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Young men in the United States are experiencing widespread unhappiness due to societal devaluation, dating challenges, economic pressures, a perceived lack of meritocracy, and unmet expectations stemming from outdated advice.
The video explores the reasons behind the unhappiness of young men in the United States, positing that safe Western societies tend to devalue them. This devaluation is linked to a reduced need for domestic security and military service. Furthermore, many young men are raised without positive male role models, leading to a sense of alienation and an association of love with feminine behavior, contributing to skepticism towards authority and society.
Dating challenges are a significant factor, with a large percentage of young men being single and dissatisfied with their options. Unrealistic expectations, the high cost of living, and the prevalence of adult entertainment as a substitute for real relationships exacerbate these issues. Many men are now looking overseas for partners, a trend amplified by the 'Passport Bros' movement, due to difficulties finding women with shared values in the US.
The economic landscape presents further obstacles, including the astronomical cost of living that prices young men out of dating and homeownership. Perpetual economic growth policies, coupled with inflation and job instability, create uncertainty. A perceived decline in meritocracy, where success is not solely based on effort, and unmet expectations from outdated advice about education and career paths, contribute to a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and purposelessness among young men in the West.
Young men in the US are unhappy due to societal devaluation, where their roles in defense and security are less emphasized. This, combined with significant dating challenges and economic instability, contributes to widespread dissatisfaction.
Key reasons include a perceived societal devaluation of men, difficulties in dating due to unrealistic expectations and high costs, and economic pressures like inflation and job instability. A decline in meritocracy and unmet expectations from outdated advice also play a role.
The astronomical cost of living in Western countries prices young men out of dating and traditional success markers like homeownership. Economic instability and job uncertainty create a pervasive sense of purposelessness.
Yes, dating challenges are a significant factor, with many young men struggling to find partners due to unrealistic expectations, high costs, and a lack of shared values. This has led some to seek relationships abroad.
The Passport Bros movement refers to young men exploring opportunities and relationships in developing countries as an alternative to dissatisfaction experienced in the West. It highlights the difficulties many face in finding suitable partners domestically.
Societal devaluation of men stems from safer Western societies reducing the perceived need for their roles in defense and security. This shift, along with a lack of positive male role models, can lead to feelings of alienation and skepticism.
Young men in the US are unhappy due to societal devaluation, lack of positive male role models, and difficulties in the dating market. The high cost of living and economic instability further exacerbate these issues, leading to dissatisfaction and a sense of purposelessness.
Many men are seeking partners outside the US due to challenges in the domestic dating scene, including unrealistic expectations and a perceived lack of shared values. The "Passport Bros" movement highlights this trend, with men exploring international options for relationships.
The astronomical cost of living in Western countries, particularly the US, prices young men out of key life goals like dating and homeownership. Economic instability and job uncertainty contribute to a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction.
Outdated advice suggesting a universal value of a college degree has led to unmet expectations and financial struggles for many young men. The perceived decline in meritocracy further disincentivizes them, as success may not solely depend on effort.
Moving abroad may help some men find happiness by offering a change of scenery and potentially better opportunities. However, true inner peace often requires building self-worth across various aspects of life, such as finances, intellect, and fitness, regardless of location.
Isolation abroad can be mitigated by making efforts to learn the local language, even if fluency is challenging. Building superficial conversational skills can help, and connecting with fellow expats is also important for social interaction.
0:09 Hi everybody, before we get into it, I want to thank you so much for subscribing. We just passed 1100 subscribers, it's a really exciting milestone for me and for the channel. Thank you so much to the longtime subscribers who have been watching for a while, and I want to welcome everyone who is new to the channel.
0:25 Hey YouTube, Alex here, and in today's video, I want to answer the question: Why are so many young men unhappy in the US? Now, this is something that I took from Naval Ravikant. He says that safe societies devalue young men until the wolves are at the door.
0:39 So, what I extrapolate from that is that basically, the modern Western countries have historically been safe. I think that's starting to change from what we're seeing now, but historically, they've been relatively safe by global standards. And so, the need for domestic security is just not as great.
