Atlantic Monthly piece, The end of men. Can you hear my eyes rolling?
More women than men are working these days, and at better jobs. Lots of single parent families with Mom working while Dad is down and out in the gutter, can't make child support payments, can't get a job, can't keep the one he's got. Hollywood cougars have boy toys instead of Hollywood moguls having trophy wives. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Could be that this women working/men starving phenomenon is the result of men being slacker assholes who can't do anything except fight, fuck and eat as the article broadly suggests. But I doubt it.
More likely, its a shift from the old manufacturing model of big factories to whatever the hell is coming next. Right now all that has happened is the big factories have moved from here to China, where their pollution and worker abuse can't be regulated. Our high school aged lads over here have no future, know damn well they have no future, and behave accordingly. They don't take anything seriously and lie back in the large, cushy social safety hammock so thoughtfully provided for them by the nanny state. Your voice is too loud, you're too hairy, you're too big and too scary to work with the girlies in the office, and you can't turn yourself into a chick without basically killing your own nature. Why the hell wouldn't you lie back and say "SCREW IT, I'm playing Nintendo! Wake me up when you want the lid taken off a jar of pickles!"
My personal humble opinion is that Big Business is falling apart under the weight of socialism. They finally broke it, probably around 1975. That's when things in America really started to go down hill, that's when my old dad really started to freak out that the world was coming to an end. Turns out he war right, the social contract that used to exist between employer and employee was broken. Now we see the results playing out, as the cracks open up into chasms and chunks fall off.
Women will probably continue to do better than men as bureaucracies continue to replace productive work. The production part stays in China, what's left over for Canada/USA? Offices. Men -suck- at office work. Men like to make stuff, move stuff, do stuff. They don't like to sit in meetings and talk about stuff. Women LOVE that, that's all they do if left to their own devices.
How long can that keep up? Given the way things are shaping up, not very long. Mega companies like Walmart can only stay in business with mega-consumption. That stops, the whole model comes apart. Its stopping. Because NOBODY HAS A FRICKING JOB. DUH! God these people are geniuses.
What will replace it? I think mass customization will, eventually. Men have to do -something-, if only to relieve the boredom. What they will do is make stuff in their garages and basements, join together on the internet, sell their stuff on-line, and generally do an end run around the whole big business/nanny state arrangement. You want to buy a grapplegrommet that isn't a cheap piece of shit made by slaves in China? Joe's Garage makes them one at a time, with pride, in Moose Antler Ontario where land is cheap as dirt.
Example, there's a boat building joint in Parry Sound just got orders for more aluminum boats than they will ever be able to make in a million years, because of the oil spill. I figure two thousand guys welding up specific aluminum parts in the garage might be able to help them out, eh? Beats the hell out of trying to move two thousand aluminum welding employees to Parry Sound, don't you think? They put contracts on the web for parts, they do the QC on the delivered units, they can even farm out the assembly if they have to. Smart garage guys will buy or lease a welding robot and a CNC mill, and make some real money out of it.
Multiply that by everything consumed in North America, that's the future. Not to be found in university, my friends. Maybe at comminity college, maybe at MIT, but not in the Ivory Tower. They think you can't keep a job because you're a testosterone soaked moron.
So buck up lads, the chicks still need you to get the lid off the pickle jar. If you're not around, they ain't gettin' any pickles. And God help them if wolves come and you're not home, eh?
The Industrious Phantom
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