Marriage: Originally, within the lives of older married people, an irrevocable commitment to live together and raise the resulting children. Now the point of marriage is divorce, the legal authority of the wife over a husband on pain of confiscation of his assets and income. Some people attempt to use Church and social pressure to enforce old type marriage, but hard to find an old type church.
That would be an interesting point, if it weren’t batshit insane.
“The point of marriage is divorce”? Really?
If Jim’s account were right, then to a very good first approximation no man would ever choose to marry.
“Confiscation of his assets”? A large part of the point of the “old type marriage” (and for that matter the not-so-old) is that the partners’ assets are shared.
(In any case, even pretending that Jim’s correct, it’s not clear to me how that explains the alleged problem with marriage, namely that it makes it harder for couples to stay in love. Suppose we have two kinds of marriage: “Old”, completely irrevocable, and “New”, open to divorce on terms ruinous to the husband. Why would a “New” marriage do more to make it harder to stay in love than an “Old” marriage? Especially if, as Scott Adams suggests, the actual mechanism by which marriage allegedly makes it harder to stay in love is by requiring the couple to coordinate every minute of their lives.)
If Jim’s account were right, then to a very good first approximation no man would ever choose to marry.
Well a lot fewer men are marrying these days. Most of the ones who are either expect to get the old definition or haven’t yet realized the definition has changed on them.
“Confiscation of his assets”? A large part of the point of the “old type marriage” (and for that matter the not-so-old) is that the partners’ assets are shared.
In practice the husband is the one who is providing most of said assets. Also in the old definition the assets were shared but since the marriage was irrevocable no one was going to confiscate anyone else’s assets.
Most of the ones who are either expect [...] or haven’t yet realised [...]
Evidence? (I have noticed that on past occasions when you’ve made confident pronouncements—in some cases, ones that seemed to imply being in possession of quantitative data—you’ve been curiously reluctant to disclose the evidence that supports them.)
In practice the husband is the one who is providing most of said assets.
Sometimes, at least nominally. But …
Imagine a family in which the husband works full-time at a difficult, hard-working, high-status, high-income job, and the wife looks after the house and the children. (The neo-reactionaries’ ideal, right?) At least part of what’s happening here is that the wife is foregoing money-earning opportunities in favour of work that doesn’t receive any direct financial compensation, and by doing so she enables her husband to focus on that tough job of his. All else being equal, he will have more time and energy for work if he doesn’t have to do the cooking and laundry and childcare. And that is likely to lead to better success at work, promotions, and higher income.
Now, of course the income from that is nominally his, not hers. And if you choose to say that everything that comes in from his employer, and any gains on investments made with that money, are “his assets”, then indeed you’ll see what happens in a divorce as “confiscation of his assets”. But I think that’s a superficial view.
The point of the quote is that it tends to make it harder to stay in love. Which is the opposite of what people want when they get married.
That’s because modern marriage is different from how it traditionally worked:
That would be an interesting point, if it weren’t batshit insane.
“The point of marriage is divorce”? Really?
If Jim’s account were right, then to a very good first approximation no man would ever choose to marry.
“Confiscation of his assets”? A large part of the point of the “old type marriage” (and for that matter the not-so-old) is that the partners’ assets are shared.
(In any case, even pretending that Jim’s correct, it’s not clear to me how that explains the alleged problem with marriage, namely that it makes it harder for couples to stay in love. Suppose we have two kinds of marriage: “Old”, completely irrevocable, and “New”, open to divorce on terms ruinous to the husband. Why would a “New” marriage do more to make it harder to stay in love than an “Old” marriage? Especially if, as Scott Adams suggests, the actual mechanism by which marriage allegedly makes it harder to stay in love is by requiring the couple to coordinate every minute of their lives.)
Well a lot fewer men are marrying these days. Most of the ones who are either expect to get the old definition or haven’t yet realized the definition has changed on them.
In practice the husband is the one who is providing most of said assets. Also in the old definition the assets were shared but since the marriage was irrevocable no one was going to confiscate anyone else’s assets.
Evidence? (I have noticed that on past occasions when you’ve made confident pronouncements—in some cases, ones that seemed to imply being in possession of quantitative data—you’ve been curiously reluctant to disclose the evidence that supports them.)
Sometimes, at least nominally. But …
Imagine a family in which the husband works full-time at a difficult, hard-working, high-status, high-income job, and the wife looks after the house and the children. (The neo-reactionaries’ ideal, right?) At least part of what’s happening here is that the wife is foregoing money-earning opportunities in favour of work that doesn’t receive any direct financial compensation, and by doing so she enables her husband to focus on that tough job of his. All else being equal, he will have more time and energy for work if he doesn’t have to do the cooking and laundry and childcare. And that is likely to lead to better success at work, promotions, and higher income.
Now, of course the income from that is nominally his, not hers. And if you choose to say that everything that comes in from his employer, and any gains on investments made with that money, are “his assets”, then indeed you’ll see what happens in a divorce as “confiscation of his assets”. But I think that’s a superficial view.