1:02 And so, what you see in the US is that people are fairly removed from the actual defense or safety of the country. And we don't need that many young men in the military. Western society doesn't value that many young men.
1:15 For those of us who are raised in single-mom households, like myself, we were often raised like defective women. I was often told, 'Look, you just need to sit down and sit still and shut up.' And that's the wrong way to raise a young man.
1:33 Now, rinse and repeat. I imagine at least half of young men in the West are growing up without a positive male role model. And I can certainly attest to that, looking for role models and teachers or instructors, TV characters, and just not really finding that solid instructor or teacher of masculinity.
1:53 And so, I definitely developed some level of skepticism for society and for authority. And it's really unfortunate. And for young men that are raised in these scenarios, we associate getting love with acting feminine.
2:06 And moving on to my next point, a lot of young men are unhappy with life in the West. You see this with two-thirds of young men in the West being single. And I don't know that that number will change in the near future. I think a lot of young men are unhappy with their options and they're just tapped out.
2:22 There is, of course, the unfortunate reality of adult entertainment that I think is serving as a substitute for a lot of young men. For me personally, I had no dating issues when I was younger, but as I got older and began to look more seriously for a long-term partner, I just wasn't happy with what I was running into.
2:39 I found plenty of women who are career-minded and looking for something fun or casual. They really wanted to focus on their careers, and with the skyrocketing cost of living in America, I can't blame them. It is very expensive in the United States.
2:52 To the Passport Bros movement, and this has been a thing for a long time, but it's really picked up steam into the zeitgeist. Guys through the popular culture, a lot of guys are now looking overseas for significant others or pursuing relationships.
3:09 As an example, in rural Sweden, 80% of the Thai people are Thai women married to Swedish men. For me personally, being an Asian guy, I struggle to find people with shared values in the US. The United States, in particular, Asian people are just a small portion of the population.
3:25 You also see a lot of white male, Asian female combos. I'm not offended by this. My maternal grandfather was a white male, my maternal grandmother was a Japanese female, so this has been going on for a while now.
3:36 I don't fault people for their preferences, but I have struggled to find women with shared values. For fun, sure, it's not a problem in the US, but for meaningful relationships, it's hard to cultivate these in my experience.
3:49 I think a lot of guys are frustrated with the unrealistic expectations in the West. I'm not going to name any specifics, but I've definitely been there as far as dealing with realistic expectations. They seem to be more realistic in other parts of the world.
4:06 I suspect some amount of change will take place to address this in the West. I don't know if it will actually work or actually fix things. I'm skeptical. I think a lot of guys will be happier just going elsewhere.
4:16 The number three reason young men in the West are unhappy is the astronomical cost of living. Just look at the rants. Western democracies are in a state of perpetual growth. Every year, they don't want to have any down years, any sort of regression in terms of economics.
4:28 Regression in terms of economics would be considered extremely serious, and they would start printing money to get out of it. As you saw in the post-COVID downturn, the US government printed something like 40% of the money supply to get the country back into a state of inflation.
4:46 This is also the reason behind the botched immigration policies. I'm not saying immigration is a bad thing, look at the color of my skin. What you see is things done in a haphazard way in the pursuit of economic growth, where things are just not organized.
5:01 Things are not done in such a way to promote the well-being of the people who actually have to live in America and don't have other places to go. A lot of young men are effectively priced out of dating.
5:10 They look at spending $12, $300 on somebody that they barely know, and they don't want to be taken advantage of. They don't want it to go badly, and then they're just out all this money. They'd rather just save and invest that money or spend it on themselves.
5:24 Couple that with dating baggage. As we get older, we have more and more baggage. We have bad breakups on our mind. Some of us have been divorced, some of us have a child from a previous relationship, and that really can make dating difficult.
5:36 The median American is like 37 years old. So by the time a person, man or woman, has gotten to 37, many of them have been through a serious breakup, many of them have had a relationship not work out, and they're carrying stress from that.
