Based Camp - The Government Destroyed Marriage： The Game Theory of Gender Dynamics

00:00:00.220 Hello, this is Malcolm Collins. Today we are going to be exploring the game theory of gender dynamics, how different societies have dealt with the game theory of gender dynamics, multiple local optimums, so we're not just going to argue that pure monogamy is the only local optimum, and we're going to be using lots and lots of data to do this.

00:00:25.180 And we're going to be exploring this through a piece that I said was very well done by Aporia, one of the best magazines out there. They've gotten in trouble a lot with Hope Not Hate, which is how you know they're good. This piece is written by Arctotherium, and it's titled Human Reproduction as a Prisoner's Dilemma, The Decline of Marriage in the West.

00:00:43.960 Yeah, the title doesn't suggest that things are moving in a great direction for marriage.

00:00:49.360 Well, no, they're not, but I think solving the marriage problem is a big segment of the way to solving the population problem, and I think he lays this out with data in a way that is clearer than I have seen other people lay it out,

00:01:05.780 and brings up a few of the less obvious problems if you're only looking at this from a modern context of what's wrong with the dating markets instead of looking at a historic context.

00:01:17.180 So let's dive into it. Simone, get started here with this graph I'll put on screen. 0.95

00:01:21.720 The core problem marriage exists to solve is that it takes almost 20 years and an enormous amount of work and resources to raise children, and he shows this graph.

00:01:31.120 Which compares humans and chimpanzees in terms of the net productivity of humans and the net productivity of chimps over their lifetime.

00:01:41.800 The caption reads,

00:01:43.060 In hunter-gatherer societies, it takes almost 20 years for the average person to become a net producer of food.

00:01:49.440 Until then, they are dependent on others, mostly their parents, who have a direct genetic stake in their survival.

00:01:55.920 The numbers are similar for agrarian societies.

00:01:57.840 Is this up and down line here is the amount of food that an individual is producing over their lifetime or their net productivity.

00:02:05.120 So you see in humans, if you're looking at hunter-gatherers, they don't end up net producers of food until they're around the age of 19.

00:02:14.140 And then they shoot way up and they're like huge producers of food compared to chimps. 1.00

00:02:17.900 Whereas chimps actually become food neutral at around the age of five.

00:02:24.040 And they go up almost immediately.

00:02:26.940 It appears that this period where chimps are lower, because it immediately snaps to like,

00:02:31.460 I'm a net producer of food at the age of five, but I don't contribute to the tribe yet,

00:02:36.340 is the period of which they are just like cling mode to mom, because it's not going up and down.

00:02:41.820 And then after that, at the age of a little under 15, they start producing for the tribe.

00:02:47.780 My guess is this is just when they reach sexual maturity and start caring for children of their own.

00:02:51.780 He continues, this makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner's dilemma.

00:02:56.380 Both father and mother can choose to fully commit or pursue other options.

00:03:00.640 In this context, marriage provides a framework for encouraging, legitimizing, and stabilizing commitment.

00:03:06.620 Defection.

00:03:07.480 If human reproduction is analogous to a prisoner's dilemma, what does defection look like?

00:03:12.180 A natural consequence of sexual reproduction is adversarial reproductive strategies.

00:03:16.580 Females must expend significant biological resources, but can be certain of maternity, 1.00

00:03:22.300 which allows maternal investment to pay off as soon as a child is born. 1.00

00:03:26.240 Males don't need to spend much biologically, but can't be certain of paternity, 0.99

00:03:30.360 making parental investment inherently risky.

00:03:33.200 By default, this leads to two idealized strategies that maximize the benefits for each sex.

00:03:38.000 In humans, the idealized male strategy is to have as many wives slash exclusive sex partners as he can afford,

00:03:44.840 plus opportunistic extra pair couplings, consensual or otherwise.

00:03:49.100 The idealized female strategy is to secure investment from a man while retaining the option to trade up for a more attractive man at any time, 1.00

00:03:57.600 plus opportunistic hidden extra pair couplings with attractive men.

00:04:01.420 Both of these strategies...

00:04:03.000 I assume most of our audience will understand what he means by that and see that as obviously true.

00:04:08.260 This is just like obviously the genetically favorable thing for both parties.

00:04:12.500 It is a truth universally acknowledged. 0.82

00:04:15.300 Both of these strategies greatly damage the interests of the opposite sex. 0.98

00:04:19.460 Cuckoldry is equivalent to death for a man from a Darwinian perspective.

00:04:23.940 And in evolutionary environments requiring paternal investment, abandonment is equivalent to death for a woman.

00:04:29.640 Losing decades of youth and all of the resources invested in a pairing is devastating for both.

00:04:37.060 So all of this, I think, is just laying out what we all know is true.

00:04:40.800 Like the obvious prisoner's dilemma that all couples are facing.

