One argument that’s often made against legalized polygamy is that rich old men will marry lots of women, leaving lots of poor young men both single and sexually frustrated—-and that’s bad, because poor young single sexually frustrated men are prone to criminal acts of violence.
Over at Overcoming Bias, Robin Hanson objects that if people really believed this argument, they’d want to criminalize lesbianism and extramarital affairs, both of which also contribute to the problem of men-without-partners.
But I think one could consistently take the position that while lesbianism contributes to the problem, it’s just not widespread enough to be worth stamping out, while polygamy (if legal) might well become so. And as far as extramarital affairs, I think Robin has it completely backward: When the wife of a 30 year old man (who is well past the prime age of violence) has an extramarital affair with an 18 year old, she is alleviating the problem, not contributing to it. Besides, most extramarital affairs do not deprive the husband of a long term sex partner.
I’m all for legalizing polygamy, because I’m all for legalizing almost everything. But I don’t think you can dismiss this argument—or the sincerity of its proponents—as easily as Robin seems to think you can.
What should we care about? The fact that sexual frustration is bad for an individual (ignoring Freudian theories about sublimation) or the fact that sexual frustration has some externalities – negative consequences for society?
If the former, then banning lesbianism is obviously a bad idea as it would, if anything, increase the total amount of sexual frustration in a society. But allowing polygamy does increase sexual frustration (assuming the extra wives are not able to have extra-marital affairs of their own), so we might countenance a ban if that is what we care about.
And libertarians should be very much against extra-marital affairs as they are essentially a breach of contract.
Origins of marriage is based on grounds of property rather than sexuality. Then law protected property of men now it protects common property including children
I would have thought the main reason not to prohibit lesbianism is that few lesbians are likely to “convert” to heterosexual relationships, whereas presumably most polygamous wives would convert to monogamous relationships if required.
EricK: The argument I was responding to concerns the externalities.
Henry: Excellent point.
Doesn’t your point that extramarital affairs solve the problem rather than exacerbating it mean that there is no problem in the first place? Or is that irrelevant since Robin’s argument is based on pointing out a lack of consistency in legislation?
You cheated with the extramarital affair example. If the wife cheats, that relieves sexual frustration among young males, hence preventing crime. But if the husband cheats, that is competition for those young males, having the opposite effect.
But I suppose if wives and husbands cheat equally it cancels out.
Also, the lesbians are roughly cancelled out by the gay men. If not for lesbians, there would be a surplus of women.
Of course, by this accounting, a surplus of women would be a positive externality.
Sorry, I mean a surplus of women would *create* positive externalities.
Steve, I realise the argument was about the externalities. But in many cases the effects of the externalities are a fraction of the effects of the item under consideration. If that is the case here, then banning the item, is a bad idea because you lose the good effects of the item along with the externalities.
So my point – very badly expressed now I read it back – is that before we decide what to do about the externalities (in this case crime by sexually frustrated males)we need to consider how bad, relatively speaking, those are.
So if the benefits of allowing polygamy/lesbianism/extra-marital affairs are very different then there is no reason why we should take the same approach to them just because they share the same externalitites.
Here’s a conundrum for Robin Hanson then. Would she object to women having amnio to selectively abort female fetuses? I know most feminists (despite their “my body my choice” mantra) do object to this. Wwhich is why some tried to ban amnio. To stave it off would she accept the ‘surplus of unattached males is a problem’ argument?
Rather than decriminalize polygamy, I would remove the legal framework that surrounds marriage. It should be a social contract, not a legal one.
Replacing the legal mess that is marriage, I would offer simple binding contracts that anyone could use. Do you want to share the parentage of a child with someone? Do you want to offer hospital visitation rights to someone? Do you want to have communal property with someone? It would be like marriage ala cart, and it wouldn’t be limited to anyone.
I think Robin Hanson presumes that if you believe most polygamous relationships would be between old men and young women, then you should also believe that most extramarital affairs are between old (married) men and young (single) women. I do not know whether or not this is true, just pointing out the logic. The question remains as to whether a young woman involved in an affair is still available to other young men for marriage.
I’d like to preface this statement with the fact that if it weren’t for John D Lee’s 5th wife a few generations ago I wouldn’t be here.
However, I have to believe that like traditional marriage, polygamy would evolve with current cultural norms. In the 19th century with Mormonism, and prior to that outside of Utah, it was only the wealthiest men who took on multiple wives. For women it was a means of security in life (which was much more valuable then than it is now). Now women can provide for themselves. One would assume that the 21st century woman would enter into polygamy later in life than her counterpart from 200 years ago. She’d probably have already had multiple sexual partners and more than likely is able to earn a wage that would not require a male for support financially.
