My experience is that extreme-normie arguments for YIMBY work fine -- for instance "it helps people live near their children and grandchildren" or "it means that as you grow older, losing your drivers license doesn't mean losing your freedom."
On the internet, we get used to arguing with people that apply an ideological framing to everything, but that's because people on the internet (myself included) are weird.
On YIMBY framing, one of my regular observations is pointing out that if people said that they didn't want foreigners from another country moving to their town, they'd be pretty clearly called out as racist and xenophobic. But when people say the same about fellow Americans moving in, hardly anyone bats an eye. (For example, out here in the West, "Don't Californicate [state I live in]" has long been a thing.)
Well, recently a rather left wing friend of mine threw an inverted curveball at me saying she just wanted anyone *but* Americans to move into town. I forget how I tried to shift my framing but boy that one was a doozy.
I'm not sure I'd give many Republican "intellectuals" credit for actually understanding Foucault, but, if some of them are quoting him, I suspect the reason is that Foucault's description of power and discipline as something more pervasive and thick than just state power, diffused through many institutions and relationship in society, speaks to the feeling a lot of conservatives are expressing of being on the losing end of a culture war and coercive change through many parts of society - the corporate world, media, etc.
I don't think your answer on the administrative state fairly grapples with the issue. Executive discretion to making changes in the staffing allocation or administration of the executive branch itself (your examples) is not in the same category as making changes in policy and binding rules of behavior that apply to private actors.
Matt dude I've been a subscriber since Day 1 but it's weird to me that you conceive of yourself as doing a "calmer" approach to politics when you're in Day 2 of a Twitter Beef with Perry Bacon Junior. The righteous pugilism of telling Dems they should deprioritize gun control the week after Uvalde is what I like about you, but it's not about being 'calmer or more rational'.
Robert Kagan, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has called this “adversarial legalism” and shown that it’s a distinctively American way of checking state power. Bagley builds on this argument. “Inflexible procedural rules are a hallmark of the American state,” he writes. “The ubiquity of court challenges, the artificial rigors of notice-and-comment rule making, zealous environmental review, pre-enforcement review of agency rules, picayune legal rules governing hiring and procurement, nationwide court injunctions — the list goes on and on.”
The justification for these policies is that they make state action more legitimate by ensuring that dissenting voices are heard. But they also, over time, render government ineffective, and that cost is rarely weighed. This gets to Bagley’s ultimate and, in my view, wisest point. “Legitimacy is not solely, not even primarily, a product of the procedures that agencies follow,” he says. “Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive and fair.” That is what we’ve lost — in fact, not just in perception.
On the question about Rene Girard- I’m currently reading “Wanting” by Luke Burgis and it’s on exactly this (Girard, mimetic desire, scapegoating, even an appearance from Thiel). Maybe this book is a symptom of the trend or it’s a cause, probably both. But it’s a good book and not at all “right wing” (or left wing) despite the Thiel references.
Burgis presents the concept of mimetic desire (basically, humans don’t tend to just want things on our own, we instinctively look around us for models to determine what we should want) as pretty earth-shattering, but to me it’s a somewhat obvious inference to make after reading “The Secret of our Success” and learning about the concept of cultural evolution. But I’m still enjoying the book, it’s a quick and easy read.
Burgis references Thiel and “Zero to One” fairly often, though always keeping him a bit at arms length and acknowledging he is controversial. He does not go full fan-boy for Thiel, just Girard. But apparently Thiel was a student of Girard’s.
Where are folks seeing it pop up in right wing circles? I’m curious. I learned about it through Chloe Valdary, who I follow for her anti-racism work but she herself is a big Jordan Peterson fan. But shes pretty heterodox generally. Given how much my brain was messed up by decades of critical race theory, Im permanently skeptical of falling too deep into a “this theory explains everything about the world” rabbit hole. But the basic claims seem uncontroversial enough. (Note that I’m only just at the point in the book where the author goes from “describing” to “proscribing,” which is where things often go off the rails.)
Today is one those days where I scroll the comments and I find myself agreeing with a comment, seeing it's posted by someone I basically never agree with and instantly turning into GOB and thinking "I've made a huge mistake."
