What Would Modern Polygamy Be Like?

Responses on G+ to some of what I posted on polygamy raise an interesting consequentialist argument against it—that wealthy men would "buy up" too many wives, leaving a surplus of unmarried single men likely to cause social problems such as increased levels of crime.

The argument takes it for granted that polygamy mostly means polygyny, multiple wives rather than multiple husbands. Historically that has been the pattern. Monogamy is the most common marital arrangement, polygyny next, polyandry rare. But it raises the question of why that pattern existed and whether it would persist in a modern society where polygamy was legal and common enough to have a significant effect on the marriage market.

One answer is that men, for reasons probably hardwired by evolution, want to know which children are theirs in order that they can avoid spending their scarce resources on other men's children. Prior to modern times, maternity was an observed fact, paternity a conjecture. The obvious way of strengthening the conjecture was to arrange matters so that a woman had sex with only one man, a condition satisfied by monogamy and polygyny but not by polyandry. Modern paternity testing, which I like to refer to as the stealth reproductive technology, changed that. It no longer requires a wise child to know his father, merely a properly equipped lab.

A second possible answer is that under pre-modern conditions, with high rates of both infant mortality and death in childbirth, one woman could not be counted on to produce as many children as several husbands would want. That again has changed. In a world where infant mortality is close to zero, a fertile woman who enjoys producing and rearing children, supported by the income of multiple husbands, should be able to produce enough offspring for all of them. And it is worth noting that a second function of marriage is sex, and women are less limited in that regard than men.

All of which suggests that, in a modern context, polyandry might turn out to be as common as, or more common than, polygyny, in which case the objection vanishes or even reverses, becomes an argument in favor of polygamy rather than an argument against it.

How could one find  data to test the theory? One possibility would be to study modern polygamy not in contexts such as the FLDS, where it represents the survival of old marital patterns, but in the context of  polyamory, where it appears as the growth of new ones. I do not know if anyone has attempted a census of polyamorous households—there are obvious difficulties, since many have reasons to keep a low profile—but the results would be interesting.

The Real News

Reading Google News, I am struck by the degree to which dramatic stories crowd out arguably more important material. The top of the page is dominated by the current U.S. debt limit crisis. It is an entertaining example of the game of Chicken as played by politicians but of limited importance otherwise, since both sides are focused not on how to deal with the long term debt problem but on the terms on which they will agree to postpone dealing with it. 

Meanwhile there are at least two other stories getting considerably less play but arguably of more real importance.

Modern Turkey is the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, one of the more successful polities of the past thousand years or so. It was also, arguably, the first Muslim state to succeed in fitting itself into the modern world, thanks to the system established by Kemal Ataturk after World War I. The central feature of that system was secular democracy guaranteed by the threat of a military coup against any attempt to transform Turkey back into some version of a religious state, a guarantee that has been gradually eroded by the increasing political strength of Islamicist parties. 

Recent charges by the government that a considerable number of officers are involved in a conspiracy can be interpreted either as a defense against a real threat or as a preemptive counter coup by the government against its own military. They have now led to the resignation of the four top officers of the Turkish military. 

That could mean that Turkey has become a real democracy with no need for a synthetic military backbone. It could  mean that Ataturk's experiment is finally collapsing, that in not very long the count of successful Islamic secular states will drop from one to zero. Either way, the outcome is likely to be more important for the rest of the world than whether the U.S. government does or does not find it necessary to pay its employees with IOU's for a week or two, or auction some spectrum, or sell some land, or play short term accounting games, or in any of a variety of other ways buy time while politicians haggle.

On the other side of the world, something else is happening that could be even more important. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the world with two polities still committed, at least in theory, to communism, while Hugo Chavez' rise to power looked very much like the gradual creation of a third.

That experiment may now have been recognized as a failure by its chief supporters. The latest news from Venezuela shows Chavez backing off from socialist rhetoric, saying good things about small business and the middle class, claiming to have an improved vision for his country—possibly inspired by conversations with one or both of the Castros during his cancer treatment in Cuba. It is possible—not perhaps likely, but possible—that the news of how to make a country richer has finally gotten through to the last holdouts.

Or at least, the last but one.

