it out of trees, but that's another rant.). On the demand side, the more people there are, the harder they have to work to create the wealth needed to buy a good which other people want as well. Like the Housing Market Bubble, sooner or later, the later players reach the point where they default from the pyramid game and cash out. Then the whole mess comes crashing down.

We see this with men who realize that they can no longer afford the high price tag placed on marriage and family. Just as the government and the corporate sector have squeezed everything it can out of the citizenry through taxation, devalued currency, and investment Ponzoi schemes, so society has squeezed everything it can out of men through unfair family laws, discrimination, and ridiculous expectations. And just as "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke thinks he can avoid an economic disaster by cutting rates, so the Helicopter Bens of cultural reactionaries try to shame and blame men into the institution of marriage. And believe me, the Helicopter Bens are easily found--even among some so-called men's rights activists. We are told that men should continue to get married and have children to fight socialism and Islam. We are told that declining marriages are the result of women deciding to not have babies. True, but declining marriages are also the result of men reacting to the devalued currency of Marriage and Family. Why should they work harder and put in more time and get less back? If we rolled back the gains of feminism and were still left with people who treated men like an expendable commodity (such as our corporate elite often do), then what incentive would men have to invest in our social structures? None, I tell you.

Selling men the modern version of Marriage and Family is like selling loans in the Housing Market Bubble. You are not selling an asset, but a debt and a liability. A lot of men are beginning to view marriage and the attendant "American Dream" as little more than the Company Store Revisted. Society must stop its wasteful consumption and stop thinking it can borrow against the lives of men. If you want young men to get married, then you must invest in them. Repeal punitive family laws, pay men decent wages that aren't eroded through burdensome taxes and inflation, put an end to male-bashing and female entitlement, provide mentoring and assistance in helping men to get married and form families (viz., possibly revive the extended family structure), and get rid of the notion that men have obligation to earn money in order to buy consumer goods they don't need. In short, just as a currency should be fixed to some precious commodity such as gold, the economic and social of value of marriage and family needs to be secured for men. Otherwise, you can watch families go the way of Countrywide.