As an aside, a question that initially bothered me about polyamory was: why isn’t polyamory more widespread, especially among people who aren’t religious or traditional? Yes, there are some scale limits. At the very least, there is a tradeoff between the frequency you can see someone and the number of people involved, but I’m sure there are people who would be happy to juggle 5 or 10 partners. Why isn’t it more common? Why don’t adults keep pivoting, and why is polygamy now relatively rare? Traditional marriage was a good tradeoff for social designers who wanted legible structures, but it’s less obvious why it’s useful for the people. Given that, it’s confusing why so many people nowadays think there is a single “correct” family structure.
I’ll leave that as a question for now, because it should answer itself later, once we figure out why companies don’t stay agile as they scale. The parallel to companies, though, is clear; what social structures work, for what purposes, and why? <snip half of the (very long) post> (This also finally answers the questions about polyamory; typical structures are comfortable, and the simplest structure that allows for a relationship is a dyad.)
Interesting post, I wish I had seen it initially.
It makes a point closely related to something I wrote on Ribbonfarm about corporate structure (and polyamory) a few years earlier: