There's a relationship between smoking cigarettes and schizophrenia too. I think this may be a case of people trying to self medicate for their conditions.
> "There has been emerging evidence of an association between tobacco smoking and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). Two meta-analyses have reported that people who smoke tobacco have an ~2-fold increased risk of incident schizophrenia or psychosis, even after adjusting for confounding factors."
Have you looked into the gaming NUCs? This thing is probably going to be difficult to get, but those things are competent and expandable in the future.
I think people have shown to be willing to give direct payment. Twitch subscriptions, Patreon, Kickstarter, even OnlyFans. People will invest in the people and the projects they like.
I don't want anything that's advertising supported. Anything. There is no media I want to consume so badly that I'll tolerate ads to watch it. There's no product so interesting I'll view ads to use it. No website contains information I need that badly.
People keep saying that without ads we'll have to pay for things. Fine. Sure. Set up a Patreon. I give money on Github to a few projects I rely on to make sure their maintainers don't get day jobs. I couldn't afford to pay a programmer's salary, but I can afford to pay a small percentage of one.
I think the problem has actually been the donation button itself. You want $1 a month out of me that's a pretty easy sell. You want me to sign up for your website and give you my credit card information and you're SOL. I tried to donate to VoiceMeeter a few months back because it's so good. They only accept $20 donations, no more no less, and their payment system wasn't working.
On the one hand I want something like a "Donation Feed" similar to an RSS feed.
Something that I can put money into, set rules for, and over a period of time dispense cents/fractions of a bitcoin/whatever as per rules.
The rules - and default rules in particular! - would be important.
Maybe you like the author so much you donate on the regular just anyway.
Maybe a plugin in my browser can see when I visit a site and automatically donate. If I don't visit the site, it doesn't pay.
Maybe you donate 0.1 of a cent to ANY website that has no ads or doesn't trigger your adblocker. $1 buys you 1000 such visits.
Then a RSS-like "Donation" button would be meaningful for longer term income, without all the hassle of Patreon etc.
OTOH, I worry that sites would then start watching such transactions and try setting floor limits for how much you need to donate before they serve you.
The issue is that pay hasn't kept up with productivity. As things become more efficient employers are having to pay far less for the same amount of work.
It has in tech - in fact I’d wager approximately 100% of productivity gains since the 80s have been in the tech sector which in turn has probably captured nearly all of those gains for itself.
We're all just really smart monkeys here, and communication is complicated. "He's always trying to fix things when I just want to talk" is this same interaction just in a home context. Same communication error. There's a gap, you're saying "Do you know, at this moment, how to do this" to which the answer is clearly no. However, men are hearing "Can you solve this problem for me". Giving you back the keyboard means admitting that I failed to fix it.
EDIT: In my head, I feel like you've given up on the idea that I can help you, and you're probably going to go find someone smarter and more competent than me. In this context, a guy who doesn't want to give the keyboard back is afraid of admitting failure.
It is absolutely not and I hate that phrase. If I ask whether you know something, I am not trying to "just talk". If you know the answer, I am asking for it.
If you don't know answer, the normal response is no. I don't want you to highjack my computer and completely prevent me from working. That is ridiculous. And it is not solution either - it is literally preventing me to solve it.
> However, men are hearing "Can you solve this problem for me". Giving you back the keyboard means admitting that I failed to fix it.
Then men should fcking learn how to parse human language. Because based on this, betweem them not being able to interpret direct speech and then supposedly being unable to interpret hints, there is not much space. How exactly am I supposed to communicate? And none of this is believable, because above interaction rarely happens against other men.
The whole "he is trying to fix it while women just want to talk" is insulting in situation when he is preventing me to solve thing, when he is not solving anything and I was not chatty at all.
The issue at hand is that working women make considerably less money overall than working men. This is due to any number of factors including sexism, social effects, and the necessity of being present at, key, moments of the child rearing process. In the current iteration of our capitalist system it's required for nearly everyone to work, especially in the lower classes. Women have all the same needs that men have, and they have to cope in a society that, for many reasons, pays them 30% less.
Identifying those factors and working to minimize or eliminate their affect is a noble goal. But there are some factors that can't be eliminated, and we wouldn't want to live in a world where they were.
Feminists are right that there is a problem, this is a demonstrably unfair society. It doesn't matter what the reason is as much as it matters what the solution is. People spend a huge amount of time arguing about the problem, who's fault is it, what factors come into play.
I don't want to live in a world where women are men. Where they can't take time to start a family and properly care for their children, because keeping the money flowing is a more immediate need.
I want to live in a world where you can't just take time off to raise a child, but also to do art, or to travel, or to simply be a human who exists outside their office.
TLDR: Why matters very little, the income gap exists and we should fix it.
> The issue at hand is that working women make considerably less money overall than working men
When people tout the "30% less" statistic, it often refers to lifelong earnings, not hourly wage, in a study that didn't control for experience, sector, location or education.