00:04:46.180 Now he goes into the different strategies that people have chosen to deal with this in a historic context.

00:04:53.440 Men defect slash women cooperate. 0.86

00:04:57.700 A defect slash cooperate society in which men act to secure the collective interests of their sex without regard to those of women looks like Meiji Japan, which was monogamous, or early 20th century Arabia, which was polygamous.

00:05:12.420 In these societies, women are effectively property. 1.00

00:05:15.760 Divorce is common.

00:05:16.840 Meiji Japan had the highest divorce rate of any country with records in the world.

00:05:20.840 And devastating to women who lose their children, economic status, virginity, and youth. 0.65

00:05:26.740 So if you look at this chart here, which I find really interesting, it shows that in late 19th century Japan, they had divorce rates several times higher than those of Northwestern Europe or the Anglosphere.

00:05:36.920 And these are really high.

00:05:39.440 The divorce rates of Japan of this period are higher than what America's was in like the 1950s, which is absolutely wild.

00:05:50.300 Most countries did not reach this until you get around, let's say, 1950s, 1960s.

00:05:56.380 And what this means is they can be like, okay, what does he mean that this is an ideal situation in both Saudi Arabia and Japan if Japan was a monogamous society during this period?

00:06:06.100 What he's saying is these men functionally have multiple wives.

00:06:10.120 So because in Saudi Arabia, they just literally have a harem of wives that they're breeding with simultaneously. 0.89

00:06:16.080 In Meiji Japan, what you may have is you are a rich man.

00:06:19.940 You marry or just upper society man, given how frequent divorces were here.

00:06:24.860 You marry, you know, one girl when you're, you know, 18 and you stay married to her until she's 30 or 35 and not producing kids as easily.

00:06:33.980 You just marry the next wife. 1.00

00:06:35.580 Then when she hits 30, you just marry the next wife. 0.97

00:06:38.260 Basically, who's the actor who does that but doesn't have kids?

00:06:41.340 Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:06:42.360 Leonardo DiCaprio-ing it.

00:06:43.680 That's what they were doing in Meiji Japan.

00:06:45.680 Thank God.

00:06:47.540 He continues.

00:06:48.260 However, a simple comparison of divorce rates between different marriage regimes is misleading.

00:06:53.760 Since divorce is at the whim of the husband in defect slash cooperate societies, men are free to invest in their family and children, which is not true in societies where men can lose their families against their will.

00:07:05.360 Furthermore, paternal certainty in defect slash cooperate societies is guaranteed, which means such societies can be highly functional, especially when they have monogamy, to reduce male intrasexual competition.

00:07:18.900 Meiji Japan was phenomenally successful economically, demographically, and territorially until destroyed by an overwhelming outside force.

00:07:26.440 So this is really interesting what he's pointing out here.

00:07:29.520 So when you have a prisoner's dilemma, there are two strategies, right, which is to say sort of three potential outcomes.

00:07:37.920 No, I'll reword that.

00:07:39.240 Sorry.

00:07:39.880 Four potential outcomes.

00:07:41.160 Both sides cooperate.

00:07:42.680 Both sides defect.

00:07:44.020 Or one side defects, whichever one it is.

00:07:46.380 Here what he's showing is a side in which societally everyone basically agrees that males are defecting.

00:07:53.120 That is what is happening in polygynous cultures, where they are hurting the women's outcome in, like, say, Saudi Arabia, where they take on tons of different wives, or in Meiji Japan, where they dispose of a wife the moment she's no longer a reproductive age. 1.00

00:08:05.180 That is hugely deleterious for women. 1.00

00:08:07.740 But when men socially make this choice, which is deleterious for women, those societies stay competitive on a geopolitical scene, which is really fascinating.

00:08:20.420 That is interesting.

00:08:21.700 Depressing.

00:08:22.100 Well, men might be the disposable gender even within these societies, because more men in Saudi Arabia and in Meiji and Japan are actually disposable.

00:08:30.760 Like, the lower category of men that's not breeding at all is larger in the societies where male defection – these are not better societies for men.

00:08:38.860 These are better societies for the very best men.

00:08:41.320 Yeah, which is a very, very small number.

00:08:43.040 It's, like, maybe 20% of men or less are getting all the benefit.

00:08:47.040 Yeah.

00:08:47.520 So, basically, most men are worse off, and most women are worse off, if we're being clear.

00:08:51.940 Most men are worse off, and most women are worse off, but they appear to function. 0.98

00:08:57.520 That is not true of the men defect, women defect condition, or the women defect condition.

00:09:03.560 This is something that always gets me when men laud men who go into these men defect women cooperate relationships, like, say, Andrew Tate, where they'll have, like, five or six different women that are supposedly producing their children.

00:09:17.440 In that these scenarios actively hurt average and below average men, the very men who are often looking up to these individuals, who are betraying them as much as they are betraying the women that they are in a relationship with.