GKC, Liberal Toleration, and the FLDS

A serious political ideology, at least as held by sophisticated supporters, is a complicated set of ideas. But an ideology also has a sort of sketch version seen by both supporters and critics as outlining, in simplified form, its essential nature. One part of the sketch version of modern liberalism is tolerance of cultural diversity, sometimes put as moral relativism. We would not want to put our grandparents on an ice floe and shove them out to sea, but if that is how  Inuit deal with the problems of their society, who are we to object? It is not as if we have some proof that our values are right and theirs are wrong.

The best critique of this position I have come across, from a psychological more than a philosophical point of view, is one of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, "The Chief Mourner of Marne." Readers who would prefer to read it themselves without spoilers from me should do so now.

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The story centers on James and Maurice, cousins, close friends, almost brothers. Maurice dies, supposedly of a chill caught at the seaside, and James is so afflicted by his death that he becomes a sort of hermit, unwilling to meet even with past friends, encouraged by "the priests" in a sort of religious melancholia.

As the story continues, Father Brown succeeds in getting from an eye witness a more plausible version of the story. Maurice did not die of a chill. The two men became rivals in love, fought a duel,  and James killed his best friend and has mourned him ever since. 

The response of  a friend of the woman both men were in love with:

"You mean to leave him to this living death of moping and going mad in a ruin!" cried Lady Outram, in a voice that shook a little. "And all because he had the bad luck to shoot a man in a duel more than a quarter of a century ago. Is that what you call Christian charity."

"Yes," answered the priest stolidly, "that is what I call Christian charity."

"It's about all the Christian charity you'll ever get out of these priests," cried Cockspur bitterly. "That's their only idea of pardoning a poor fellow for a piece of folly; to wall him up alive and starve him to death with fasts and penances and pictures of hell-fire. And all because a bullet went wrong."

"Really, Father brown," said General Outram, "do you honestly think he deserves this? Is that your Christianity?"

"Surely the true Christianity," pleaded his wife more gently, is that which knows all and pardons all; the love that can remember—and forget."

And then we discover what really happened—and why the winner of the duel fled the country for years and then went into seclusion. 

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The surviving cousin is not  James but Maurice. Knowing his friend was the better shot, he dropped to the ground just before James fired. James, struck with remorse, ran over to his fallen cousin, who shot him dead. Not a duel but cold blooded murder. 

"Are you sure of this?" asked Sir John at last, in a thick voice.

"I am sure of it," said Father Brown, "and now I leave Maurice Mair, the present Marquis of Marne, to your Christian charity. You have told me something today about Christian charity. You seemed to me to give it almost too large a place; but how fortunate it is for poor sinners like this man that you err so much on the side of mercy, and are ready to be reconciled to all mankind."

"Hang it all," exploded the general; "if you think I’m going to be reconciled to a filthy viper like that, I tell you I wouldn’t say a word to save him from hell. I said I could pardon a regular decent duel, but of all the treacherous assassins——"

"He ought to be lynched," cried Cockspur excitedly. "He ought to burn alive like a nigger in the States. And if there is such a thing as burning for ever, he jolly well——"

"I wouldn’t touch him with a barge - pole myself," said Mallow.

"There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.

"There is," said Father Brown dryly; "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven."

"But, hang it all," cried Mallow, "you don’t expect us to be able to pardon a vile thing like this?"

"No," said the priest; "but we have to be able to pardon it."

Which brings us back to moral relativism and the FLDS. What Warren Jeffs is charged with was normal and acceptable behavior in a society, Old Testament Judaism, a great deal closer to ours than the Inuit. It remained accepted throughout the diaspora until, if I remember correctly, about a thousand years ago. It remained accepted in parts of the diaspora, North African and Arabic Jewish communities, up until modern times. 

When the Israeli rabbis decided to raise the age of consent from twelve and a half to something more in tune with modern views, their justification was the claim that early pregnancy was more dangerous in the 20th century than it had been two thousand years earlier, a factual claim it is difficult to imagine anyone taking seriously, given the medical progress over the intervening interval.

I have yet to see  commentary by anyone identifying himself as a liberal defending Jeffs, or the FLDS more generally, on grounds of moral relativism. As Chesterton points out, it is easy to forgive people for doing things you don't really disapprove of. 

Harder when you do.

To be fair, what I am criticizing is the sketch version of liberalism. No doubt someone holding a more detailed and sophisticated version could come up with a justification for making and enforcing the laws that the FLDS is accused of breaking. Making such as a justification consistent with the rhetoric of moral relativism might be a more difficult project.