Huh, I'm in the exact opposite camp regarding authors reading their own works; I look on it as a red flag and rarely get those audiobooks. My sense is that "writing a good book" and "reading a book aloud well" are two completely different skillsets that don't necessarily overlap and, in fact, rarely do. Is this just a silly bias on my part?
I would like to argue a step beyond "hypocrisy is weak tea" and say that *for most people*, hypocrisy is the only morally acceptable way to live your life.
To attempt to justify this claim, and at the risk of being extremely weird, I will explain my reasoning not in prose but in a dialogue excerpt from a play I wrote (never yet produced and frankly not ready to be produced):
__________________
SAUL
What are the alternatives?
(He takes three shrimp from the rabbi's plate and lays them side by side, on the table.)
There are three kinds of people in the world, and only three: saints, villains, and hypocrites. Right?
ZEV
I don't know that I agree but you can go on.
SAUL
Well who else is there?
ZEV
Whatever, say I concede, what's your point?
SAUL
(Pointing to the shrimp)
Saints, villains, hypocrites. Well, sainthood is in very short supply. It's out of reach for most of us.
(SAUL puts one shrimp back on the plate.)
ZEV
Yes.
SAUL
So if you find yourself imperfect and unable to always live up to your own standards, you have two choices: either keep telling the moral truth as you see it and accept that you will be seen correctly as a hypocrite, or else lower your standards to meet your weaknesses, i.e., undermine your principles just to avoid being a hypocrite. And what could be more self-centered than that? In fact, doing that makes you a villain. And you don't want to be a villain.
(He puts one more shrimp back on the plate.)
Once you realize you're not perfect, hypocrisy is the only moral choice.
ZEV
Okay. As a result, okay. But not as a mission, not as your North Star.
SAUL
Whatever. The point is, what you're doing is important.
ZEV
How is it important? Everyone else is a hypocrite too.
SAUL
But you admit the hypocrisy! That's no small thing!
ZEV
Admitting it doesn't make it okay.
SAUL
But not admitting it would make it worse. It's like— There are two kinds of hypocrite. Two levels. You're a hypocrite because you preach one thing and do another.
ZEV
Yeah, that's what it means.
SAUL
But there's a step beyond that. The worse kind of hypocrite—the kind most people are!—preaches one thing, does another thing, and at the same time he swears up and down that he lives by what he preaches. He's a hypocrite who also pretends to be a saint!
ZEV
Okay.
SAUL
So what we should do, what we have to do, is be the good kind of hypocrite. The humble kind. Right? Be the honest hypocrite. Honestly preach a vision of morality, and even when you fail to live up to it, which is often, honestly be willing to say so publicly. That's what you do. I see you doing it!
ZEV
Yes.
SAUL
And that's what I want to do! That's what I've been searching for, for the past eight years of feeling torn in half between two worlds!
(He picks up the remaining piece of shrimp.)
Shrimp is not kosher! Jews should not eat shrimp! Ritual law trains our self-control and binds us together as a people and gives our lives meaning! Eating kosher makes our deepest philosophy and our shared history and our shared future all into something that's real in our bodies! Jewish law is not optional and it is not part-time! For a Jew to eat shrimp is to reject his heritage, attack his integrity, and uproot his soul!
(He eats the piece of shrimp.)
Shrimp is delicious! And the rest of it is all still true!
Up early again here in Mountain Time. So one of my lists.
1. Irony.... Matt says if he were boss he would build all the housing and clear all the homeless, but then a few paragraphs later says the evidence for focused deterrence is poor. Clearing homeless but providing housing/treatment is the definition of focused deterrence. It's the real reason why Europe has few homeless but laxer drug laws.
B. The whole gun thing and length of sentencing is so clearly wrong. Long sentences don't deter crime is one of those things that gets repeated ad nauseum but without evidence. When you start studying, the sentences go like.... long sentences hardly reduce crime... as in they do reduce crime, but not enough to justify the authors progressive sensibilities.
And whenever they talk about his subject, its always about deterrence. That's because like Matt said, deterrence is more about catching and punishing more people.
What they never talk about is incapacitation. The fact is that keeping hardcore high prevalent criminals in jail for a long time until they age out does reduce crime, and combined with a high catch rate, it works well.
