maia comments on On private marriage contracts - Less Wrong
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I want to talk about this. I do not feel that the contract described here is unacceptable. I find it strange to come to terms with how it might be the case. Would someone mind enlightening me about why they would feel it unethical to engage in a contract of the sort?
(By the way, I understand the practical objections to such a contract being allowed. People might sign it without fully realizing the implications of it, or they might be coerced by social pressures into signing it. Are reasons like these the only reasons? It seems though that people who argue that contracts like that should be banned are not generally saying so because of reasons like these, but rather they say it from some deeper moral principles, which I would like to know what they are.)
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think anyone should be killed for being adulterous, even if they entered into a contract that stipulates such.
Flogging I don't care as much about.
Even if the individuals in question want badly not to be adulterous, but the only way they expect to be able to hold themselves to that commitment is by the knowledge that their life literally depends on it?
Possibly more realistically, the person may realize - from observing the world - that the only way he or she will be able to maintain monogamy is through social (not just government) enforcement of the marriage contract - not that his or her life literally depends on it, but that his or her social death will result from violation of the contract. And people care a whole lot about social death. This aspect of social support of marriage is already gone from all but a few recent immigrant communities in the United States. Even if marriage were government-enforced for reals, collusion (pretending grounds for divorce existed) and stretched notions of "cruelty" were already common before no-fault swept the nation. The government maybe slowly changes its enforcement toward the enforcement of whatever limping modern non-tribal community happens to exist.
Anyway. People are sometimes harmed by getting extra choices. And people are sometimes harmed by losing choices.