It's 18% less when just comparing median wages. When controlled for the same job and qualifications, women earn 98 cents on the dollar (0). Women (as a group) work more part-time and in less profitable sectors like education, NGOs, government and nursing. They are less interested in high-profile and/or high status roles. Again, it feels good to say that women earn less due to discrimination and less so when it's because of their own choices.
You could argue (and I would agree) that some professions should be paid more. I think Covid has shown all of us which professions provide actual value, amongst whom definitely nursing and teaching.
> Women have all the same needs that men have
Women have the same basic needs, but there are differences in preferences, needs unique to women, needs unique to men and gender-specific dreams/wants that aren't needs.
> the necessity of being present at, key, moments of the child rearing process
Sure, but there is also a greater preference towards staying at home and having the man provide. It's simplistic to say "women are being forced" or "men aren't taking up their fair share" - this is a multivariate analysis. Specifically when it comes to a family, two thirds of the divorces are initiated by women. So not only are women staying home more often, they are choosing not to have a man be there at all. That might be for legitimate reasons, or it might not - but a divorce will impact your life balance.
> Feminists are right that there is a problem, this is a demonstrably unfair society
The problem, according to modern feminism, is different outcomes. As I see it, that's not a problem as long as opportunity is equal. Where women earn less on average per annum, they also have almost none of the workplace related deaths, lower suicide rates, homelessness, depression, incidence of burnouts, etc. In the younger generation, women outperform men both in wages and education. To me, it's not so clear if there is a better deal, and if so who has it.
> It doesn't matter what the reason is
I couldn't disagree more. If the claim is the problem lies with men or "the patriarchy", then the onus is on the claimant to prove that position, starting with a solid definition and falsifiable demonstration of patriarchy. That said, if you don't understand the reason for your outcome, you're powerless to change it. In a very concrete sense, you won't know what policy to implement when you topple the status quo and get to power. Among third wave feminists, I'm not hearing about how women architect their own fates and the importance of choices. I do among second wave feminists.
Would you say "it doesn't matter what the reason is" if all your relationships are short-lived, if you keep getting fired or if you keep failing your driving exam?
> this is a demonstrably unfair society
Yes, because of unequal access to money and genetics. Therefore there are class issues first and foremost, some sexism, some racism and the other forms of discrimination. To claim all (or even most) of women's problems are due to sexism, systemic or not, is a reductio ad absurdum.
> I don't want to live in a world where women are men. Where they can't take time to start a family and properly care for their children, because keeping the money flowing is a more immediate need.
Neither do I. But if that's what you want, you can't be opposed to earning less, either. Those are the consequences of your choices. Child rearing is unpaid, unless you're nannying as a service.
> I want to live in a world where you can't just take time off to raise a child, but also to do art, or to travel, or to simply be a human who exists outside their office.
Going out on a limb, I'm going to assume you mean where you can take time off. I'm fully with you there. That comes with a trade-off: you're going to be less "successful" in the conventional, square, monetary sense. You're sacrificing compensation for added fulfillment. That might entail any of: being less resistant to economic downturns, a smaller house, less of a pension, no or fewer kids, less social credit, fewer available/compatible dating partners, more limited career chocies, etc. It might also mean more laughing wrinkles, good moments, average happiness, life expectancy, better relationships, and so on.
That's why I said modern feminism is infantilising: it refuses to acknowledge that life is a struggle, filled with compromise and sacrifice. It's the Disney princess that won't grow up and the college kid that won't stop shouting from the barricades long enough to get on with writing their final dissertation. You have to pick and choose, mostly because no one owes you a damn thing. That is, until we've achieved fully automated luxury space communism à la Roddenberry. We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet by any stretch of the imagination.
> as much as it matters what the solution is
TL;DR: If the cause/reason is unimportant and the solution is key, what do you think is/are some good next step(s)?
I understand that women tend to make choices that cause them to earn less money. However, as a society, we benefit hugely from people making these choices for which we do not properly compensate them to the tune of $1.2 billion a year.
> For 2018 (the most recent data available), the dollar value of women’s unpaid work in the U.S. was equal to 86% of all the economic activity recorded in the state of New York. In other years—say, the late 1990s and late 2000s—the value of women’s unpaid work even surpassed New York state GDP. And keep in mind this value is at the low end of the possible range because we use the federal minimum wage and not, for example, higher state minimum wages let alone market wages that correspond to the specific work being done.
