Quote of the day—Robin Hanson

One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met. As with income inequality, most folks concerned about sex inequality might explicitly reject violence as a method, at least for now, and yet still be encouraged privately when the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies. (Sex could be directly redistributed, or cash might be redistributed in compensation.)

Robin Hanson
April 26, 2018
Two Types of Envy
[Interesting. Read the article to get background about “incels” if you aren’t familiar with the term.

Some people see “incels” as about male supremacy. See, for example, What Are ‘Incels’? The Anti-Woman Online Community Behind the Toronto Van Attack. I think it is more about envy and inability to find a partner which results in the symptoms of a somewhat male supremacist attitude. The author doesn’t even mention this as a component. I suspect counseling, social skills training (not pickup artist type stuff), and attending social events to practice their training would provide the “cure” for “incels”.

I knew the scum bag loser who shot some people then drove his car through groups of people in Isla Vista California in 2014 had problems with his relationships with women. But I didn’t know there were online communities of these type of people and that the April 23rd terrorist attack in Toronto was perpetrated by someone who identified as an “incel”.

Getting back to the QOTD by Hanson. In the quote above, Hanson may appear to advocate for the forced redistribution of sexual access. In an addendum they clarify:

Let me also clarify that personally I’m not very attracted to non-insurance-based redistribution policies of any sort, though I do like to study what causes others to be so attracted.

Apparently many people can’t imagine any other way to reduce or moderate sex inequality. (“Redistribution” literally means “changing the distribution.”)  In the post I mentioned cash compensation; more cash can make people more attractive and better able to afford legalized prostitution. Others have mentioned promoting monogamy and discouraging promiscuity. Surely there are dozens of other possibilities; sex choices are influenced by a great many factors and each such factor offers a possible lever for influencing sex inequality. Rape and slavery are far from the only possible levers!

What I find interesting about this whole thing in that the political left has some components which would appear to make them likely to take this on as an issue. Consider the following:

  • The left uses violence to achieve their ends just as the “incel” attackers.
  • The left appears to take the side of those who use violence to achieve their ends.
  • The left uses envy and disparity of outcomes as political issues to justify government intervention (government intervention is actually just a special case of using violence).
  • “Slavery”, one method of addressing the sexual access inequality, can also be used to described the nearly 100% marginal income tax rates frequently advocated and sometimes implemented by the political left.
  • The left views many issues through some sort of sexual lens. i.e. Markley’s Law, feminism, celebration of sexual minorities, etc.

Hence, one could make the case that taking up the cause of “incel”s will soon be part of their political platform. It appears to be a good fit.—Joe]

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10 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Robin Hanson

  1. The coercives have been forever promoting the concept of “Salvation Through Wholesale Theft”, and also the concept of “Salvation Through Copulation” (the sex cultism of ancient India and Egypt being cases in point, and those cults are alive today in your country) and so yes; it is a good bet that they’d try some form of coercive redistribution of sex. They’re promoting transgender-ism in children’s programming right now (not mere tolerance of it, but actively promoting it) (I witnessed some of that just last night) and I believe all of that is a precursor.

    Anyway; they’ll do whatever can be done to make people feel deprived, blame others for that deprivation and then advocate coercion (or other forms of violence) as a result. The Dark Side wants everyone to be a “collector of grievances”, and the natural drive sex is an obvious leverage point in that process.

    The recurring message, and our only hope, is to “come out and be separate” (from the authoritarian hierarchy, which uses grievances as a form of currency), and there again we see the coercives advocating “global unity” and ecumenical-ism in opposition to that saving message.

    • I call the various studies majors, “Grievance Studies.” They study, of course, Grievance Culture.

    • I can’t say where I read it, but at the very start of the Russian Revolution there was a proposal to “nationalize” the women because not everyone was getting any, and what they were getting was not at all fairly distributed. John Reed wouldn’t mention that in his propaganda piece, Ten Days That Shook the World.

