A little culture: the bachelor life

Is more and more attractive. Here is why:



On the other side of the argument, this is one of those cases where, perversely enough, some social conservatives and some feminists tend to line up. Both sides think that men should just suck it up and deal with it even though it is obviously not in men's interest to do so. They argue as if men should willingly sacrifice their own interests to claimed social benefits just because feminists and social conservatives want he to.

The conservative reaction to Dr. Helen’s Men On Strike is interesting because it is the opposite of their general stance on government creating the wrong incentives.  When high income taxes discourage investment and production, conservatives point to the Laffer curve and advise lowering tax rates to rectify the problem.  The liberal response to conservatives pointing out that high taxes are strangling the economy is to accuse those responding to the current incentives of being selfish or unpatriotic.  We see the same pattern across a slew of issues, including stifling environmental regulations, capital gains taxes, minimum wage laws, and rent control.  Liberals tend to want to shame actors into going against their own best interest in order to prop up bad public policy, where conservatives tend to point out the folly of using shame and moral coercion to overcome bad policy.  The solution to bad policy, conservatives regularly point out, is to fix the policy, not to try to strong arm companies and individuals to go against their own best interest.

But all of this suddenly changes when the bad policy is regarding marriage.  Then the same conservatives who stand ready to offer a detailed lecture on the need to match risk with reward, authority with responsibility, and to have consistent and fair enforcement of contracts suddenly switch to the tactics of a liberal defending a 90% marginal tax rate.

But Dr. Helen is absolutely right, if you take away the positive incentives to marry, then a lot of men will make the rational choice and stay single.

I'd add this: history has some very brutal ways of dealing with societies that don't recognize that men and women have different strengths and fail, as a consequence to cherish men who possess masculine virtues. Our civilization will fail very quickly if this does not change.

By the way, pretty much any time you find feminists and social conservatives on the same side of an argument you can be sure it's the wrong side. Both ideologies have outlived their usefullness.