There is also the opportunity cost. Would a woman rather be my first wife, Dr. Landsburg’s second or Brad Pitt’s twenty-first? If we go off wealth, chances are she’d prefer Brad Pitt (even when his net worth is divided over and over it would probably still exceed ours). However, there has to be some value associated with being “the one”, and I’m not certain how to quantify romance. There is probably a number though where a woman would choose to be a wealthy man’s X wife rather than marry a young man, or a number where even a wealthy man would say “I have enough wives”.
The combination of a later age for entering into a plural marriage and the lack of a need would probably both keep the amount of plural marriages low. I would assume that plural marriage divorce rates would be much lower. If all parties enter into the arrangement with a full knowledge of what is entailed, some of the problems that may lead to divorce (affairs due to a difference in sex drive, lack of stimulation in conversation and company, etc.).
This seems silly to me: Why focus on legalizing only men having multiple wives? One problem with that might be that it’d create an imbalance, but surely a bigger problem with it is that it’s sexist and unequal, and the obvious solution is to legalize multiple marriage regardless of sex or gender. If you do that, where’s the imbalance?
I doubt that the proscription has anything to do with sexual frustration. Rich men can, and do, have as many sexual partners as they can attract and keep, viz Hugh Hefner. They just can’t marry them all. And even if they could, as pointed out the wives would still be available extra-maritally.
Government involvement in marriage arrangements pertain to property ownership and child custody, not sexual activity. Polygamy would significantly increase the complexity of resolving these legal issues. For example, if a man with property were able to take on an additional wife, it would dilute the equity of the existing wife. The polygamy proscription protects her interest.
Steve, you and Robin are simply reciting some of the arguments for laws and public policies favoring marriage between one man and one woman.
I don’t think lesbianism really contributes to a supposed problem of men-without-partners, because it appears that male homosexuality is more common than female homosexuality. Thus, lesbianism can only contribute if we account for it, but ignore male homosexuality. Not that I’m personally worried about a problem of men-without-partners anyway.
Also, I don’t believe that the problem with polygamy is fundamentally about men-without-partners anyway. It’s really about dilution of the gene pool. For example, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia fathered upwards of 50 children and had more than 500 grandchildren. At that level of procreation, it is inevitable that cousins will marry and procreate, which both reduces diversity in the gene pool and increases the risk of inherited disease.
Interestingly, there is an obvious negative correlation between polygamy in a society and the rights of women in that society, whereas there is no such correlation for polyandry. Of course, there have been few modern instances of polyandry, so it’s hard to evaluate.
Regarding philandery, a recent study indicated that about 15% of wives were unfaithful, while 28% of husbands were. This implies that either some of the unfaithful men had affairs with other men, that unfaithful wives have more partners, or that unfaithful husbands are more likely to have affairs with single women than unfaithful wives are to have affairs with single men.
Cos: the obvious solution is to legalize multiple marriage regardless of sex or gender. If you do that, where’s the imbalance?
The imbalance arises if the result of this legalization is that many rich old men have many wives, while relatively few women have many husbands. I think it is not too much of a stretch to believe that this is a likely outcome.
When are you going to tell us how to succeed in high school?
Phil, in my experience lesbians do not cancel out gay men. There are many many more gay men than lesbians. maybe this is just my region but I have a feeling this is true for the USA in general at least. Now, I will agree with you that there seem to be more bisexual women than bisexual men, but these women are usually truly bisexual and date men. As a straight man, I of course wish the gay male/lesbian ratio would go even higher.
Small side note: Lesbianism (or at least feigned lesbianism in the porn industry) may be used to alleviate the average males sexual frustration i.e. look at Dr. Landsburg’s chapter on access to the internet v rape. Making all lesbian activity illegal may create more sexual angst than the number of female partners that may (or may not) be freed up by banning it.
Roger: The “how to succeed in high school” post is scheduled for tomorrow (though I might push it to next week). It was inadvertently published early, because WordPress is an idiot. I cancelled it very shortly after it went up, but the RSS feeds seem to have caught it. It will be back at the proper time.
Surely if you believe this argument against polygamy (and to a certain extent I do), the proper solution is to work to reduce economic inequality between men and women, so that women who enter into polygamous relationships will do so more because they fancy a part-time husband than because they need the economic support of a rich man who they feel they can tolerate occasional sex with.
I know, I know, crazy talk…
Doctor Memory: Arguably, given the different mating strategies of men and women, the legalization of polygamy would give men a more powerful incentive to accumulate wealth, so you’d expect to see the inequality between men and women increase on this count alone.
If we’re going to pursue a legal strategy of reducing sexual frustration, then wouldn’t the most logical course of action be that of outlawing religion? What could possibly create more sexual frustration than convincing single people that they will suffer eternally for having sex?