People will have to pay compensation if they are the party at fault.
Everyone? Or do you just want enforcement of pre-nups?
I am still interested in your view on the basic nature of marriage. Is it, in its essence, a contract between two parties? To point to an obvious divergent view, Catholics view marriage rather differently.
but if I break the lease I’ll have to pay compensation to the landlord.
You voluntarily signed a contract to that effect. If there is no such contract (or no such clause in the contract), would you still owe compensation to the landlord?
I say “damages in the case of breach” and I am confronted with people suggesting I mean specific performance, dragging people off in chains, or slavery. It’s so strange.
Well then, let’s avoid fuzzy generalities and get down to brass tacks.
Alice and Bob are thinking of getting married. However Alice believes that men are philandering bastards who tend to screw everything that moves so she would like to protect herself against the possibility of Bob turning out to be precisely such a bastard.
In the world which you would consider just and fair, what would Alice and Bob do and what would the legal system have to accept?
It seems that you have in mind an enforceable contract whereby Alice and Bob agree that if any of them gets caught in the wrong bed, he or she will pay the other party ONE! MILLION! DOLLARS! or some other sufficiently painful sum.
I don’t see anything horrible about such a contract, but I’m curious what you think the contract-less default should be (Eve and Dick just got married without any specific contracts, Eve got drunk at a party and slept with her boss, what’s next?). I am also interested in the motivations of Alice in insisting upon such a contract—is it incentive or punishment?
Once people realised that marriage wasn’t enforceable, the marriage rate collapsed.
Sure, but I don’t see why that is “extremely unfair” and “leads to widespread suffering”. I see nothing wrong with low marriage rates.
Everyone? Or do you just want enforcement of pre-nups?
If you like, call it a pre-nup. In your terms, I want:
enforcement of pre-nups
Pre-nups to be valid over a much wider variety of terms.
I am still interested in your view on the basic nature of marriage. Is it, in its essence, a contract between two parties?
And I still don’t find this level of analysis helpful. Marriage means different things to different people, and has developed over millenia. I don’t think it makes sense to talk about its basic nature.
I don’t see anything horrible about such a contract, but I’m curious what you think the contract-less default should be (Eve and Dick just got married without any specific contracts, Eve got drunk at a party and slept with her boss, what’s next?).
I would propose that, for now, the contract-less default should be the status quo, because I feel like otherwise you would be upsetting fixed expectations by the back door. But of course existing married couples should be free to alter their marriage terms. After a while I think almost everyone will want a contract that makes the party at fault pay compensation; once that happens, it would make sense to switch the default, but not until then.
I am also interested in the motivations of Alice in insisting upon such a contract—is it incentive or punishment?
It is very hard for the rest of us to speculate as to the motivations of a fictional character you have created. But even if you disapprove of Alice’s motivations, it seems to me that you should respect her right to form a contract.
Sure, but I don’t see why that is “extremely unfair” and “leads to widespread suffering”. I see nothing wrong with low marriage rates.
The marriage rate collapsing isn’t “unfair.” Denying people the ability to form voluntary contracts is the unfair part. The marriage rate collapsing leads to widespread suffering because people want to get married, but feel they can’t because the institution is too unstable due to lack of precommitment. And hence you get soaring illegitimacy. The whole thing is a disaster.
What gives the game away is that I am talking about giving people more freedom, and I get this vitriolic pushback, and find myself constantly being strawmanned. I note that certain people viscerally hate the idea of discipline, stability, order, hard work and bourgeois values generally, and view long-lasting marriages as awful patriarchy. This is what’s lurking beneath it all.
I would propose that, for now, the contract-less default should be the status quo, because I feel like otherwise you would be upsetting fixed expectations by the back door. But of course existing married couples should be free to alter their marriage terms. After a while I think almost everyone will want a contract that makes the party at fault pay compensation; once that happens, it would make sense to switch the default, but not until then.
Adultery was harshly punished in the past. Even in the recent past, before the 70s, adultery was one of the few admissible reasons to obtain divorce, and lead to unfavourable settlement for the adulterous party. In the 70s, no-fault divorce laws were passed in most Western countries, and adultery was demoted to having little or no role in divorce settlements. Keep in mind that no-fault divorce laws weren’t imposed by dictators trying to destroy the fabric of society or something (*), they were passed with popular support by democratically elected governments, and there is no noticeable political pressure today to revise them, or even to make the type of pre-nup agreements you are referring to enforceable.