00:09:35.640 To laud this behavior is to cuck yourself, because ultimately this behavior, when normalized, cucks a large percentage of males in a society.

00:09:45.480 Let's go into men defect, women defect. 0.99

00:09:47.800 Yes.

00:09:48.220 As Arctotherium describes it, a defect, defect society looks like the most primitive parts of sub-Saharan Africa or the Amazon rainforest.

00:09:58.040 Women sleep around while adult men prey on women and children and regularly kill each other for access to women. 1.00

00:10:04.380 As men have multiple wives and wives are not loyal, there is no respite from intrasexual competition. 0.96

00:10:10.000 You can always be replaced.

00:10:12.740 And he includes a graph here.

00:10:14.260 Among Himba of Southern Africa, the vast majority of married men and women have extrasexual pair partners. 0.99

00:10:20.380 And 48% of children are not the husbands.

00:10:23.320 That is wildly high.

00:10:25.700 Percent reporting extra pair partners.

00:10:28.260 If you look at the 15 to 25 range, for men, it's 100%.

00:10:32.720 For women, it's over 75%. 1.00

00:10:34.920 So they're around 80%.

00:10:35.740 The 26 to 35 range, again, men, 100%. 0.98

00:10:39.100 For women, over 75%.

00:10:41.100 The 36 to 46 range, men, over 75%.

00:10:45.480 Women, over 75%. 0.77

00:10:46.880 That is wild.

00:10:48.620 During your entire reproductive life cycle, you are for around 75% of people sleeping with other partners.

00:10:55.000 Well, and you're not incentivized to invest in the future, to think long term.

00:10:59.720 As Arctotherium writes, without paternal certainty, men have no investment in the future and spend their time fighting, dancing, or resting rather than working.

00:11:08.480 Economically, these societies are desperately poor and largely incapable of collective action.

00:11:13.280 In war, they shatter like glass when faced with an enemy that expect chastity and fidelity from women. 0.59

00:11:18.840 He shows a graph of ethnicities and historic plow use, noting that defect-defect societies tend to be ones without a history of plow use pre-1500.

00:11:30.040 Plow agriculture requires male labor to sustain a family, which meant that groups that didn't enforce paternity certainly could not survive. 0.93

00:11:38.780 Defect-defect societies are reliably the poorest, most technologically backwards, and most violent.

00:11:46.540 Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.

00:11:47.980 When, when, when, it's almost like a tragedy of the commons issue, of just like, why would I invest in anything?

00:11:54.020 Why would I not just try to take it?

00:11:55.140 It's not the tragedy of the commons issue.

00:11:56.240 This is the issue of socialized land use.

00:11:59.440 So, what a lot of people don't realize is one of the biggest problems with socialized land use, like the government giving you a property,

00:12:05.680 and we saw this in a lot of communist countries, is when people do not own a property, there is no advantage to improving that property.

00:12:14.080 Right.

00:12:14.240 And so, what you saw in these communist countries is that people's houses would fall apart.

00:12:19.900 They would even like partially strip them of valuable materials themselves.

00:12:23.640 They became like dust piles really quickly.

00:12:26.740 Where, in countries where they gave people houses to own and then potentially sell in the future, what people did to those houses was work to improve them because that improved their value.

00:12:37.440 If you own property in the U.S., like even if you inherit it, even if you get it for free, you have a value in one maintaining and to improving that property.

00:12:44.720 This is what we're seeing at the level of a family.

00:12:49.880 If your family is like a net cost to you, like I know I'm going to be with my wife in 20 years or 30 years, I have a reason to work to both improve my relationship with her,

00:13:02.480 if we're having some level of discord, and to improve her as a human being, as a mother, as an employable asset in our society, etc.

00:13:11.960 And you have a motivation to do that for me as well.

00:13:16.980 In these other societies, there is no motivation.

00:13:19.820 I really want to double click on this point.

00:13:21.800 When there's no reason to invest in the core thing that a human owns, their family, then it makes sense to spend your life optimizing for in-the-moment recreation.

00:13:34.480 And what are the forms of recreation that you can access with no accumulated resources?

00:13:39.120 It's dancing, fighting, and resting.

00:13:41.960 And that's why you see that so much in these societies.

00:13:45.680 And it's something we're beginning to see more within our own society as people become more sexually promiscuous and less stable in their relationships.

00:13:57.700 However, in our society, because the resources needed to access different forms of recreation are lower, this can appear like playing lots of video games.

00:14:09.120 I'd also note that this tendency to invest in a family or, you know, a woman that you own or kids that you own is likely why there's a big boost to earnings, both when a man is married and again when they have children.

00:14:26.860 Because men in those scenarios just have less motivation to rest and more motivation to invest.