[I should probably add, to avoid any possible confusion, that I am an atheist not a Catholic. That does not prevent me from admiring Chesterton's writing, including his sometimes brilliant defenses of his religious views.]

Should King David and Solomon be in Jail?

The polygamist FLDS is again in the news, although the current assault is a good deal less outrageous than the activities of the Texas child protective authorities a few years back, which I covered extensively here.

But it does occur to me that it raises a serious issue for both American Christians and Jews, at least ones who take their religion fairly literally. It is clear from the Old Testament that God's chosen people practiced extensive polygamy. It is clear from what we know of Jewish law that marriage and sex were legal at ages well below those at which they are currently illegal in most of the U.S.; a woman was a legal adult at twelve and a half, provided she had shown some sign of menarch. By those standards, nothing that Warren Jeffs is charged with, at least so far as I know—I haven't actually followed the case—should be illegal.

Yet I would be surprised if any large fraction of modern American Christians and Jews actually defended Jeffs. What is their basis for not doing so? Should King David and Solomon be in jail?

Thoughts on the Debt Limit Controversy

As best I can tell, there are two different games being played. One is the attempt by each side to make sure that either it gets the credit for solving the problem or the other side gets blamed for not solving it. That game is basically about rhetoric and PR.

The other and more interesting game, now that the administration has dropped its demand for tax increases, is about whether or not to raise the limit by enough to get past the next election. From Obama's standpoint, the answer is, I think, obvious. Having the option of deficit spending is almost always a benefit for those currently in power, since it lets them buy votes without obvious cost. Concern with the size of the national debt may have changed that, at least for a while, but I think more likely not. Hence Obama would like to be able to spend as much money as he wants through the election while satisfying demands for fiscal responsibility via cuts, possibly imaginary, in future expenditures. 

The Republicans, on the other hand, would like to be in a position to force real reductions in spending, both because many of them think reductions are a good thing and, I suspect, because many of them think that reductions in spending by Obama will cost him the votes that the spending would have bought him. One way of doing so is to arrange things so that a second increase in the debt limit will be needed before the election, and make their support for such an increase conditional on serious reductions in expenditure—which are not, so far as I can tell, happening on either of the current plans.

There is one other feature of the situation,  one which may explain Obama's failure to hold out for tax increases even while orating in favor of them. An election is coming up, and Democrats to Obama's left have no realistic alternative.

Debt Limit as Incentive: A Modest Proposal

News stories on the debt limit controversy agree that Boehner's plan, which increases the limit by $900 billion, will require further action before the 2012 election, but that Reid's plan, which increases the limit by $2.4 trillion, will not. Obama would obviously like to push the debt limit issue to some date, any date, after the election. To an economist, that suggests a simple tactic to reduce government expenditure. 

Raise the limit by an amount that will require further action before the election unless Obama manages to substantially reduce federal expenditure, but which can be pushed past the election if he does. It will then be in Obama's self-interest to find ways of cutting federal spending, which is a better guarantee than any legislative promises that Congress can pass today and break tomorrow.

Of course, it is also an incentive to find ways of increasing tax revenue—but until the election, the Republican House is in a position to deal with that problem.

P.S. I note that Reid has gotten at least one thing right. I've been arguing for some time that one way of reducing the debt problem is by selling off government assets, the policy that Greece has been urged to follow. Reid apparently agrees, although his specific proposal is on too small a scale to help much with the current situation.

(Almost) Free Medical Advice

A recent news story about the use of smart phones as heart monitors reminds me of an idea along similar lines that I recently had.

There are a variety of medical conditions, such as Alzheimers or a brain tumor, that cause a gradual decrease in mental performance, gradual enough so that the victim may not notice it. Early warning of such a condition could be very valuable.

Many people, faced with a few minutes of boredom, pull out a cell phone and play a game. It should be straightforward to add to such a game the ability to monitor some simple measure of player performance such as reaction speed that, under most circumstances, is reasonably stable over time. If the measure trends down for longer than, say, a month, a message goes to the phone's owner, suggesting that he see a doctor. Just in case.

It doesn't work for everyone. It doesn't watch for everything that might go wrong. But the cost is negligible and the potential payoff from detecting a tumor or early stage Parkinson's tomorrow instead of next year could be large.