(Some) economists, every now and then, look for reasons why polygamy cannot be efficient. How about this?:
Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled
or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles
Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.Disobedience is
usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and
state legal officials say the exodus of males – the expulsion of girls
is rarer – also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market.
Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are
supposed to have at least three wives.
Here is the longer article, which has several interesting parts.
Many species in the animal kingdom also have harems of females, where some males never get the chance to mate. I think walruses are an example.
I suppose they, too, are inefficient?
If all my watching of Animal Planet has given me a correct understanding of the process, the exiled males wander off by themselves, or, depending on the species, perhaps hang around with another male or a small band. Periodically, the younger males approach the leader of the harem and see if they can chase him off. Eventually, one succeeds in killing or exiling the previous leader and then take over. Amongst lions, at least, the winner kills his predecessor’s cubs to bring the lionesses into heat so that he can reproduce ASAP. We seem to have done away with these mechanisms.
One can interpret monogamy laws as a cooperative response by a risk averse population of males to the high variance created by polygamous practices. Most males get one wife rather than a few getting twelve and others none. Even in our system, under current rules, some males do get more than one mate either via serial monogamy (if they can afford the alimony, like Pavarotti, or skip on it), or via mistresses, again if they can afford it.
“(Some) economists, [...] look for reasons why polygamy cannot be efficient.”
Stooges of the status quo!
Not unlike Hollywood types like Tom Lykis, yet another rich powerful male who teaches that unless you have a few girls “in the bullpen” you are not a “real man.”
Obviously they are selecting only those males with appropriate tendencies to good
market behavior in order to make their economy grow in the future.
I have driven by the place. It is somewhat odd to see these long, dormitory-like
buildings in that community, which straddles the state line so as to be able to run
into the other state if the state police from one of them raid the place, as happened
once in the late 1950s from the Arizona side. Apparently there was a Mormon voter
reaction to this against the incumbent governor, and AZ authorities have left the place
to its own devices, more or less, as have the ones in Utah as well.
Yan Li asks an interesting question, but should know the answer:
According to Kauffman’s NK model, for a system of N>7, the mean fitness of local optima is the highest when K is approximately 3. In the context of marriage, 3 partners per capita (has to be well assorted because of the constraint of N>7) delivers the highest mean fitness. I wonder why law and convention set K=1.
Male coalitional violence is an awesome thing. It easily destroys the things that powerful men value most.
So, these powerful men restrict female choice by enforcing monogamy, and after all, they can easily get around the restrictions. Of course, females don’t sit quietly and accept monogamy. They can, and do, choose to make the fathers of their children different to their meal tickets.
Just look at the Taiping rebellion.
“Not unlike Hollywood types like Tom Lykis, yet another rich powerful male who teaches that unless you have a few girls “in the bullpen” you are not a “real man.”"
I heard him a few times, many years ago. For some reason, he did not strike me as rich or powerful, or at the very least he struck me as somebody very frustrated. I mean, objectively I realize he must make a lot of money, but he didn’t seem like a happy guy. Maybe I have my stereotypes, but I tend to think of “ladies men” as being a bit calmer than Mr. Leykis.
On the polygamy thing, it looks like a collusive arrangement among the older men to shut the younger men out. In terms of evaluating norms based on competing societies, it looks like monogamy or semi/serial monogamy has produced societies that people prefer to live in.
I was just contemplating a post on polygamy and sex-selection as good antilibertarian arguments. The libertarian would say, let people marry whoever and how many people they want, of any gender, and include the farm animals if you want. From the standpoint of individual rights, why not?
But the societal side-effects of both of these practices are devastating, if practiced in a large enough scale. Large numbers of unpaired young men is a recipe for turmoil and war.
Polygamy has been largely outlawed. China and India have tried to outlaw sex-selection technologies with little success.
It is surprising that we are not being told both sides of the story, ie, that equality for men means restricting choice for women, but I guess, at a time when it is clear that a woman stood up to tanks in TianAnMen square, and Tipper Gore designed the internet and Shakespeare stole all his works from his sisters, I guess it wouldn’t do to remind them of their lack of choice.
Seems like this nutjob cult is free riding on our larger society, by having us take care of their males. We should send the young, strong, sexual deprived males back. As a group. And, let the old males try to enforce their property rights the old fashion way.
The fact that polygamy affects the economy never really occured to me before, but after thinking about it, it does make sense. Even in some tribal cultures where they don’t use money polygamy would still negatively affect things. If only the tribal leaders took all the women, the other males would still be able to survive sometimes, but if they were farmers they would have no way to reproduce to raise help to work. The same for these small religious sects in America, these males who are left out or kicked out have to find a new way to survive and make money with little education and no decent start in life.
Ironically from the ‘female choice’ argument, polygynous societies tend to be societies where the females have little choice at all. If a woman’s decision-making authority in the household is limited to her own children, if that, then being the 10th wife of a rich man may well be a better deal than being the only wife of a poor man.
But where household decisions are made by all adults in the household, polygyny becomes essentially polyamory, which exists but is rare, anywhere: the woman’s decision-making power is diluted not only by having to negotiate with her husband, but also with all his other wives.
inefficiency or inequality?
Josh seems to ask the right question. Polygamy may create inequality.
But we need to know more to determine whether it’s inefficient. Perhaps the men who end up with multiple wives are at their highest and best use as providers and breeders, whereas the lost boys would not be good at either. If so, that society is better off with polygamy, even if they have to continue to support the lost boys. Perhaps they’re expelled only if their are a net drain on the society–their productive value is negative (because they watch movies all day).
Concerning efficiency, perhaps the ‘best’ method isn’t the most efficient method, biologically. Those species for which only the alpha males reproduce aren’t necessarily lacking in males—it’s simply a method to pass on stronger genetics.