00:14:32.160 Even in the cooperate effect where men would leave women, those wives probably had very little incentive to invest in their husbands and help to build up their careers, probably knowing their husbands would drop them. 1.00

00:14:46.180 Like, you know.

00:14:47.000 But the husbands had a motivation to improve their wives.

00:14:49.500 Yeah.

00:14:50.100 And in those societies, that worked because women were largely unproductive anyway as economic assets. 1.00

00:14:56.860 So it didn't matter that the husbands were not attempting to improve them.

00:15:01.880 One of those societies would likely be curb stomped by a modern, truly monogamous society.

00:15:07.700 Yeah.

00:15:07.980 Just technologically and economically if they went to war.

00:15:11.760 But if that other society is captured by the woke mind virus or something like that, it's irrelevant because they are just not going to, like, the bureaucracies are going to suffocate them.

00:15:23.220 So this is really interesting of how bad you get as a society when you hit a boast defect condition.

00:15:30.100 Yeah.

00:15:30.800 Intergenerationally speaking.

00:15:32.260 Yeah.

00:15:33.040 But let's get to the good one.

00:15:35.540 Men cooperate, women cooperate. 0.99

00:15:38.040 Arctotherium writes, the Western solution to the prisoner's dilemma can be summarized as follows.

00:15:43.120 One, monogamy. 0.59

00:15:44.640 Two, marriage by mutual consent.

00:15:47.180 Three, high standards of premarital chastity, especially for women and fidelity.

00:15:51.640 Four, divorce is difficult.

00:15:54.440 The marriage contract can be created by mutual consent, but cannot be unilaterally dissolved.

00:15:59.620 And five, men materially support their wives and children.

00:16:04.160 Let's deal with each pillar in turn.

00:16:07.080 Monogamy.

00:16:08.180 Polygamy is a natural attractor state for humans since it satisfies the desires of powerful men to have multiple wives and the desires of women to have elite husbands. 0.55

00:16:17.080 Monogamy requires both elite men and many women to sacrifice their desires.

00:16:23.040 In exchange, it provides strong checks on negative sum intrasexual competition.

00:16:28.160 Powerful married men are not constantly on the lookout for another wife and can devote their efforts to other pursuits, while less powerful men who would be shut out of marriage in a polygamous society have fewer evolutionary incentives to stab their compatriots in the back.

00:16:42.300 The result is a much more cohesive and powerful society, but it's not just male coordination that benefits from monogamy.

00:16:49.060 As Joseph Heinrich in 2020 notes, quote, because of how monogamous marriage influences social dynamics and cultural evolution, inhibiting female choice by prohibiting women from freely choosing to marry men who are already married results in both women and children doing better in the long run.

00:17:07.600 This occurs because of how the social dynamics unleashed by polygyny influence household formation, men's psychology, and husbands' willingness to invest in their wives and children, end quote.

00:17:20.240 Rather than invest in additional wives, men in monogamous societies invest in their original wife and children, with the result that almost everyone is better off.

00:17:28.400 So this is what I was saying earlier, and it's just a really important point.

00:17:31.740 When you, quote, unquote, own your wife, you know, women are like, own your wife, there is value to owning your wife. 0.99

00:17:38.040 Or are they like, own your wife. 0.51

00:17:41.400 Or your wife owning you, when it's a mutual state of ownership, which is what true monogamy is. 0.88

00:17:48.400 Oh, I'm sorry, this is so, there was this song that was sent to us by one of our fans, and it is like the worst, it's just a woman complaining, and they got like big fans, everyone in the crowd. 0.91

00:17:57.560 All day, every day, therapist, mother-made, nymph, then a virgin, curse, then a servant, just an appendage, lift to attendance.

00:18:05.960 By 24-7, baby machine, you make me do too much labor. 0.99

00:18:12.160 It's like, you cannot have a happy relationship if you don't want to do labor for your husband, because clearly you're describing a scenario where the husband is doing labor for you, like going out, working, everything like that.

00:18:23.900 But you are completely unappreciative of this, when we are both appreciative if whatever relationship you decided works for you.

00:18:32.360 And that's the thing that I think people miss when they try to go like trad was relationships and everything like that, is they focus on the wrong parts of trad.

00:18:39.900 They focus on husband does all the work in the factory, or just whatever, to bring home the money, and the wife stays at home, raises the kids. 0.98

00:18:48.320 You don't really need to do things that way.

00:18:50.220 There are other ways that things can be done.

00:18:52.220 Lots of other historic ways that things have been done, as we mentioned, sword and shield relationships, like the Vikings, where the wife manages the farm and does the stable source of income, and the husband does it.

00:19:01.000 I think it's, again, it's more of a fantasy, this idea that the wife isn't doing work aside from just cooking meals and raising the children. 0.92

00:19:12.660 Like managing a household is so much more than that, and also assisting a husband in his career is a big part of what I think many, like people who are seen as housewives are doing.

