The fact that people are making redistribution arguments regarding sex (like, y'know, fuckin' and suckin', etc.) because of the many grievances of online incels says something somewhat interesting about the current state of how our perception of human rationality is changing.
I'm writing up an essay on what I understand to be incel psychology (because the psychological aspects of these weird online communities are the things that I really care about most) but let me make a quick point that I don't want to belabor with a big long argument
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We know that "homo economicus" is a misconceived invention, and that true richness within human life (i.e. what brings happiness) does not correspond to the amount of wealth one has. That men are increasingly fine with being unemployed, uneducated slobs nowadays is proof of this.
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At the same time, so many of our non-economic policy ideas are advertised with a soupy and sentimentalist sort of rhetoric that appeals to the emotions (especially that line about "the pursuit of happiness"). It has been wildly successful in enacting progressive social reforms.
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Additionally, most socialist arguments seem to stem from the misbegotten principle of 'homo economicus' while using the same soupy progressive rhetoric to justify its proposals, even when their adherents ought to know better.
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This Robin Hanson guy, a libertarian, seems to understand the contradictions underlying all of these progressive and/or redistributionist proposals, so he makes a trollish argument based on what men *really* want.
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People can't easily refute the argument, because they know deep down that sex makes men happy more than money. If a man could choose between being a broke yet uber-hunky womanizer and a billionaire eunuch, he'd probably take the former.
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We in the West also happen to live in managerial technocratic states whose values permeate the overall culture, and Hanson's point appeals to their inherent invasiveness, making it that much more difficult to resist.
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Unable to perceive the subtle contradictions at play regarding how we understand what humans really want and need, the response to Hanson just seems to be so much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yelps, shrieks, and assorted ululations about misogyny and entitlement, or whatever.
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Ross Douthat, for his part, seems to perceive *something,* but he reverts back to a typical conservative mopish stance on how we need to stop rationally analyzing things and get back to good ol' fashioned monogamy. Of course, he's right, but he's too much of a doofus to know why.
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The best reason why is that the institution of monogamy corrects for female hypergamy in times of crisis (economic and otherwise), and so it corrects for the Pareto principle applied to sex, in which theoretically the most desirable 20% of men can have access to 80% of the women.
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Essentially, Christian monogamy was that sexual redistribution that Hanson is trollishly calling for, and that's why it worked. And the decline of the cross in civic life amounts to so much of the reason we're seeing such a crisis at the present moment.
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But of course, when I put it *that* way, now I'm just sounding like one of those creepy and icky incels, with their Chads, Beckys, and Staceys, aren't I?
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