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simplicio comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong
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What if he wanted to make them stay in love?
Then he would let them work out a custom solution free of societal expectations, I suspect. Besides, an average romantic relationship rarely survives more than a few years, unless both parties put a lot of effort into "making it work", and there is no reason beyond prevailing social mores (and economic benefits, of course) to make it last longer than it otherwise would.
Just to clarify, you figure the optimal relationship pattern (in the absence of societal expectations, economic benefits, and I guess childrearing) is serial monogamy? (Maybe the monogamy is assuming too much as well?)
Certainly serial monogamy works for many people, since this is the current default outside marriage. I would not call it "optimal", it seems more like a decent compromise, and it certainly does not work for everyone. My suspicion is that those happy in a life-long exclusive relationship are a minority, as are polyamorists and such.
I expect domestic partnerships to slowly diverge from the legal and traditional definition of marriage. It does not have to be about just two people, about sex, or about child raising. If 3 single moms decide to live together until their kids grow up, or 5 college students share a house for the duration of their studies, they should be able to draw up a domestic partnership contract which qualifies them for the same assistance, tax breaks and next-of-kin rights married couples get. Of course, this is a long way away still.
To my mind, the giving of tax breaks etc. to married folks occurs because (rightly or wrongly) politicians have wanted to encourage marriage.
I agree that in principle there is nothing wrong with 3 single moms or 5 college students forming some sort of domestic partnership contract, but why give them the tax breaks? Do college kids living with each other instead of separately create some sort of social benefit that "we" the people might want to encourage? Why not just treat this like any other contract?
Apart from this, I think the social aspect of marriage is being neglected. Marriage for most people is not primarily about joint tax filing, but rather about publicly making a commitment to each other, and to their community, to follow certain norms in their relationship (e.g., monogamy; the specific norms vary by community). This is necessary because the community "thinks" pair bonding and childrearing are important/sacred/weighty things. In other words, "married" is a sort of honorific.
Needless to say, society does not think 5 college students sharing a house is an important/sacred/weighty thing that needs to be honoured.
This thick layer of social expectations is totally absent for the kind of arm's-length domestic partnership contract you propose, which makes me wonder why anybody would either want to call it marriage or frame it as being an alternative to marriage.
I could make exactly the same argument about divorce-able marriage and wonder why would anyone call this get-out-whenever-you-want-to arrangement "marriage" :-D
The point is, the "thick layer of social expectations" is not immutable.
If traditional marriage is a sparrow, then marriage with no-fault divorce is a penguin, and 5 college kids sharing a house is a centipede. Type specimen, non-type specimen, wrong category.
Social expectations are mutable, yes - what of it? Do you think it's desirable or inevitable that marriage just become a fancy historical legal term for income splitting on one's tax return? Do you think sharing a house in college is going to be, or ought to be, hallowed and encouraged?
Agreed, no fault divorce laws were a huge mistake.
From which point of view?
I don't think anyone suggested that?
Some marriages are of convenience, and the honorific sense doesn't apply as well to people who don't fit the romantic ideal of marriage.
It reduces the demand for real estate, which lowers its price. Of course this is a pecuniary externality so the benefit to tenants is exactly counterbalanced by the harm to landlords, but given that landlords are usually much wealthier than tenants...
Yes and the social benefit is already captured by the roommates in the form of paying less rent.
I recommend reading the whole Scott Adams post from which the quote came. The quote makes little sense standing by itself, it makes more sense within its context.