00:19:22.280 Well, and that's what they said, you know, we did an episode on what people used to tell people to look for in Hawaii.

00:19:27.580 So if you go to like the early Puritan period or something like that, they're always like, make sure your house can manage the household well and manage the servants well.

00:19:33.820 And people hear that, and they think that means like cook and clean.

00:19:37.100 It's like, no, like if you look at what's, you know, Sam Adams' wife is doing.

00:19:40.700 They're doing hiring, procurement, they're doing HR, they're doing coaching, they're doing conflict management.

00:19:46.460 What it means is run the farm.

00:19:48.880 Yeah.

00:19:49.140 It means you are running the asset that is producing income for the family.

00:19:54.620 That is what it means when they say be able to run the household well.

00:19:58.220 That means while the husband is out in Washington doing his politics stuff, the wife is running the farm, bringing in the income, selling the goods. 0.85

00:20:05.720 This is not a woman who isn't productive. 0.99

00:20:08.740 The point I'm making here is when you think about traditionalism, monogamy, or meaningful phonogamy, and we'll talk about what that means.

00:20:19.140 That is the actual part of traditionalism that works here, which means the husband and the wife persistently own each other. 0.68

00:20:27.840 Yeah, commit to each other.

00:20:28.980 Just commit, commit.

00:20:29.960 Commit, commit.

00:20:30.920 And I don't even think that this needs to be like not that sexual or whatever.

00:20:34.300 There are some couples I know where the husband and wife are totally committed to others, the other, and they have outside sexual relations sometimes.

00:20:43.180 And people can be like, how is that not breaking this?

00:20:46.420 And it's like it literally doesn't break any of this because what this is about is probability that the kids are the husbands or the wives.

00:20:53.780 And is one partner going to leave the other partner?

00:20:57.920 And in these scenarios I'm thinking of, that is not a risk at all.

00:21:02.080 And so I think that people can misunderstand what the meaningful part of a traditional relationship is, which is owning your wife.

00:21:09.700 And I want that to be clipped out of context because what it really is is the wife owning the husband as well.

00:21:15.860 It is a permanent stake that creates a motivation for investment.

00:21:20.920 Well, then let's bring this back to reasonableness by pointing out his second pillar, marriage by mutual consent.

00:21:27.800 He writes, this comes from Catholic doctrine, quote, what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put a sender, unquote.

00:21:36.920 And particularly benefits women who cannot be forcibly married against their will.

00:21:41.640 Okay, but this guy has a huge bias here.

00:21:44.420 There was another piece that we did where it was looking at, you can check it out, is Asian low fertility genesis.

00:21:50.920 And we point out that if you look at Anglo-Saxon courts going into the pre-Christian period, there was a strong belief that you should stay married to whoever you choose to marry.

00:22:03.960 So the idea of who you choose to marry existed in these territories pre-Catholicism.

00:22:12.160 And a lot of Catholic areas actually had arranged marriages, as we know from anyone who has studied royal history of that time period.

00:22:20.620 So I don't understand what they're going for.

00:22:23.200 My understanding is that the Protestant areas actually had less arranged marriage or less pressured marriage than the Catholic areas.

00:22:27.780 But whatever the case may be.

00:22:29.740 I don't know.

00:22:30.300 And remember the podcast we did looking at Scott Alexander's review on the book on the early rise of Christianity talked about how basically like empowering to women Christianity was.

00:22:39.980 You know, it was like, be nice to your wife.

00:22:42.680 Wives matter. 1.00

00:22:44.000 Don't kill your children.

00:22:45.840 I don't know.

00:22:46.400 I see it as pretty Catholic to give women consent and a voice.

00:22:51.360 Well, no, but we're talking here about do arranged marriages trump what the family would prefer?

00:22:57.040 And if you're talking about noble families.

00:22:58.200 Most arranged marriages involve consent from women. 0.97

00:23:00.920 I don't know why people think arranged marriages mean I'm going to force you to marry this person.

00:23:04.420 What he's talking about here is not that.

00:23:06.380 This line that he read from the Bible, because I know how this applies.

00:23:10.460 What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder, is not saying a woman can turn down a guy who her family has chosen for her.

00:23:19.040 It's saying if a woman eloped without the family's knowledge, then she gets to marry that guy.

00:23:24.440 This is like the shotgun marry line. 0.76

00:23:27.420 This is not the women can turn down an arranged marriage line. 1.00

00:23:31.660 And it was applied pretty liberally.

00:23:34.240 So it did mean that basically you could within even Catholic countries, my understanding, largely speaking, if you wanted to get out of like an arranged marriage or what your family wanted to do, if you eloped with someone that still counted as marriage.

00:23:44.420 Well, OK, leaning back into the more traditional leanings of his five pillars, high standards of premarital chastity, especially for women and fidelity.

00:23:54.320 This ensures two things.

00:23:55.380 First and most importantly, it ensures paternal certainty and minimizes sexual jealousy.

00:24:00.900 Second, it makes marriage the gateway to sex, which strongly encourages young people to get themselves into the long term pair bond.

00:24:06.940 That is the ideal environment to have and raise children.

00:24:10.780 Actually, you and I have been talking about this a lot recently, this this argument that uncontrolled sex drive is not actually the major driver of birth rates and prenatalism.

00:24:21.340 But we have talked about the fact that, like, there are plenty of religions.

00:24:25.580 I think the LDS church is a really good example of this presently that use marriage as the gateway to sex, forcing people to marry younger, which does help with fertility. 0.89

00:24:37.500 It causes people to make catastrophically bad decisions about who they marry because they are marrying to gain access to sex.

00:24:45.700 And I think that just people need to be much like this.

00:24:48.200 This is one I actually pretty strongly disagree with.

00:24:50.740 I'm not saying that women should sleep around a lot before marriage. 0.88

00:24:54.520 I don't know, because sleeping around before marriage also is a it's it's it's distracting procrastination.

00:25:01.840 Yeah, you should be focused on getting married.

00:25:03.320 Yeah, it's distracting.

00:25:04.340 I agree.

00:25:05.060 Yeah.

00:25:05.280 But I think that that's a very different motivation than what he's talking about here, which is the way that some traditional systems used it.

00:25:11.440 I mean, I think he's looking at it more from a male perspective, but also throughout the history of like Catholicism and Christianity.

00:25:17.560 It was just well known that men would sleep around a ton and then get married like it didn't really count for men.

00:25:24.100 So, yeah, that is true.

00:25:26.640 This expectation was from women. 1.00

00:25:29.020 And there's an expectation, you know, in the way he's writing this here, he knows that he means for women.

00:25:33.600 Yeah, but he writes in parentheses, especially for women when it comes to premarital chastity.

00:25:38.220 He's explicit about.

00:25:39.240 Yeah, I do not think for the game theory as he has laid out, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but for the game theory as he has laid out to maintain steady.

00:25:49.300 So long as you have security around paternity, I do not see this as that much of breaking the entire contract.

00:25:59.600 All right.

00:26:00.540 He continues.

00:26:01.400 Divorce is difficult.

00:26:02.500 The marriage contract can be created by mutual consent, but cannot be unilaterally dissolved.

00:26:07.840 This allows for greater specialization of labor within the household and greater investment in, quote, relationship capital, end quote, including children.

00:26:16.040 It also shifts the balance of power within the relationship to the more committed partner.

00:26:21.280 Oh, hmm.

00:26:25.360 So this one gets really interesting because he goes into it a bit more, and I had never thought of it this way, is making divorce easy shifts the balance in the relationship to the less committed partner.

00:26:37.900 When divorce is easier.

00:26:39.120 Oh, because you can just walk away.

00:26:40.240 But why would divorce being harder give more power to the person who's more committed?

00:26:45.900 Because you're not giving it to the person who's less committed.

00:26:49.860 Yeah, but the less committed person can just quiet quit.

00:26:53.540 That's true.

00:26:54.380 I think what he's thinking of here is he's more focused on his later argument about giving power to the less committed partner when divorce is easier.

00:27:01.320 And the reality is you can just quiet quit in this situation.

00:27:04.140 It doesn't give more power to the more committed partner. 0.92

00:27:06.040 Like if you wanted to leave me, but you couldn't, you'd just be like, well, I'm just going to be a dick to you, and I'm not going to help out with anything, and I could do the same, right?

00:27:12.920 And that does it. 0.91

00:27:14.200 It does at least not make the situation harder.

00:27:18.160 And I will note to the previous comment when I was like fidelity in women before marriage, and I was like, I don't know if that's really necessary to maintain the bargain.

00:27:26.900 Somebody might take that to mean like, oh, he's just justifying his wife slipping around.

00:27:30.200 Actually, Simone had only ever kissed one person other than me when we first met. 0.98

00:27:34.700 Yeah, people are gross. 0.84

00:27:35.580 I don't think people understand. 0.92

00:27:37.300 Like I...

00:27:38.160 She had never slept with a woman.

00:27:39.700 I was just talking with Malcolm.

00:27:41.140 I literally wouldn't be married if Malcolm didn't exist in the world.

00:27:44.660 There is only one person in this world for me.

00:27:46.380 I would be not an incel.

00:27:48.680 I would be an intentionally celibate, never interact with human kind of person.

00:27:53.660 Well, that's not helpful for people.

00:27:55.960 I know it's not helpful, but I'm just...

00:27:57.600 Yeah, like I'm just to clear up any...

00:27:59.260 The point I'm making here is this isn't cope.

00:28:01.640 My wife actually did not, like, she did not sleep with anyone.