> The UNDP Women and Development Report of 1995 conducted a time-use study that analyzed the amount of time women and men spend on paid and unpaid household and community work in thirty-one countries across the world, including countries classified as 'industrial, 'developing' and 'transition economies.'[12] They found that in almost every country studied women worked longer hours than men but received fewer economic rewards. The study found that in both the 'developing' and 'industrialized world', men received the "lion's share of income and recognition" for their economic inputs, while women's work remained "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued."[12]
The fact that we don't pay as much for the things women tend to do is the problem. We've created a world where if you choose to spend your life sitting in a cubicle, you can support yourself. But if you spend your life caring for the people around you, you cannot, your labor still has value, it's simply not compensated. This is a really bad incentive scheme. We want parents to spend time with their children, not just because children with present parents perform better, but because of course we do. We want smart, capable people to become social workers and teachers and pediatricians without sabotaging their finances. To put another way, the world would be made worse, if 20% of the people who are currently working in their homes, decided to become software engineers instead. The world would become better if 20% of software engineers decided they'd rather contribute to their homes and communities.
I was talking about compensation in a professional capacity in the West. In that context, women are very much not paid unequally. Sectors compensate differently, but that's true for women and men. If you want to pivot to unpaid labour: sure, I'll go along.
> But if you spend your life caring for the people around you, you cannot, your labor still has value, it's simply not compensated. This is a really bad incentive scheme.
That's true, but that goes for any type of activity in the trade economy, whether you're raising kids, doing the shopping for someone, building their shed, teaching them to drive, troubleshooting their devices, fixing their flat tire, etc. That incentive scheme is evidence of a mercantilist attitude in society: social capital is just not valued in monetary terms.
Calling it sexism is reductive, because there are a lot of things men do for free, too. That's also my problem with your first link, which didn't examine men's unpaid labour at all as far as I could tell. I'm unable to tell what the picture looks like on balance.
> We want smart, capable people to become social workers and teachers and pediatricians without sabotaging their finances.
Public sector jobs will always be subject to government budget whims, "cost saving" initiatives and the like. What's needed there isn't feminism but collective bargaining and lobbying. It's also worth remembering that the rest of the West isn't like the US: in Europe, teachers can make median income or above.
As to pediatricians: I see no evidence of them being paid badly across the West. In fact, here in Belgium gynaecologists make more than ER doctors, and pediatricians make more than neurologists and oncologists, but less than ER doctors.
Sadly, the recurring theme everywhere seems to be nursing, which is just undervalued, micro-managed and thankless in general. Nurses can generally get somewhat better wages when they get some extra certificates. Of all examples I know, this one is the most suspiciously low across the board. Then again, I don't think it would be considered less menial or low-status if men did most of it.
> We want parents to spend time with their children, not just because children with present parents perform better, but because of course we do.
When a woman stays at home taking care of the kids, does she not enjoy the same lifestyle as the man? How is that not being compensated? When they get divorced, is she not entitled to half the money and how is that not getting paid? Is she not entitled to child support? Women aren't being disadvantaged simply because they don't get a payslip every month. Now that definitely isn't true everywhere else yet, so globally there's an argument for change towards our current status quo. That also seems to be what your second link is referring to: there is more yet to be done in the Middle East and beyond.
If you think parenting for free (as a couple) is unfair, what would be fairer? Parents already get tax cuts and benefits by virtue of having kids, so there's already a wealth transfer going on from childless people to parents. What would you do instead/additionally? In concrete terms: who should be paying what? I'm not asking for an exact solution, but would like to know what principles or policy levers you're thinking of.
> To put another way, the world would be made worse, if 20% of the people who are currently working in their homes, decided to become software engineers instead.
I agree on that too, but that is also not evidence of sexism but of a machinistic, homo economicus kind of collective philosophy. It's admirable to dream of and take action in order to create a better world, but I'm not sure how we'd get there, in terms of re-evaluating what's fundamentally important. Perhaps restructuring money creation itself (pivoting from loan-based to UBI based) would get us there, but I don't think that movement is anywhere near critical mass.
> The world would become better if 20% of software engineers decided they'd rather contribute to their homes and communities.
The assumption being that they don't, right? There's more to it than raising kids. Let's also please not pretend like men do none of that, or that being a stay at home parent is a full-time job at all kids' ages. I mean: do professional women not contribute to their homes and communities?
Then go. If the price of having them here is that they get to not pay their fair share while taking advantage of our infrastructure and workforce, they can pound sand.
I'm not concerned with people with that little money. If you've got $10M, you're rich, but you're not part of the problem rich. The three walmart heirs are worth $180B between them. Jeff is worth that by himself. This isn't "being good at business" it's hording. I'm concerned with Billionaires. 800 people who control $3.4T in assets. I don't want to make them poor, I am completely happy if they remain obscenely rich, but you just can't have that much of the pie.
I've often thought this about those dark strip malls and grocery stores. They need to be incentivized to either lower the prices so low that someone will move in, or to demolish the building. Just marking it off as a loss every year while it slowly decays destroys the property values nearby.
> "There has been emerging evidence of an association between tobacco smoking and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). Two meta-analyses have reported that people who smoke tobacco have an ~2-fold increased risk of incident schizophrenia or psychosis, even after adjusting for confounding factors."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6255982/#:~:tex....