3a. I love Matt, well I love all humans, but I really enjoy his work, but the spoken word is not his forte. His reading voice (I sampled One Billion Americans) wasn't the best. Though at least the audiobook isn't filled with fillers like "like" ... listen to Matts podcasts.
d. Questions for Milan: How was Amsterdam? I know it's famous for weed (and I know you smoke), but the bar scene was always my favorite. I could ask if you tried the red lights but I don't expect an answer. I will confess that when I lived in Holland as a young single man, I hit them occasionally. (Don't judge me people). I do miss the Netherlands.
e. I completely agree about hypocrisy being overrated. I am hypocritical about 1000 things. All we can do is acknowledge and move on.
Different subject: I just bought an RV to live in while I remodel my cabin which I bought to replace an RV I sold. I'm a total buy high sell low guy. Heading to the Cabin in Granite, Oregon this weekend.
Related Subject: We are getting so much rain in the North West lately. Hopefully it means an easy fire season.
The discussion of hypocrisy brought to mind this old story (I forget where I read it):
An Indian mother was worried about her young son eating too much candy, so she brought him to Gandhi and asked the great man to tell her son to give up candy, hoping that Gandhi's moral authority would make an impression on the boy.
Gandhi told her, "I cannot do this now, but come back in a month and I will tell him then."
The mother was puzzled, but she did as Gandhi said. A month later, she came back with her son, and Gandhi told him: "Young man, listen to your mother. Candy is bad for you. You shouldn't eat so much."
The mother said, "Gandhiji, thank you, but I don't understand. Why couldn't you have told my son this a month ago?"
Gandhi replied, "You see, a month ago *I* was eating too much candy."
I feel Matt is soft peddling some of the more effective, ugly aspects of ‘tough on crime’ policing.
Four young men are found in a car containing an illegal handgun. Everyone in the car could face a 10 year sentence or a 1 year sentence with a bail requirement they are unlikely to be able to meet. Or they can be released without bail to face any charge again from 1 year to 10. The difference in the bail req is much more impactful than the sentence pursued. It’s effect is much more immediate and that is both the deterrence and incapacitation that primarily matters, not what punishment they might face in 18 months after trial.
We have a procedural understanding of justice that unfortunately does not line up with actual crime control very well. And it lines up with ‘public order’ even worse.
Far better than bail reform would be a process for adjudicating quickly! Our legal system has a wide range of powers, rights, and responsibilities based on argumentation and essentially divorced from the reality of actually processing cases through a courtroom.
I’ve recently read Noah Feldman’s The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, and it seems to me that the fundamental questions around secession are still very much with us internationally. That is certainly the case regarding pre-invasion Ukraine and any possible settlement to the current conflict that I can imagine.
I’m new to your newsletter, so you might have delt with secession in the past. If so, could you point me to where you have discussed this.
If not, I hope you would consider taking up this topic at some point. Specifically, I have in mind these areas:
Secession vs. revolution vs. rebellion vs. civil war: what are the distinctions and what the overlaps.
Secession throughout history.
When is secession legitimate and when not? When is suppression of secession legitimate and when not?
How is secession not inviting an indefinite regress into ever smaller independent regions?
Secession (it now seems to me) as inherently extra-constitutional, regardless of what a given constitution might or might not state. This is a key reason that Jefferson Davis was never put on trial.
Secession as inevitably only settled by military force.
Does the fight for secession and the fight against it fall under international rules of war or any other rules?
If you have suggestions on good sources on this topic, I’d appreciate you passing these on to me. My current list of sources to get to:
Ahsan Butt Secession and Security
David Gordon Secession, State, and Liberty
Allen Buchanan The Morality of Political Divorce
Cynthia Nicoletti Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis
I disagree with Matt's claim that he is being, to some extent, hypocritical in applying differential standards to himself than he applies to his son. Having different standards for people of different ages is not necessarily hypocritical and is often quite reasonable. It would be hypocritical if Matt simultaneously criticized his other parents for allowing their children to behave in a way while Matt allowed his same age child to behave similarly. And how does Matt think he would feel about his son spending all night watching YouTube videos after the son is an adult? I doubt Matt would give it a second thought.
My experience is that extreme-normie arguments for YIMBY work fine -- for instance "it helps people live near their children and grandchildren" or "it means that as you grow older, losing your drivers license doesn't mean losing your freedom."