00:28:06.680 She did not do anything more than kiss anyone else before meeting me.

00:28:09.860 I am not saying this is cope for me.

00:28:12.320 And I slept around a lot beforehand.

00:28:14.140 So this is like low male sexual fidelity.

00:28:16.380 I'm just thinking about my own children.

00:28:18.640 And like, if I told my kids to incredibly heavily discount any potential female partner.

00:28:24.780 Now, I know it does increase the risk of divorce.

00:28:26.660 But I think as soon as you say, I'm not dating women who have slept around before marriage, 1.00

00:28:32.820 you have so wiped such a large portion of women off the pool in a modern dating market. 1.00

00:28:37.500 Unless you start early.

00:28:39.380 Unless you start early, yeah.

00:28:41.080 But I mean, you have got to start really early.

00:28:43.860 I think before you have a feeling of how this woman's going to turn out. 0.92

00:28:47.760 I'm really not pro-marriage before, like, 19.

00:28:51.360 I think you really need to reach that age for a woman to... 1.00

00:28:55.100 Yeah, but Malcolm, look at the plummeting rates of sex.

00:28:57.380 The number, the percentage of women who actually haven't had sex,

00:29:00.400 I will say age 25, 26, is actually increasing over time.

00:29:04.440 And I'm not of this hopeless.

00:29:07.340 Now, I'm also not of like, it, I don't think that being a virgin is a prerequisite for a good marriage for anyone.

00:29:14.160 And I think there are good arguments, especially for sex before marriage, 0.99

00:29:17.400 between people who are committed to each other.

00:29:18.940 Because you kind of want to make sure you're sexually compatible.

00:29:22.280 I mean, it's not like the most important thing, but it kind of matters to me.

00:29:25.600 Like, I'd be really concerned about...

00:29:27.840 You and I had sex while... 0.68

00:29:28.880 Yeah, we had sex before marriage. 0.97

00:29:30.520 Yeah, so... 0.79

00:29:31.320 But you, being a San Franciscan, like, far lefty when we met, 0.60

00:29:35.460 it was not even like a question of if we were going to have sex. 0.99

00:29:38.220 You planned to use me for sex before marriage. 0.94

00:29:41.600 Yeah. 0.99

00:29:42.100 And then never married.

00:29:43.580 To be fair, but yeah.

00:29:47.200 That was the plan. 0.73

00:29:48.240 And she wanted you to try sex so she could say she'd done it and then live alone forever. 1.00

00:29:51.440 That was what you wanted to... 1.00

00:29:53.760 I was a sex toy to this harlot who seduced me with her pragmatism and diligence. 1.00

00:30:03.740 Anyway, keep going. 1.00

00:30:06.280 Okay.

00:30:06.860 Where was I?

00:30:08.500 Ah, yes.

00:30:09.280 Okay.

00:30:09.520 Men materially...

00:30:11.840 Shush, shush, shush, shush.

00:30:13.840 Men materially support their wives and children. 0.68

00:30:16.640 They are not expected to provide for children that are not theirs, nor for children born outside

00:30:21.500 of wedlock.

00:30:22.500 If men do not have access to their children, they are not expected to support them unless 0.98

00:30:26.940 they are personally at fault.

00:30:28.680 This should be seen as a contract between the prospective husband and wife.

00:30:32.160 Like any reasonable contract, both parties are giving something up and getting something

00:30:37.320 in return.

00:30:38.000 I strongly agree with the way that it was worded here in divorce law and paternal support,

00:30:44.580 which is...

00:30:45.360 I think that's the big problem with no-fault divorce, is a woman can leave a guy, then 1.00

00:30:49.940 take the kids and expect support for the children she had with him, which really messes up the 0.62

00:30:56.080 dynamics of marriage.

00:30:57.100 I think if a woman, like if a woman is at fault in a divorce, like she was cheating on

00:31:02.680 the man or something, if she expects to have access to the children, the man does not need

00:31:08.500 to pay her access.

00:31:09.800 You mean exclusive access?

00:31:11.380 Like if he doesn't get to be around the children?

00:31:13.060 I don't know if she doesn't.

00:31:13.960 I think if it's like 50-50 paternity, like child care, she still doesn't get any child care. 0.95

00:31:20.560 Oh yeah, well yeah, if he's shouldering the burden and taking care of the kids...

00:31:23.980 No, no, no, he's not shouldering the burden entirely.

00:31:26.140 This guy is earning more, okay?

00:31:28.040 I know, yeah, but okay, yeah, but let's say that like he spends 10 days with the kids

00:31:32.720 and then she spends 10 days with the kids, then yeah, no one needs to... 1.00

00:31:35.580 In a traditional divorce course, you understand, he still has to pay her.

00:31:39.940 Really?

00:31:41.080 Yes, he has to pay her if he earned more than her.