  2. The vermin in Isla Vista murdered six people, three men and three women, but to the media he quickly became anti-woman.
    The three men murdered became as much non-persons at that moment and throughout the remainder of his time in the news as the Feminists claim women are thanks to “rape culture.”

  3. I find it ironic that the left, which does so much to promote promiscuity (which allows men with high sexual market value to dominate the sex scene like a big-antlered buck among the does), are so outraged that men with low sexual market value might get frustrated at being locked out of the market, while promoting the idea of accusing men of “rape culture” and denying that women not getting what they want can get vicious. It’s almost like they were trying to create a sexually dysfunctional society.

    If there were strong social pressured to only have sex with a single partner – your spouse – there’d be enough to go around on a voluntary basis for ~85-90 percent of the people. Family life would also be a lot more stable if they tossed no-fault divorce.

    Huh. Maybe the political left isn’t as smart as they think they are.

    • “Maybe the political left isn’t as smart as they think they are.”

      And maybe they’re a lot smarter than you think. You’re judging them according to your values and perceptions, but their actual values and perceptions, at least those of their leadership, are totally different. I say they have an agenda of demoralization, societal decay and chaos, and that therefor they’ve been very clever indeed, and successful. So don’t knock it; it works, and here you are still in some degree of denial, which tells me it works very well indeed, and has no signs of being detected. And if it isn’t detected then it can never be stopped, for the first step in solving a problem is recognizing it.

      If your perception of the issue is the predominant one, and I believe it is, then we as a society haven’t even taken the first step in solving the problem.

      And so many of us are calling THEM the stupid ones. Here we are taking mortar fire, over and over and over again, and we’re still yelling back at the enemy, “HEY! Don’t you know you could hurt someone with that?!! You IDIOTS!!!”

      Well yeah, it could hurt and is hurting people, and that’s the point and purpose of it. The other point is, we never return fire. The best we’ve done so far, in 150 years of taking enemy fire in a specifically Marxist/authoritarian war, is to try talking them down so we can get along with them. But they speak a totally different language, an our appeals to goodness and reason only show them we have no idea of what’s going on, and so they will keep gaining ground.

      In short; The leftist/agitator/revolutionaries are fighting a total war, and winning, and we’re in denial over it.

  4. Based on Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything, the whole program should be put under the Obamacare umbrella and paid for through taxes.

    • I have no doubt that there is a significant population in this country which would go for that.

      Anyway, Viagra or some such is already in that status of being being coercively funded under the pretext of “medicine”.

      But don’t get too excited; you may only get a tax-payer funded sex robot, made in China.

      Liquor, gambling and marijuana were all outlawed because, supposedly, they were destructive to society, but now they’re all approved and heavily taxed by government. Prostitution will eventually fall into the same category, much like the pot trade is being taken up by state after state. Once that happens, some form of “medical sex” isn’t far behind. With pot the legalized “medicinal” sales came before the legalized recreational sales, and so that could happen with prostitution as well.

      Thus we see, right before our eyes, the role of the old grime hands of the 1920s taken over and adopted by government.

      We’ve been going down the drain one drop at a time, but the rate of flow is increasing. Surely the Progressives should be celebrating, but I believe they never thought it could possibly take so long to destroy America, and so they’re as angry and frustrated as ever.

      If they get too impatient they’ll over-play their hand, and so that’s the best we can hope for at this juncture. That would wake up enough people that there might be some real opposition for once. As it is we’re still almost totally clueless.

      • I would go for that, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m afraid of what I might get.

  5. One VERY curious thing that they conspicuously fail to mention is that every one of the attackers that they discuss are LEFT wing people, not right wing.

    It seems to me, as a male who has had trouble in relationships, that people, mostly men but also some women, on the right find ways to deal with it and focus on other areas of life; those on the left seem to obsess over sex and can’t seem to move on to the parts of their lives that ARE successful.

    Has anybody else noticed this?

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