On the internet, we get used to arguing with people that apply an ideological framing to everything, but that's because people on the internet (myself included) are weird.
On YIMBY framing, one of my regular observations is pointing out that if people said that they didn't want foreigners from another country moving to their town, they'd be pretty clearly called out as racist and xenophobic. But when people say the same about fellow Americans moving in, hardly anyone bats an eye. (For example, out here in the West, "Don't Californicate [state I live in]" has long been a thing.)
Well, recently a rather left wing friend of mine threw an inverted curveball at me saying she just wanted anyone *but* Americans to move into town. I forget how I tried to shift my framing but boy that one was a doozy.
I'm not sure I'd give many Republican "intellectuals" credit for actually understanding Foucault, but, if some of them are quoting him, I suspect the reason is that Foucault's description of power and discipline as something more pervasive and thick than just state power, diffused through many institutions and relationship in society, speaks to the feeling a lot of conservatives are expressing of being on the losing end of a culture war and coercive change through many parts of society - the corporate world, media, etc.
I don't think your answer on the administrative state fairly grapples with the issue. Executive discretion to making changes in the staffing allocation or administration of the executive branch itself (your examples) is not in the same category as making changes in policy and binding rules of behavior that apply to private actors.
Matt dude I've been a subscriber since Day 1 but it's weird to me that you conceive of yourself as doing a "calmer" approach to politics when you're in Day 2 of a Twitter Beef with Perry Bacon Junior. The righteous pugilism of telling Dems they should deprioritize gun control the week after Uvalde is what I like about you, but it's not about being 'calmer or more rational'.
"Judging these things more by the results and less by a checklist seems wise to me. "
That's also kind of the core point of Ezra's latest polemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/29/opinion/biden-liberalism-infrastructure-building.html
<blockquote>
Robert Kagan, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has called this “adversarial legalism” and shown that it’s a distinctively American way of checking state power. Bagley builds on this argument. “Inflexible procedural rules are a hallmark of the American state,” he writes. “The ubiquity of court challenges, the artificial rigors of notice-and-comment rule making, zealous environmental review, pre-enforcement review of agency rules, picayune legal rules governing hiring and procurement, nationwide court injunctions — the list goes on and on.”
The justification for these policies is that they make state action more legitimate by ensuring that dissenting voices are heard. But they also, over time, render government ineffective, and that cost is rarely weighed. This gets to Bagley’s ultimate and, in my view, wisest point. “Legitimacy is not solely, not even primarily, a product of the procedures that agencies follow,” he says. “Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive and fair.” That is what we’ve lost — in fact, not just in perception.
</blockquote>
On the question about Rene Girard- I’m currently reading “Wanting” by Luke Burgis and it’s on exactly this (Girard, mimetic desire, scapegoating, even an appearance from Thiel). Maybe this book is a symptom of the trend or it’s a cause, probably both. But it’s a good book and not at all “right wing” (or left wing) despite the Thiel references.
Burgis presents the concept of mimetic desire (basically, humans don’t tend to just want things on our own, we instinctively look around us for models to determine what we should want) as pretty earth-shattering, but to me it’s a somewhat obvious inference to make after reading “The Secret of our Success” and learning about the concept of cultural evolution. But I’m still enjoying the book, it’s a quick and easy read.
Burgis references Thiel and “Zero to One” fairly often, though always keeping him a bit at arms length and acknowledging he is controversial. He does not go full fan-boy for Thiel, just Girard. But apparently Thiel was a student of Girard’s.
Where are folks seeing it pop up in right wing circles? I’m curious. I learned about it through Chloe Valdary, who I follow for her anti-racism work but she herself is a big Jordan Peterson fan. But shes pretty heterodox generally. Given how much my brain was messed up by decades of critical race theory, Im permanently skeptical of falling too deep into a “this theory explains everything about the world” rabbit hole. But the basic claims seem uncontroversial enough. (Note that I’m only just at the point in the book where the author goes from “describing” to “proscribing,” which is where things often go off the rails.)
Today is one those days where I scroll the comments and I find myself agreeing with a comment, seeing it's posted by someone I basically never agree with and instantly turning into GOB and thinking "I've made a huge mistake."