Your position largely used to be the default one in the past, and public opinion has been moving consistently away from it for the last decades. Holding an unpopular political position is legitimate, but what makes you think that public opinion would move back to it?
Uhm, are you sure you are not succumbing to the false-consensus effect?
Quite sure. To quote from another post I made in this thread:
I think that, right now, most people have no strong view on the subject. But I think that people are good at learning, and so, over time, they will imitate those marriages which prove the most successful, and which best signal future commitment. I could be wrong.
Basically, I think people radically and consistently underestimate the effects of institutional constraints and incentives, and assume that aggregate societal results are somehow “chosen.” So people tend to think that:
Our high rate of divorce is very bad
Changing the incentives to get a divorce has little or no effect on this.
Something just “magically” happened in the 1960s/1970s (“Kids today...”/”liberation!”).
If you enabled people to make binding commitments in marriage, I don’t think most people would leap out and take advantage immediately. Most people would just keep on with whatever they’re doing. But a small number of people would, and their marriages would be more successful and happier and long-lasting, and over time (decades) their behaviour would be imitated, and so on.
Keep in mind that no-fault divorce laws weren’t imposed by dictators trying to destroy the fabric of society or something, they were passed with popular support by democratically elected governments
Disagree about the popular support thing. In Britain, certainly, the Divorce Reform Act was passed with neither popular support nor opposition, just a public who didn’t particularly care. The people pushing for it were a small number of activists, who were also in favour of these social “liberalisations” like abolition of the death penalty, etc. Many of these “lilberalisations” were in fact quite unpopular. I think you greatly underestimate the institutional leeway available to politicians/regulators.
Holding an unpopular political position is legitimate, but what makes you think that public opinion would move back to it?
I don’t think my position is so much unpopular as it is low-demand. I think the UK government, at least, could easily pass the kind of law I favour, and no-one much would care. In fact I don’t think my position is ever likely to be in high demand, because most people don’t think incentives are particularly important.
Disagree about the popular support thing. In Britain, certainly, the Divorce Reform Act was passed with neither popular support nor opposition, just a public who didn’t particularly care. The people pushing for it were a small number of activists, who were also in favour of these social “liberalisations” like abolition of the death penalty, etc. Many of these “lilberalisations” were in fact quite unpopular. I think you greatly underestimate the institutional leeway available to politicians/regulators.
It seems to me that you are arguing that some small groups of activists somehow managed to manipulate the democratic governments of multiple countries in a short span of time, without the general public taking notice, despite the fact that this alleged manipulation affected in substantial (and significantly negative, in your opinion) ways the family life of many people. Sorry, but I don’t think this is a rationally tenable position.
It seems to me that you are arguing that some small groups of activists somehow managed to manipulate the democratic governments of multiple countries in a short span of time,
Yes. This is indeed the whole point of activism.
without the general public taking notice,
I never said anything of the sort. Perhaps I should take it as a compliment that people are determined to put words into my mouth, as it indicates they feel unable to argue with my actual position. In fact, of course, the public did take notice, but didn’t much care.
despite the fact that this alleged manipulation affected in substantial (and significantly negative, in your opinion) ways the family life of many people.
Yes, because the effect was attenuated, and was not seen as causally linked to the activity.
I’m afraid your model of political activity in democratic governments is rather faulty.
Perhaps I should take it as a compliment that people are determined to put words into my mouth, as it indicates they feel unable to argue with my actual position.
Or maybe it indicates that you are not being clear in arguing your position.
Yes, because the effect was attenuated, and was not seen as causally linked to the activity.
In another comment you claimed that divorce rates skyrocketed the very same year that no-fault divorce legislation was passed, now you are arguing that there was no immediate large effect. I’m starting to think that you actually don’t have a coherent position, and you just want to argue that “good old” conservative values are obviously desirable and therefore you have to handwave away the fact that public opinion is largely against them by pushing a quasi-conspiracist narrative.
Denying people the ability to form voluntary contracts is the unfair part.