You might find it surprising that according to DNA evidence, we have twice as many women ancestors as men. That is, something like 80% of women, historically, have produced offspring with currently living genetic lines, while only around 40% or men have.
Due to incarceration and war and drugs and widows, I think there’s a 6 million man shortage. That leaves alot of room for the polygamists to sop up the excess females. Although the polygamists probably aren’t going for the widows, but as we all know, there are substitutes.
In most post industrial nations women make up more of the population than men. Men are more likely to die, at a younger age than women (All kinds of risky behaviors). There is always going to be excess women, and its just gotten to a point that men dont die as often as they used too.
So what we are losing sight of is that it is not inefficent for an adult to have multiple spouses. Its as efficent as any market. We dont say rich people are inefficent, because they have lots of dollars. The ferrari market isnt inefficent because I dont have one.
We also forget that women can have multiple mates as well, the whole Anna Nicole Smith thing being a prime example.
We have decided that the consequences of a large population of unmarried men are a danger to society. I never got the religious angle, as most characters in the bible were polygamists.
In the end ask yourself a few questions
1.) Is it really worth the hassle? I have one wife and 2 would keep me permanently grumbling in my garage.
2.) Do I really want to house that many shoes?
3.) just because they love you doesnt mean they love each other. (chick drama)
Polygamy only works if it goes in both directions. If only one gender can have multiples of the other gender, that one gender rapidly sucks up the roughly equal proportion of the other. If you take 3 as the average number of spouses for one gender and 1 as the universal number for the other, 2/3 of the first gender will end up necessarily single.
Besically, the average needs to be unbounded on both sides. If both men and women have an average of N spouses, then nobody ends up single and the market works. It’s only when you introduce forced inequality between the genders that it fails.
Polygyny (many wives but only ever one husband) only works when the supply of men is low and the supply of women is high. This is true when men tend NOT TO SURVIVE. In warlike nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, this is the natural state of things. In modern culture, it’s not. Nearly everyone of both genders survives to adulthood. The definition of polygamy in modern society needs to change so it incorporates polyandry (many husbands with one wife) as well.
It would certainly alter our notion of “extended family”.
Well if if men can have several wives in these societies , Why can’t women have several Husbands. Women today are working and making more then men. So if a woman can aford to have several husbands why not. She could have one child with each if she wanted to. I look at as another way of men using women.It’s like a baby factory.One man has problems showing one women attention how can he possibly show all of them attention. shallow
I agree with Dave Tufte and have blogged on the FLDS. The girls are used as rewards in the community. The boys are tossed to keep the girls clean before they are given away
It may be worth pointing out that the sex ratio is also unbalanced within each polygamous marriage – it is just unbalanced the other way. I gather this rarely leads to harmony.
It would probably be an even bigger problem for a woman with multiple husbands.
In my opinion, if one considers polygamy under the aspect of economy that way polygamy should be for the man an attractive form of marriage for many reasons: diverse women contribute to the household income, polygamy means major sexual choice and companion, and he who can afford more women has a more excellent social position and upper importance.
However, polygamy can in certain circumstances turn to be attractive also for women. It offers women a place in the society, in which otherwise there is no approved role for bachelor women, and polygamy means that several women divide the task of the child education and the housework.
By the way, I am a man and can not imagine sharing a woman with other man.
LN – perhaps he believes that women commit domestic abuse at similar or higher rates than men, because that’s what the research has consistently found.
LN – Traditionally the deaths of women and children were considered less acceptable than those men. The Titanic effect, as it were.
Yes, as I read the link I was aware of the “Titanic effect.” This might have been helpful had it responded to my point about female infanticide, honor killings, and preference for sons. Or is that not Eurocentric enough?
Anthony — What about this? Full disclosure: I haven’t read either paper. http://www.xyonline.net/downloads/malevictims.pdf
But I find the suggestion that men and women don’t have different inherent levels of aggression a bit funny, especially when it comes from people who surely insist that there are all sorts of real differences between the sexes. Testosterone anyone?
ISTM that a lot of the discussions of polygamy involve communities in which there’s a huge power imbalance. The informal “kept woman” or “serial monogamy” versions of polygamy common in the US and Europe are probably a better model for how polygamy works in a free society. Most guys can get married if they want to, assuming they can hold down a decent job, remain passably sober, and pay some minimal attention to grooming. A few guys manage to keep two women off the market, and a very few manage (maybe) to keep four or five off the market. But I doubt this has much of an impact, and at any rate, it’s not too clear to me that the kept women are actually off the market; how many of them have lovers or would be willing to pursue a more permanent and exclusive relationship if one were available? And how many 18-year old women will actually volunteer for the exalted status of #4 wife of some sixty year old CEO?
I’ll admit I don’t have any data here, but polygamy seems like almost a non-issue in a free society for both men and women. If women are property, then they can be hoarded effectively by someone very powerful or wealthy, but if our society ever gets to the point that this is a big problem, we have *way* bigger fish to fry.
Polygamy us the strongest social device to promote, not equality, but tp prevent the appearance of strong social inequalities.
1. Since the excess of women over men is very small, men who want to be polygamous have to look for women outside their social class, race and nation. For instance, the nanny, who becomes the second wife.
2. Since rich men have it easier to be polygamous, in the next generation, this wealth will have been divided among a bigger number of children, a part of them, the ex-nanny’s children
3. This way, wealth will have been transmitted to the lower class: the one of the ex-nanny.
4, Culture and education will unite social classes and races, preventing the typical segmented societies in the West.
5. Social hate will disappear: a poor man hates the rich man who uses his daughter as a lover or prostitute, but loves therich man who married his daughter.
6. This is why Roman-Greek-Western societies have suffered recurrent comunist revolutions but Islamic countries have been immune to communism
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