Huh, I'm in the exact opposite camp regarding authors reading their own works; I look on it as a red flag and rarely get those audiobooks. My sense is that "writing a good book" and "reading a book aloud well" are two completely different skillsets that don't necessarily overlap and, in fact, rarely do. Is this just a silly bias on my part?
If Celtics win in 5 Matty should buy Milan a pizza
I would like to argue a step beyond "hypocrisy is weak tea" and say that *for most people*, hypocrisy is the only morally acceptable way to live your life.
To attempt to justify this claim, and at the risk of being extremely weird, I will explain my reasoning not in prose but in a dialogue excerpt from a play I wrote (never yet produced and frankly not ready to be produced):
__________________
SAUL
What are the alternatives?
(He takes three shrimp from the rabbi's plate and lays them side by side, on the table.)
There are three kinds of people in the world, and only three: saints, villains, and hypocrites. Right?
ZEV
I don't know that I agree but you can go on.
SAUL
Well who else is there?
ZEV
Whatever, say I concede, what's your point?
SAUL
(Pointing to the shrimp)
Saints, villains, hypocrites. Well, sainthood is in very short supply. It's out of reach for most of us.
(SAUL puts one shrimp back on the plate.)
ZEV
Yes.
SAUL
So if you find yourself imperfect and unable to always live up to your own standards, you have two choices: either keep telling the moral truth as you see it and accept that you will be seen correctly as a hypocrite, or else lower your standards to meet your weaknesses, i.e., undermine your principles just to avoid being a hypocrite. And what could be more self-centered than that? In fact, doing that makes you a villain. And you don't want to be a villain.
(He puts one more shrimp back on the plate.)
Once you realize you're not perfect, hypocrisy is the only moral choice.
ZEV
Okay. As a result, okay. But not as a mission, not as your North Star.
SAUL
Whatever. The point is, what you're doing is important.
ZEV
How is it important? Everyone else is a hypocrite too.
SAUL
But you admit the hypocrisy! That's no small thing!
ZEV
Admitting it doesn't make it okay.
SAUL
But not admitting it would make it worse. It's like— There are two kinds of hypocrite. Two levels. You're a hypocrite because you preach one thing and do another.
ZEV
Yeah, that's what it means.
SAUL
But there's a step beyond that. The worse kind of hypocrite—the kind most people are!—preaches one thing, does another thing, and at the same time he swears up and down that he lives by what he preaches. He's a hypocrite who also pretends to be a saint!
ZEV
Okay.
SAUL
So what we should do, what we have to do, is be the good kind of hypocrite. The humble kind. Right? Be the honest hypocrite. Honestly preach a vision of morality, and even when you fail to live up to it, which is often, honestly be willing to say so publicly. That's what you do. I see you doing it!
ZEV
Yes.
SAUL
And that's what I want to do! That's what I've been searching for, for the past eight years of feeling torn in half between two worlds!
(He picks up the remaining piece of shrimp.)
Shrimp is not kosher! Jews should not eat shrimp! Ritual law trains our self-control and binds us together as a people and gives our lives meaning! Eating kosher makes our deepest philosophy and our shared history and our shared future all into something that's real in our bodies! Jewish law is not optional and it is not part-time! For a Jew to eat shrimp is to reject his heritage, attack his integrity, and uproot his soul!
(He eats the piece of shrimp.)
Shrimp is delicious! And the rest of it is all still true!
Up early again here in Mountain Time. So one of my lists.
1. Irony.... Matt says if he were boss he would build all the housing and clear all the homeless, but then a few paragraphs later says the evidence for focused deterrence is poor. Clearing homeless but providing housing/treatment is the definition of focused deterrence. It's the real reason why Europe has few homeless but laxer drug laws.
B. The whole gun thing and length of sentencing is so clearly wrong. Long sentences don't deter crime is one of those things that gets repeated ad nauseum but without evidence. When you start studying, the sentences go like.... long sentences hardly reduce crime... as in they do reduce crime, but not enough to justify the authors progressive sensibilities.
And whenever they talk about his subject, its always about deterrence. That's because like Matt said, deterrence is more about catching and punishing more people.
What they never talk about is incapacitation. The fact is that keeping hardcore high prevalent criminals in jail for a long time until they age out does reduce crime, and combined with a high catch rate, it works well.
