From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Mar 17 2003 - 13:31:47 GMT
Hi Rick, DMB:
> PLATT
> I wonder if you object to polygamy and if so, on what grounds?
>
> DMB says:
> Rights and equality. That's what its all about. Polygamy is fundamentally
> unfair because he gets 7 wives and she gets one seventh of a husband.
>
> RICK
> I do object to polygamy. Here's why... Assuming that the population of
> any given society breaks down to roughly 50% men and 50% women, allowing a
> person to have 7 spouses would entail depriving 6 other people of the
> chance to have a spouse. Or in other words: If Platt has 7 wives, then 6
> other men will likely have none. The biological drive to mate and
> procreate being as strong as it is, I don't think that those other 6 men
> will be very happy with that society once they realize their chances of
> finding a woman there.
> If the society is really lucky, those other 6 guys will just take off
> (and maybe go looking for some polyandrous society that has an excess of
> single women), but more likely, things are gonna get ugly! Those other 6
> guys are going to withdraw their consent and support from the social
> structure that permits such an absurdity, and if they can... they'll tear
> it down. Such a society will be sustainable only so long as the men with
> multiple wives can hold power over the men with none (who in this situation
> could have 6x their numbers). That is, such a society would only be
> sustainable by brute force and coercion.
> As such, I think the practice of allowing people to marry more than one
> person at a time is a recipe for inequality and unrest which is
> inconsistent with the very concept of ordered liberty. In MOQ terms, this
> is to say that such a society is inherently unstable, and thus will be a
> dangerous and low quality foundation on which to build towards Dynamic
> Quality. Moreover, a society like that would (obviously) be inconsistent
> with the concept of democracy, which in the MOQ, is an intellectual
> pattern.
>
> How do you feel about polygamy Platt?
I don't know where the number 7 came from. I was thinking of 2, at most
3. And it could just as well be 2 or 3 husbands for one wife. If limited in
this way, Rick's argument based on "social unrest" loses its punch, and
DMB's playground "fairness" doctrine gets subsumed by the rights of
consenting adults. Along the same line, what would be the objection to
a marriage of 3 lesbians?
Once you change the legal and socially accepted definition of marriage
as between one man and one women, all sorts of marital arrangements
open up. A society that tosses out proven patterns to control biology
risks degeneration, as demonstrated by the 60's Hippies and explained
by Pirsig in Chap. 24 of Lila.
Platt
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