5:49 They're carrying thoughts about that into their new relationships, and it makes it challenging. For some parts of the country, very few young men are going to be able to buy a house.
5:58 House, very, very few. I mean, you look at LA or New York, and a condo can easily run a million dollars. So who's going to be buying those? Probably older, more established people, maybe people with generational wealth that want to help out their family members.
6:14 But most young men are not in that position. Most young men are having roommates, living with other people. They're not in a position to own a home. You've also seen a lot of people get laid off from the tech industry, myself included, and we're concerned about the stability of the economy and our ability to pay mortgage.
6:30 I would probably qualify for a mortgage right now. Do I believe that I'll be able to maintain employment to consistently make those mortgage payments? I'm not sure.
6:40 I often ask people in closing, do you think the prices in the United States are coming down anytime soon? And it's a resounding no from just about everybody.
6:48 The fourth point is meritocracy seems to be less valued in the West. I think they finally undone some of the quota-based systems that kept Asian-Americans out of elite universities. But for a long time, they had these systems in place to try to make things fair.
7:02 That desperately negatively impacted a lot of people simply based on the color of their skin or the national origin of their parents. And I think a lot of people don't feel that Western society is as erratic as it was in the past.
7:16 When young men feel that they are not in a meritocratic system, it disincentivizes their effort. Why would you try to get ahead if you know that getting ahead is contingent upon things that you have no control over?
7:28 This doesn't even get into some work environments being especially political, where it's often not performance, but rather your ability to kiss up that can dictate your career progression. A common thing I've seen in the West is that when you can't sort something out, you just lower the standard.
7:44 The fifth and final point is to why young men are unhappy in the West is unmet expectations. If you were like me and raised by Boomers, Greatest Generation individuals, you probably heard, 'Just go to college and get any degree, and it doesn't matter, things will work out well.'
7:58 In their time, a degree was highly valued and rare, and now not so much. It went from in the Baby Boomers generation, around a quarter of people having a degree, to now something like 40 to 45% of Americans having a degree.
8:14 That's a degree in general. I got a useless degree myself. I thought I was going to go to law school until I found out what the day-to-day life of a lawyer actually is like.
8:24 I was told constantly by non-lawyers, 'Oh, being a lawyer is awesome, you make so much money.' And then I spent time around actual lawyers, especially young lawyers, who told me about the debt they had, the struggle they had to find their first job.
8:35 A lot of these fields that were historically markers of being able to make money have become saturated because so many people that are in the pursuit of money pick these fields. And so you're competing with people who aren't motivated by a love for the law or the legal system, but by people who just want to make lots of money.
8:50 And don't really care about the consequences of a litigious society. These days, I'd say you need at least 100k a year to have a middle-class lifestyle in the United States, probably more like 200k on the coasts.
9:01 And I think only one in six Americans makes over $100,000 a year. So you're talking about a select group of people. It's not the average Joe that's making $100,000 a year.
9:14 I've made that kind of money, but I also, I'm going to brag on myself a little bit. I don't see myself as average. So what is the future hold? I think a lot more guys are going to start leaving the West and checking out the developing world, Latin America, Southeast Asia, parts of Eastern Europe.
9:29 I hear Central Asia is up and coming, and they're just curious. They're bored. Life is very boring and frankly, kind of feeling at times purposeless. The guys that are goal-driven, that want to do something exciting, want a sense of adventure, want to see the world and meet.
9:46 Many men want to see the world and meet interesting people and date beautiful women. They want to check out other countries. I've been personally surprised at the response to this channel; so many guys are curious about this lifestyle and are interested to see what it's about.
10:00 I don't think it's for everybody, but I think a lot of guys will find value in this. They're intrigued by beautiful tropical Thailand and other parts of the world. I'm a fan of Latin America, and I think they're intrigued by Latin America as well.
10:16 Thanks so much for watching till the end. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to watch this content. If you enjoy this content and want to see more, please subscribe to the channel down below. It is free to subscribe.
10:27 Give us a thumbs up if you like the topic, or give us a thumbs down if it wasn't for you. That's all for today. We'll see you next time.
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