Unless you want to argue for some extreme form of anarcho-libertarianism, you would concede that there are some types of voluntary contracts that it is in the public interest for the state to consider unenforceable. Selling yourself into slavery is the textbook example, but there are clearly many others.
I’m not saying that the type of pre-nup agreements that impose monetary compensation on adultery are necessarily in the same class of slavery or other forms of undesirable contracts, in fact, I have no strong intuitions either way.
What do you infer from the silence of people who hear what you’re saying, find it uncompelling but not particularly viscerally hateful, shrug, and go on about our business?
“care about” is a broad term. I certainly have opinions about it, but if you mean that I don’t have strong emotional responses to it, your inference is correct as far as it goes.
Pre-nups to be valid over a much wider variety of terms.
I don’t mean purely division-of-property contracts. Pre-nups are general agreements, they can be about anything the parties want to agree to.
And I still don’t find this level of analysis helpful.
Ah. I find your consistent refusal… illuminating :-)
After a while I think almost everyone will want a contract that makes the party at fault pay compensation
Do you, now? I don’t want such a contract, quite explicitly, too. Why do you believe that most people think like you and not like me?
But even if you disapprove of Alice’s motivations
I don’t approve or disapprove. I am interested in them.
Denying people the ability to form voluntary contracts is the unfair part.
Well, that’s the basic libertarian position. Given that you proclaim it, should I understand that you are in favor of gay marriage, a large variety of poly marriages, marriages between close relatives, etc? And that’s even before we get to a variety of more interesting contracts that don’t deal with marriage...
How do you feel, for example, about temporary marriages: Alice and Bob form a voluntary contract that they will be married for one year after which the marriage automatically dissolves and they are free to go their own ways..?
people want to get married, but feel they can’t because the institution is too unstable due to lack of precommitment.
Really? That looks like, um, let’s be polite and say “motivated cognition”. Can you provide evidence that supports this claim?
I am talking about giving people more freedom
That’s the thing, you see, it certainly doesn’t look like that to me.
Ah. I find your consistent refusal… illuminating :-)
What’s the basic nature of drinking alcohol? Is it really about changing your mental state? Or is it really about lowering your inhibitions? Or is it really about drowning your sorrows? Or something else? It’s a ridiculous question. It doesn’t have a single purpose, it has lots, and some people drink for one reason but strongly disapprove of another reason, or vice-versa.
Do you, now? I don’t want such a contract, quite explicitly, too. Why do you believe that most people think like you and not like me?
I think that, right now, most people have no strong view on the subject. But I think that people are good at learning, and so, over time, they will imitate those marriages which prove the most successful, and which best signal future commitment. I could be wrong.
But even if you disapprove of Alice’s motivations
I don’t approve or disapprove. I am interested in them.
She’s your fictional character. You tell me.
Given that you proclaim it, should I understand that you are in favor of gay marriage, a large variety of poly marriages, marriages between close relatives, etc?… [temporary marriage also]
Except for marriages between close relatives, I “favour” all of these things in the sense that I think they should be legal.
That’s the thing, you see, it certainly doesn’t look like that to me.
And I am much too polite to tell you what your position looks like to me.
What’s the basic nature of drinking alcohol? Is it really about changing your mental state?
Why, yes, it is, given that lowering your inhibitions and drowning your sorrows are exactly that. I don’t think it is a ridiculous question.
they will imitate those marriages which prove the most successful
I am guessing that you define a “successful marriage” as a “long-lasting marriage”. I would not agree with such a definition.
Let me also point out that people will imitate the lives which look the most successful to them. Such lives may or may not involve long-lasting marriages.
I “favour” all of these things in the sense that I think they should be legal.
Interesting. So you think both that temporary marriages should be legal and that marriages should be made to be longer and more painful to get out of.
And I am much too polite to tell you what your position looks like to me.
/me waves a magic wand… Poof! I invoke the magical name of Crocker and release you from the politeness spell! :-)
What’s the basic nature of drinking alcohol? Is it really about changing your mental state?
Why, yes, it is, given that lowering your inhibitions and drowning your sorrows are exactly that. I don’t think it is a ridiculous question.
So someone who drinks alchohol just because they like the taste is “wrong”? To me that’s just absurd. Marriage can mean a holy sacrament to a Catholic, a lifelong commitment to me, an excuse for a good party for my cousin, and many more things besides. There’s no true “nature” beside the meanings we give it.
