Welcome to my weekly digest for February 24, 2023. For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by
The problem of marriage with both men and women seemingly going in the same direction - away from marriage - for different reasons lies with the parents. A recent Roper poll (Sep/Oct 2022) stated that only 21% of parents prioritize "getting married" as extremely or very important for their children with 46% saying that it is neither "not too or not at all" important. A very similar prioritization for "having children" for their children by parents was 20% and 46% respectively. Extremely important prioritization was "being financially independent" and "having jobs or careers they enjoy" at 88% each.
Parents are still the biggest influence in their children's lives and since they don't think it's important neither do their children. We can blame churches and government, but parents need to see the importance of marriage. Unfortunately, a vast majority do not.
I have a few quibbles with the Governing column. I mostly agree with the premise of "symbiosis" - rather than seeing either the city or the suburb as parasitic. But in a few particular domains, I think there are clear ways that the relationship has been historically exploitative.
Cities are built on network effects. Those network effects generate incredible wealth and surpluses, and many people want a piece of the pie.
Today, if you're a deranged, mentally ill drug addict walking around Greenwich, CT, what do you think the police are going to do with you? Does Greenwich maintain its own shelters and social services? Since the mid-20th century, suburban police departments send these folks on a one-way ticket to Grand Central.
In NYC, imagine an apartment dweller living in a tiny efficient apartment. The marginal cost of their service utilization for things like trash, sewer, and the like are vanishingly small. Their consumption of scarce and valuable resources, like urban land, are minimal. Should the apartment dweller's taxes reflect this, and reward their efficiency? Often, the inverse is true - you're punished for living in an efficient apartment, and rewarded for living in a brownstone in Brooklyn.
Sadly, often the more *wasteful* consumption of these scarce resources is subsidized or mandated. Think FEMA subsidized flood insurance for beach homes, mortgage interest deductions for single-family homes, highway subsidies, cul de sacs instead of grids, minimum parking requirements, the list goes on.
I recommend the above series on South Bend, which is likely analogous to many other mid-size cities. As it alludes to, amidst late-20th century decline of the center city, "most population growth was occurring outside of the city limits and in unincorporated suburbs."
Which makes me ask: who is paying for those roads? The sewers? Public services? Probably: the rest of us, and mostly via debt (nobody's willing to talk about the cost to simply maintain this infrastructure when it comes up on the end of its life cycle).
This is the "soft default" where old communities suddenly come up on the end-of-life of their infrastructure and they realize they are insolvent. Taxes go up, they still can't pay to repair the roads, services degrade, and the smart folks leave quickly for a new and improved Ponzi scheme.
Many of these suburbs rely on the implicit subsidy of federal interstate systems and state highway funds. And the "costs" are often non-financial, especially for the poor people who end up living next to the smog-filled, dangerous, loud, ugly highways that dominate American automobile commutes.
NYC struggles with the multi-billionaire tax-exempt entities like Columbia and NYU buying up land. Shady sale-leaseback deals abound around the country.
A lot of cities rely on "taxable" people being physically located in their cities to fund their model. The automobile was kind of a "soft outsourcing" - painful, but you keep the jobs, but lose the people for half of the week, and inflict commuting costs. Remote work is a substantial threat to a city like Philadelphia that relies so much on wage taxes.
I have no problem with anyone wanting a more urban, or suburban, or rural lifestyle. But I am convinced that an era of "cheap money and free land" is coming to a close. We are locked in a mid-20th century city-suburb infrastructure and development pattern that isn't working.
From James Pogue's Vanity Fair article, "This politics is already reshaping Europe, where Vladimir Putin has made it clear that the invasion of Ukraine was intended to be a first step in smashing what you’ll hear sneeringly called the “globo-homo”—a term spiced with homophobia, used both in Russia and on the American right to describe a world transforming into a soulless landscape of chain stores and empty hedonism."
The term globohomo is short for global homogenization. Which based on the second half of the quote the author appears to at least somewhat understand. Near the end of this very long piece he includes a quote for someone who opposes the pride flag, not because he cares about sexual morality, but because, "what that flag really represents is sameness. It’s this one single worldview that is going to take over everything, and what that really means is just money." Could the corporate embrace of the alphabet soup movement bring about widespread public rejection of it? Is the quote criticizing the movement buried at the end of the piece because he thinks and hopes most true believers on the left will quit reading before they get that far?
The big problem all the people he featured have is they don't really have much in common, certainly not enough to build a community with a strong sense of social trust. Those who have run to hide in the Northern Rockies certainly shouldn't count on the support of the working class locals they have priced out of their own communities.
Wow, a litany of the worst, dumbest sources around including the idiotic enemy nyt. Women put more effort into finding a wage job or where to waste time for 4 to 6 years than finding a mate. If the male isn't away from the blue haired penis hating freaks in the current us public school system, he's already at a disadvantage.
Most men are "unmarriagable" in the 18 to 29 range for obvious reasons. They are still growing their assets to find a wife where as the 18 to 29 females, if they don't disfigure themselves or poison their minds, are at their peak fertility and should have no time in selecting their 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier mates. But then again, the women today like always imbibe whatever authority says and poison their bodies and minds and waste their peak fertility in useless endeavors.
All this info has been known by all who wanted to see it through the manosphere from the mid 2000s onwards. The nyt freak gain is just making excuses.
The problem of marriage with both men and women seemingly going in the same direction - away from marriage - for different reasons lies with the parents. A recent Roper poll (Sep/Oct 2022) stated that only 21% of parents prioritize "getting married" as extremely or very important for their children with 46% saying that it is neither "not too or not at all" important. A very similar prioritization for "having children" for their children by parents was 20% and 46% respectively. Extremely important prioritization was "being financially independent" and "having jobs or careers they enjoy" at 88% each.
