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V_V comments on "NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1) - Less Wrong
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The fact that there are people who make stupid (grossly sub-optimal w.r.t. their own preferences) life decisions is a cost for a society which in general gives people substantial freedom to make their own decisions.
The classical liberal position is that this kind of freedom benefits most people. It might harm a few of them, but this is considered an acceptable trade-off.
In a traditional, arranged marriage system, where marriage is negotiated between the parents of the prospective spouses, you have that in general the parents' interests don't perfectly track the interests of their children. Moreover, while stupid children might be protected from their stupidity by smarter parents, smart children might be harmed by stupid parents that pick bad matches for them.
Children's intelligence correlates with their parents, while their parents have more life experience, so on average parental advice ought to be fairly good.
Ceteris paribus, yes, but arranged marriage systems generally entail little time for the parents to get to know the prospective spouse for their child (up to the extreme case of black-box marriage) and generally also make divorce difficult or impossible.
Overall, I think that, even if the parents interests are perfectly lined to the interests of their child, the chances of landing a bad match and getting stuck with it are higher in an arranged marriage system than in a free-choice system.
South Asia, where arranged marriages are still commonplace, with its high rates of domestic violence (India, Pakistan) and honor killings, is a piece of evidence pointing in that direction.
Maybe there is a compromise, where children listen to their parent's advice and take it seriously (as opposed to doing the opposite because they want to rebel) but in the end make their own decisions. And social norms could be pro-natalist without endorsing domestic violence.