Let me also point out that people will imitate the lives which look the most successful to them. Such lives may or may not involve long-lasting marriages.
This is true! Different people have different wishes and desires. That’s why people should have the choice. I think most people want a long-lasting marriage, and would take steps to achieve that. I could be wrong though, and if people want to stay with the status quo they would be free to do so. You on the other hand, refuse to discover whether you are right, and refuse to give people the choice.
So you think both that temporary marriages should be legal and that marriages should be made to be longer and more painful to get out of.
No, I do not think that marriages should be made more painful to get out of. If people want to, they should be allowed to make their marriages shorter and even easier to get out of. But of course you already know that, and are deliberately misreading me.
I … release you from the politeness spell! :-)
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that I show politeness out of respect for you. I assure you that is not the case. I am polite out of respect for me.
So someone who drinks alchohol just because they like the taste is “wrong”?
I don’t know of a single person who drinks alcohol because they like the taste. I know people who drink Bordeaux wines, or particular beers, or specific ports because they like the taste.
There’s no true “nature” beside the meanings we give it.
Oh, I did not ask about the eternal true Platonic nature. I asked what do you believe the true nature of marriage to be.
You on the other hand, refuse to discover whether you are right, and refuse to give people the choice.
Do I, really? You seem to lapsing into the agitprop vocabulary.
I am polite out of respect for me.
Allow me to have my doubts. People like that don’t drop hints how they would really destroy the opponent’s positions if only the limits of politeness did not hold them back...
Allow me to have my doubts. People like that don’t drop hints how they would really destroy the opponent’s positions if only the limits of politeness did not hold them back...
Once again you miss the point. I don’t think my arguments would gain any extra force if I was personally rude about you, or resorted to the type of deliberate misreadings you engage in. Everyone can see what your position is like, and we can all draw our own conclusions.
The way we all conduct ourselves leads others to conclude things, not merely about the weight of our arguments, but the content of our characters. That’s all.
Well, the discussion seems to have drifted into the more heat and less light direction. I don’t find your position convincing and no doubt you feel the same way about mine. Perhaps we should just accept that we disagree.
Everyone? Or do you just want enforcement of pre-nups?
I am still interested in your view on the basic nature of marriage. Is it, in its essence, a contract between two parties? To point to an obvious divergent view, Catholics view marriage rather differently.
You voluntarily signed a contract to that effect. If there is no such contract (or no such clause in the contract), would you still owe compensation to the landlord?
Well then, let’s avoid fuzzy generalities and get down to brass tacks.
Alice and Bob are thinking of getting married. However Alice believes that men are philandering bastards who tend to screw everything that moves so she would like to protect herself against the possibility of Bob turning out to be precisely such a bastard.
In the world which you would consider just and fair, what would Alice and Bob do and what would the legal system have to accept?
It seems that you have in mind an enforceable contract whereby Alice and Bob agree that if any of them gets caught in the wrong bed, he or she will pay the other party ONE! MILLION! DOLLARS! or some other sufficiently painful sum.
I don’t see anything horrible about such a contract, but I’m curious what you think the contract-less default should be (Eve and Dick just got married without any specific contracts, Eve got drunk at a party and slept with her boss, what’s next?). I am also interested in the motivations of Alice in insisting upon such a contract—is it incentive or punishment?
Sure, but I don’t see why that is “extremely unfair” and “leads to widespread suffering”. I see nothing wrong with low marriage rates.
If you like, call it a pre-nup. In your terms, I want:
enforcement of pre-nups
Pre-nups to be valid over a much wider variety of terms.
And I still don’t find this level of analysis helpful. Marriage means different things to different people, and has developed over millenia. I don’t think it makes sense to talk about its basic nature.
I would propose that, for now, the contract-less default should be the status quo, because I feel like otherwise you would be upsetting fixed expectations by the back door. But of course existing married couples should be free to alter their marriage terms. After a while I think almost everyone will want a contract that makes the party at fault pay compensation; once that happens, it would make sense to switch the default, but not until then.
It is very hard for the rest of us to speculate as to the motivations of a fictional character you have created. But even if you disapprove of Alice’s motivations, it seems to me that you should respect her right to form a contract.