Parents are still the biggest influence in their children's lives and since they don't think it's important neither do their children. We can blame churches and government, but parents need to see the importance of marriage. Unfortunately, a vast majority do not.
I have a few quibbles with the Governing column. I mostly agree with the premise of "symbiosis" - rather than seeing either the city or the suburb as parasitic. But in a few particular domains, I think there are clear ways that the relationship has been historically exploitative.
Cities are built on network effects. Those network effects generate incredible wealth and surpluses, and many people want a piece of the pie.
Today, if you're a deranged, mentally ill drug addict walking around Greenwich, CT, what do you think the police are going to do with you? Does Greenwich maintain its own shelters and social services? Since the mid-20th century, suburban police departments send these folks on a one-way ticket to Grand Central.
https://www.nypress.com/news/bronx-youth-remembered-at-grand-central-HFNP1020030909309099994
https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/homeless-hypocrisy-always-has-a-home-in-new-york-and-elsewhere/
Infrastructure costs and taxation are a big driver of exploitation, where the city is expropriated at the expense of those who live there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/nyregion/property-tax-reform-nyc.html
In NYC, imagine an apartment dweller living in a tiny efficient apartment. The marginal cost of their service utilization for things like trash, sewer, and the like are vanishingly small. Their consumption of scarce and valuable resources, like urban land, are minimal. Should the apartment dweller's taxes reflect this, and reward their efficiency? Often, the inverse is true - you're punished for living in an efficient apartment, and rewarded for living in a brownstone in Brooklyn.
Sadly, often the more *wasteful* consumption of these scarce resources is subsidized or mandated. Think FEMA subsidized flood insurance for beach homes, mortgage interest deductions for single-family homes, highway subsidies, cul de sacs instead of grids, minimum parking requirements, the list goes on.
https://westsb.com/features/morepeople
I recommend the above series on South Bend, which is likely analogous to many other mid-size cities. As it alludes to, amidst late-20th century decline of the center city, "most population growth was occurring outside of the city limits and in unincorporated suburbs."
Which makes me ask: who is paying for those roads? The sewers? Public services? Probably: the rest of us, and mostly via debt (nobody's willing to talk about the cost to simply maintain this infrastructure when it comes up on the end of its life cycle).
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/10/24/dispatches-from-spokane-living-a-soft-default
This is the "soft default" where old communities suddenly come up on the end-of-life of their infrastructure and they realize they are insolvent. Taxes go up, they still can't pay to repair the roads, services degrade, and the smart folks leave quickly for a new and improved Ponzi scheme.
Many of these suburbs rely on the implicit subsidy of federal interstate systems and state highway funds. And the "costs" are often non-financial, especially for the poor people who end up living next to the smog-filled, dangerous, loud, ugly highways that dominate American automobile commutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3o8_BY_oyM
NYC struggles with the multi-billionaire tax-exempt entities like Columbia and NYU buying up land. Shady sale-leaseback deals abound around the country.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/11/when-a-university-helps-a-business-avoid-property-taxes/
A lot of cities rely on "taxable" people being physically located in their cities to fund their model. The automobile was kind of a "soft outsourcing" - painful, but you keep the jobs, but lose the people for half of the week, and inflict commuting costs. Remote work is a substantial threat to a city like Philadelphia that relies so much on wage taxes.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/investigators/pandemic-remote-work-job-losses-could-cost-philly-100m-in-tax-revenue/2651740/
I have no problem with anyone wanting a more urban, or suburban, or rural lifestyle. But I am convinced that an era of "cheap money and free land" is coming to a close. We are locked in a mid-20th century city-suburb infrastructure and development pattern that isn't working.
For all of our GDP, we should have nicer things.
https://9gag.com/gag/aQojEbd
From James Pogue's Vanity Fair article, "This politics is already reshaping Europe, where Vladimir Putin has made it clear that the invasion of Ukraine was intended to be a first step in smashing what you’ll hear sneeringly called the “globo-homo”—a term spiced with homophobia, used both in Russia and on the American right to describe a world transforming into a soulless landscape of chain stores and empty hedonism."
The term globohomo is short for global homogenization. Which based on the second half of the quote the author appears to at least somewhat understand. Near the end of this very long piece he includes a quote for someone who opposes the pride flag, not because he cares about sexual morality, but because, "what that flag really represents is sameness. It’s this one single worldview that is going to take over everything, and what that really means is just money." Could the corporate embrace of the alphabet soup movement bring about widespread public rejection of it? Is the quote criticizing the movement buried at the end of the piece because he thinks and hopes most true believers on the left will quit reading before they get that far?
The big problem all the people he featured have is they don't really have much in common, certainly not enough to build a community with a strong sense of social trust. Those who have run to hide in the Northern Rockies certainly shouldn't count on the support of the working class locals they have priced out of their own communities.
Wow, a litany of the worst, dumbest sources around including the idiotic enemy nyt. Women put more effort into finding a wage job or where to waste time for 4 to 6 years than finding a mate. If the male isn't away from the blue haired penis hating freaks in the current us public school system, he's already at a disadvantage.
Most men are "unmarriagable" in the 18 to 29 range for obvious reasons. They are still growing their assets to find a wife where as the 18 to 29 females, if they don't disfigure themselves or poison their minds, are at their peak fertility and should have no time in selecting their 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier mates. But then again, the women today like always imbibe whatever authority says and poison their bodies and minds and waste their peak fertility in useless endeavors.
All this info has been known by all who wanted to see it through the manosphere from the mid 2000s onwards. The nyt freak gain is just making excuses.