Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice

What then is a reasonable definition – a definition that identifies the central point of contention between feminists and non-feminists? Something like this: Feminism is the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women.

Women view men as “success objects.”

First, contra feminism, human beings take female suffering more seriously than male suffering. Consider the classic lifeboat slogan: “Women and children first.” We expect men to be stoic and chivalrous – to gladly and silently sacrifice for the sake of women. As a result, we fixate on female suffering, even when male suffering is vastly greater. Perhaps the most notorious instance was Hillary Clinton’s 1998 statement that “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”18 Even when the males are literally dying, it remains rhetorically easier to get people to lament the collateral misery of the women who knew the fallen. Feminism succeeds because it is false; claims about the unfair treatment of women capture our attention because men and women in our society especially abhor the unfair treatment of women.

the modern West, hardly anyone worries about in-the-flesh witches, Communists, or atheists, much less implicit or structural versions of these creeds. But that’s because the targets have changed, not because the age of moral panic is over. And while the list of targets is long, racists and sexists are plainly at the top. The most obvious result is that people spend ample time trying to find racist and sexist individuals. In practice, however, this is as frustrating as trying to find witches in Salem

So what are you supposed to do if you want to continue the good fight against social ills you’ve already practically driven to extinction? Move the goalposts all the way to Mars. These days, the world’s best detectives would struggle to find outright racists and sexists. Yet implicit racism, structural racism, implicit sexism, and structural sexism will always be in plain sight because the definition expands as the phenomenon contracts.

don’t expect the world to revolve around me or my kids – and lashing out at touchy-feely people is hard because they’re so nice. Still, as we economists emphasize, nice people often do bad things. Good intentions are not enough; if you really want to do good, you have to calmly weigh the actual consequences of your actions. You may find drawing posters more fun than reading textbooks, but that’s a reflection of your personality type, not a universal law of human nature. Forget these truisms, and you risk being a touchy-feely bull in a china shop – loudly expressing philanthropic sentiments as you trample all over the feelings of hapless studious children.

Discouraged Suitors is as dogmatic as denying the existence of Discouraged Workers. In both cases, people face a challenge of epic proportions: convince an employer to hire you… or convince a stranger to love you. When the stakes are this high, failure is scary. Unsurprisingly, then, we commonly respond to failure with despair: “I’ll never find a job” or “I’ll never find love.” Discouraged Workers silently endure deep feelings of uselessness. Discouraged Suitors silently endure deep feelings of loneliness.

Friends pass a stricter selection filter than spouses of friends. If you think poorly of someone, you won’t be their friend. But if you think poorly of the spouse of your friend, you’ll probably put up with your friend’s spouse to preserve your relationship with your friend. As long as people tend to make more same-sex friends, then, men’s male associates will seem better than their female associates, and female’s female associates will seem better than their male associates.

To a person of low intelligence, the threats of apprehension and prison may fade to meaninglessness. They are too abstract, too far in the future, too uncertain.

Implicit: One of the best ways to help impulsive people reach decent long-run outcomes is to give them a lot of strong short-run feedback.

The name for the view that government (or “the people” if you prefer) rightfully owns everything, of course, is socialism.1 The socialist needn’t believe that everything government does is right. He does however need to believe that government has a right to do anything to everything – and everyone – under its rule. (Why everyone, and not just everything? Because by remaining on the government’s land, you’re consenting to its rules. Love it or leave it).

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men… October

Batman’s butler got it right: “Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn

This is an example of what economists call the Law of Comparative Advantage. Trade between two people or groups increases total production even if one person or group is worse at everything. Suppose, for example, that Brains can make 5 Computer Programs or 10 Bushels of Wheat per day, and Brawns can make .1 Computer Programs or 5 Bushels of Wheat per day. Brains and Brawns can still trade to mutual benefit: Just have one Brain switch from farming to programming (+5 Programs, -10 Bushels of Wheat), and three Brawns switch from programming to farming (-.3 Programs, +15 Bushels of Wheat), and total production rises by 4.7 Programs and 5 Bushels of Wheat.

against pickpocketing to avoid being a pickpocket, you don’t have to crusade against racism to avoid being a racist, and you don’t have to crusade against sexism to avoid being a sexist. Just keep your own hands clean

The Case Against Education, published in 2018, was my first book to explicitly use SDB to explain the global dominance of education subsidies and the intellectual dominance of the human capital model. Writing it brought me back to elementary school, when I first noticed the chasm between official school rhetoric and actual school experience. Teachers, parents, and politicians all speak as if kids are learning useful skills from dawn to dusk. The actual evidence, in contrast, confirms that education is mostly signaling. As I often say, education is not so much job training as a passport to the real job training, which happens on the job.

“Well, whatever you think about Trump, don’t you at least enjoy the attendant outrage of the left? At least that must make you happy, right?” In my misanthropic youth, the answer would have been a resounding yes. But in all honesty, I put away such childishness years ago. I have a rich, full life that affords me ample opportunities for pure joy. I have no need to seek out joy sullied by anger. And again in all honesty, I wish everyone else felt as I do.

in I Dream of Repentance

should you be sad because North Korea exists? Should Norwegians be gloomy because of American police brutality? As I’ve said before, any non-oblivious person has to choose between (a) daily misery, or (b) personal happiness in a world of woe. When you put it that way, (b) is the only rational choice. Social Desirability Bias notwithstanding, each of us has the right – nay, the duty – to try to be happy despite the shortcomings of society and the universe. The key question then becomes: How? I ponder this key question regularly. Here are the main steps I’ve taken to pursue happiness in 2020.

1. Continue ignoring the news unless it affects you personally. Dry statistics are OK, but avoid any information source that tries to engage your emotions.

2. Break bad but weakly enforced rules that get in your way. Never be Lawful Neutral.

3. Refuse to be stampeded.

4. Don’t give up on your friends, but lower your expectations to rock bottom.

5. Living Dale Carnegie I: Try extra hard to make new friends.

6. Living Dale Carnegie II: Help your kids make new friends.

7. If schools won’t even provide daycare, cut the cord and homeschool.

8. Start new projects that you enjoy.

9. Move to Texas for a spell.

10. General rule: Ask “what options are left?” not “what options are lost?” And make your Bubble beautiful!

Never mind World War III. Taking a far view, I expect a lifetime median of two additional global events worse than COVID. But I’m not going to let that bother me on a typical day, any more than I’m going to fret about my own mortality. Instead, I’m going to remember how lucky I am to be alive at all. As I wrote long ago: If you read Woody Allen very charitably, he seems to have a perfectly reasonable desire to live longer. But his real complaint is that the time he has is meaningless because he only has a finite amount. And his conclusion resonates with a lot of people, and has for a long time. I’ve never understood the appeal of this argument. If a finite quantity of life is worthless, how can an infinite quantity be desirable? Sure, you could trot out mathematical structures with this property, but come on. If an infinite span of days is so great, what’s stopping you from enjoying today? I suspect that many readers are telling themselves, “This is going to be a great year once the vaccine brings us to herd immunity.” Wrong. This is going to be a great year starting today if you choose to make it great. And if you postpone happiness until society gets its act together, you’ll be waiting for a lifetime.