The marriage rate collapsing isn’t “unfair.” Denying people the ability to form voluntary contracts is the unfair part. The marriage rate collapsing leads to widespread suffering because people want to get married, but feel they can’t because the institution is too unstable due to lack of precommitment. And hence you get soaring illegitimacy. The whole thing is a disaster.
What gives the game away is that I am talking about giving people more freedom, and I get this vitriolic pushback, and find myself constantly being strawmanned. I note that certain people viscerally hate the idea of discipline, stability, order, hard work and bourgeois values generally, and view long-lasting marriages as awful patriarchy. This is what’s lurking beneath it all.
Uhm, are you sure you are not succumbing to the false-consensus effect?
Adultery was harshly punished in the past. Even in the recent past, before the 70s, adultery was one of the few admissible reasons to obtain divorce, and lead to unfavourable settlement for the adulterous party. In the 70s, no-fault divorce laws were passed in most Western countries, and adultery was demoted to having little or no role in divorce settlements.
Keep in mind that no-fault divorce laws weren’t imposed by dictators trying to destroy the fabric of society or something (*), they were passed with popular support by democratically elected governments, and there is no noticeable political pressure today to revise them, or even to make the type of pre-nup agreements you are referring to enforceable.
Your position largely used to be the default one in the past, and public opinion has been moving consistently away from it for the last decades.
Holding an unpopular political position is legitimate, but what makes you think that public opinion would move back to it?
(* Well, the Soviet divorce law of 1918 arguably was.)
Quite sure. To quote from another post I made in this thread:
Basically, I think people radically and consistently underestimate the effects of institutional constraints and incentives, and assume that aggregate societal results are somehow “chosen.” So people tend to think that:
Our high rate of divorce is very bad
Changing the incentives to get a divorce has little or no effect on this.
Something just “magically” happened in the 1960s/1970s (“Kids today...”/”liberation!”).
If you enabled people to make binding commitments in marriage, I don’t think most people would leap out and take advantage immediately. Most people would just keep on with whatever they’re doing. But a small number of people would, and their marriages would be more successful and happier and long-lasting, and over time (decades) their behaviour would be imitated, and so on.
Disagree about the popular support thing. In Britain, certainly, the Divorce Reform Act was passed with neither popular support nor opposition, just a public who didn’t particularly care. The people pushing for it were a small number of activists, who were also in favour of these social “liberalisations” like abolition of the death penalty, etc. Many of these “lilberalisations” were in fact quite unpopular. I think you greatly underestimate the institutional leeway available to politicians/regulators.
I don’t think my position is so much unpopular as it is low-demand. I think the UK government, at least, could easily pass the kind of law I favour, and no-one much would care. In fact I don’t think my position is ever likely to be in high demand, because most people don’t think incentives are particularly important.
It seems to me that you are arguing that some small groups of activists somehow managed to manipulate the democratic governments of multiple countries in a short span of time, without the general public taking notice, despite the fact that this alleged manipulation affected in substantial (and significantly negative, in your opinion) ways the family life of many people.
Sorry, but I don’t think this is a rationally tenable position.
Yes. This is indeed the whole point of activism.
I never said anything of the sort. Perhaps I should take it as a compliment that people are determined to put words into my mouth, as it indicates they feel unable to argue with my actual position. In fact, of course, the public did take notice, but didn’t much care.
Yes, because the effect was attenuated, and was not seen as causally linked to the activity.
I’m afraid your model of political activity in democratic governments is rather faulty.
Or maybe it indicates that you are not being clear in arguing your position.
In another comment you claimed that divorce rates skyrocketed the very same year that no-fault divorce legislation was passed, now you are arguing that there was no immediate large effect.
I’m starting to think that you actually don’t have a coherent position, and you just want to argue that “good old” conservative values are obviously desirable and therefore you have to handwave away the fact that public opinion is largely against them by pushing a quasi-conspiracist narrative.
Unless you want to argue for some extreme form of anarcho-libertarianism, you would concede that there are some types of voluntary contracts that it is in the public interest for the state to consider unenforceable.
Selling yourself into slavery is the textbook example, but there are clearly many others.
I’m not saying that the type of pre-nup agreements that impose monetary compensation on adultery are necessarily in the same class of slavery or other forms of undesirable contracts, in fact, I have no strong intuitions either way.