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/incapacitation-how-much-does-putting-people-inside-prison-cut-crime-outside
3a. I love Matt, well I love all humans, but I really enjoy his work, but the spoken word is not his forte. His reading voice (I sampled One Billion Americans) wasn't the best. Though at least the audiobook isn't filled with fillers like "like" ... listen to Matts podcasts.
d. Questions for Milan: How was Amsterdam? I know it's famous for weed (and I know you smoke), but the bar scene was always my favorite. I could ask if you tried the red lights but I don't expect an answer. I will confess that when I lived in Holland as a young single man, I hit them occasionally. (Don't judge me people). I do miss the Netherlands.
e. I completely agree about hypocrisy being overrated. I am hypocritical about 1000 things. All we can do is acknowledge and move on.
Different subject: I just bought an RV to live in while I remodel my cabin which I bought to replace an RV I sold. I'm a total buy high sell low guy. Heading to the Cabin in Granite, Oregon this weekend.
Related Subject: We are getting so much rain in the North West lately. Hopefully it means an easy fire season.
Have a great day!
The discussion of hypocrisy brought to mind this old story (I forget where I read it):
An Indian mother was worried about her young son eating too much candy, so she brought him to Gandhi and asked the great man to tell her son to give up candy, hoping that Gandhi's moral authority would make an impression on the boy.
Gandhi told her, "I cannot do this now, but come back in a month and I will tell him then."
The mother was puzzled, but she did as Gandhi said. A month later, she came back with her son, and Gandhi told him: "Young man, listen to your mother. Candy is bad for you. You shouldn't eat so much."
The mother said, "Gandhiji, thank you, but I don't understand. Why couldn't you have told my son this a month ago?"
Gandhi replied, "You see, a month ago *I* was eating too much candy."
I feel Matt is soft peddling some of the more effective, ugly aspects of ‘tough on crime’ policing.
Four young men are found in a car containing an illegal handgun. Everyone in the car could face a 10 year sentence or a 1 year sentence with a bail requirement they are unlikely to be able to meet. Or they can be released without bail to face any charge again from 1 year to 10. The difference in the bail req is much more impactful than the sentence pursued. It’s effect is much more immediate and that is both the deterrence and incapacitation that primarily matters, not what punishment they might face in 18 months after trial.
We have a procedural understanding of justice that unfortunately does not line up with actual crime control very well. And it lines up with ‘public order’ even worse.
Far better than bail reform would be a process for adjudicating quickly! Our legal system has a wide range of powers, rights, and responsibilities based on argumentation and essentially divorced from the reality of actually processing cases through a courtroom.
I’ve recently read Noah Feldman’s The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, and it seems to me that the fundamental questions around secession are still very much with us internationally. That is certainly the case regarding pre-invasion Ukraine and any possible settlement to the current conflict that I can imagine.
I’m new to your newsletter, so you might have delt with secession in the past. If so, could you point me to where you have discussed this.
If not, I hope you would consider taking up this topic at some point. Specifically, I have in mind these areas:
Secession vs. revolution vs. rebellion vs. civil war: what are the distinctions and what the overlaps.
Secession throughout history.
When is secession legitimate and when not? When is suppression of secession legitimate and when not?
How is secession not inviting an indefinite regress into ever smaller independent regions?
Secession (it now seems to me) as inherently extra-constitutional, regardless of what a given constitution might or might not state. This is a key reason that Jefferson Davis was never put on trial.
Secession as inevitably only settled by military force.
Does the fight for secession and the fight against it fall under international rules of war or any other rules?
If you have suggestions on good sources on this topic, I’d appreciate you passing these on to me. My current list of sources to get to:
Ahsan Butt Secession and Security
David Gordon Secession, State, and Liberty
Allen Buchanan The Morality of Political Divorce
Cynthia Nicoletti Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis
I disagree with Matt's claim that he is being, to some extent, hypocritical in applying differential standards to himself than he applies to his son. Having different standards for people of different ages is not necessarily hypocritical and is often quite reasonable. It would be hypocritical if Matt simultaneously criticized his other parents for allowing their children to behave in a way while Matt allowed his same age child to behave similarly. And how does Matt think he would feel about his son spending all night watching YouTube videos after the son is an adult? I doubt Matt would give it a second thought.