What do you infer from the silence of people who hear what you’re saying, find it uncompelling but not particularly viscerally hateful, shrug, and go on about our business?
I infer that you don’t particularly care one way or the other about the discussion. Should I infer something different?
“care about” is a broad term. I certainly have opinions about it, but if you mean that I don’t have strong emotional responses to it, your inference is correct as far as it goes.
I don’t mean purely division-of-property contracts. Pre-nups are general agreements, they can be about anything the parties want to agree to.
Ah. I find your consistent refusal… illuminating :-)
Do you, now? I don’t want such a contract, quite explicitly, too. Why do you believe that most people think like you and not like me?
I don’t approve or disapprove. I am interested in them.
Well, that’s the basic libertarian position. Given that you proclaim it, should I understand that you are in favor of gay marriage, a large variety of poly marriages, marriages between close relatives, etc? And that’s even before we get to a variety of more interesting contracts that don’t deal with marriage...
How do you feel, for example, about temporary marriages: Alice and Bob form a voluntary contract that they will be married for one year after which the marriage automatically dissolves and they are free to go their own ways..?
Really? That looks like, um, let’s be polite and say “motivated cognition”. Can you provide evidence that supports this claim?
That’s the thing, you see, it certainly doesn’t look like that to me.
What’s the basic nature of drinking alcohol? Is it really about changing your mental state? Or is it really about lowering your inhibitions? Or is it really about drowning your sorrows? Or something else? It’s a ridiculous question. It doesn’t have a single purpose, it has lots, and some people drink for one reason but strongly disapprove of another reason, or vice-versa.
I think that, right now, most people have no strong view on the subject. But I think that people are good at learning, and so, over time, they will imitate those marriages which prove the most successful, and which best signal future commitment. I could be wrong.
She’s your fictional character. You tell me.
Except for marriages between close relatives, I “favour” all of these things in the sense that I think they should be legal.
And I am much too polite to tell you what your position looks like to me.
Why, yes, it is, given that lowering your inhibitions and drowning your sorrows are exactly that. I don’t think it is a ridiculous question.
I am guessing that you define a “successful marriage” as a “long-lasting marriage”. I would not agree with such a definition.
Let me also point out that people will imitate the lives which look the most successful to them. Such lives may or may not involve long-lasting marriages.
Interesting. So you think both that temporary marriages should be legal and that marriages should be made to be longer and more painful to get out of.
/me waves a magic wand… Poof! I invoke the magical name of Crocker and release you from the politeness spell! :-)
So someone who drinks alchohol just because they like the taste is “wrong”? To me that’s just absurd. Marriage can mean a holy sacrament to a Catholic, a lifelong commitment to me, an excuse for a good party for my cousin, and many more things besides. There’s no true “nature” beside the meanings we give it.
This is true! Different people have different wishes and desires. That’s why people should have the choice. I think most people want a long-lasting marriage, and would take steps to achieve that. I could be wrong though, and if people want to stay with the status quo they would be free to do so. You on the other hand, refuse to discover whether you are right, and refuse to give people the choice.
No, I do not think that marriages should be made more painful to get out of. If people want to, they should be allowed to make their marriages shorter and even easier to get out of. But of course you already know that, and are deliberately misreading me.
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that I show politeness out of respect for you. I assure you that is not the case. I am polite out of respect for me.
I don’t know of a single person who drinks alcohol because they like the taste. I know people who drink Bordeaux wines, or particular beers, or specific ports because they like the taste.
Oh, I did not ask about the eternal true Platonic nature. I asked what do you believe the true nature of marriage to be.
Do I, really? You seem to lapsing into the agitprop vocabulary.
Allow me to have my doubts. People like that don’t drop hints how they would really destroy the opponent’s positions if only the limits of politeness did not hold them back...
Once again you miss the point. I don’t think my arguments would gain any extra force if I was personally rude about you, or resorted to the type of deliberate misreadings you engage in. Everyone can see what your position is like, and we can all draw our own conclusions.
The way we all conduct ourselves leads others to conclude things, not merely about the weight of our arguments, but the content of our characters. That’s all.
Well, the discussion seems to have drifted into the more heat and less light direction. I don’t find your position convincing and no doubt you feel the same way about mine. Perhaps we should just accept that we disagree.