00:31:43.740 So imagine she was a stay-at-home wife and he was out as a lawyer or something like that 0.80

00:31:48.340 and then they get divorced.

00:31:49.580 That's even in the absence of kids though.

00:31:51.740 That's different.

00:31:53.040 But yeah, that's still screwed up.

00:31:53.860 It's not in the absence of kids because in the absence of kids, you're not paying child support.

00:31:59.260 Okay, so this isn't, you're not talking about alimony or also child support is still...

00:32:03.380 You pay child support to the person who in the relationship earned less money, whether

00:32:07.840 it's the man or the woman.

00:32:08.840 I didn't know that.

00:32:09.640 Okay, sorry.

00:32:10.240 That's wild.

00:32:11.480 Just when I think things couldn't get worse for men who... 1.00

00:32:13.860 The point being is I am 100% pro-child support in instances in which there is a no-fault divorce,

00:32:22.180 i.e.

00:32:22.700 both people are just like, we don't get along anymore because that's required to maintain

00:32:26.760 any sort of sane contract where the man just doesn't leave a woman when she reaches too

00:32:30.640 old an age.

00:32:31.580 And you need it whenever a man is at fault.

00:32:34.480 The man was cheating.

00:32:35.380 The man was doing something against the initial marriage contract.

00:32:37.920 However, if the woman decides on the divorce and the man doesn't want it, or if the woman

00:32:46.240 and she can't prove that he was beating her, she can't prove that he was cheating on her,

00:32:50.720 she can't prove, or worse, he can prove that she was doing those things to him, no money,

00:32:57.360 no child support, because this removes the incentive to live that kind of lifestyle, which

00:33:03.520 hurts everyone in society.

00:33:04.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does.

00:33:09.960 Well, and I guess it also encourages less prudent marriage decisions when you feel like you

00:33:14.540 can just get out of it, especially if you feel like you can get out of it and get money.

00:33:17.740 Yeah, well, so I was talking with, this is at the Heritage Foundation, and I was talking

00:33:21.520 with a lawyer there who, so this is in a conservative community that he was talking about in California,

00:33:26.160 right?

00:33:26.780 And he was talking about how it became in the same way that like transgenderism swept through 0.94

00:33:32.700 the community like a trend more recently.

00:33:34.980 You remember a time in the past, but divorce swept through the community like a trend. 0.98

00:33:38.340 And it was almost seen as sort of like low class to like not have an ex.

00:33:44.360 It was like, well...

00:33:45.580 Oh, like you're only on your first marriage?

00:33:48.060 Like it's a little pedestrian and low class to only be on your first marriage. 0.99

00:33:52.500 And women would go to other women and be like, oh yeah, don't you want to like, you know, 1.00

00:33:57.320 you could leave him, you can get all the money that he has right now.

00:34:00.480 Like, and it actually worked as a sign of class because the men who were earning more

00:34:06.860 wives felt like they could get more out of a divorce. 1.00

00:34:11.400 So it really was signaling the class status of the man, whether his wife had attempted to

00:34:18.840 divorce him to be able to stay at home and do nothing and live off of like child supported

00:34:23.020 alimony.

00:34:24.140 That's a big deal.

00:34:24.960 But yeah, he's a divorce catch.

00:34:28.300 Yeah.

00:34:28.960 And it's like a long term, this ended up terrible for the people who got like swept up in this

00:34:33.180 trend.

00:34:33.620 No kidding.

00:34:34.260 But it was seen as like a trendy, cool thing, especially if you do it amicably, right?

00:34:40.180 Um...

00:34:40.580 I don't know.

00:34:42.160 I don't know if financially supporting someone, unless he was like, these people were like

00:34:46.900 continuing to sleep with all of their ex-wives.

00:34:49.100 So it's basically a harem, if that's what is being described.

00:34:51.760 But I don't think that's what's being described.

00:34:52.480 No, no, no, no, no.

00:34:53.300 But it's like, now what you're missing is, okay, I've got an ex-wife and I'm sleeping

00:34:57.820 with 20-year-old secretaries and stuff like that because I'm super rich.

00:35:01.360 That's, that's what was happening in these communities.

00:35:03.680 You know, I'm, I'm sleeping with my, my kid's babysitter or whatever, right?

00:35:08.220 Like, look, these are not, these are not communities that you and I would consider high

00:35:13.160 class, but we're talking about like LA, Nouveau Reef.

00:35:16.040 I can see how this could swipe, like, flow through a community.

00:35:19.980 Yeah.

00:35:20.180 And I was pointing out to him, it's interesting, in our age range, like, if I look at our friends

00:35:24.620 who are married, I don't know anyone who's divorced.

00:35:27.620 I don't know anyone in our friend group who's divorced.

00:35:30.460 Oh, yeah.

00:35:30.800 Good for our friends and us.

00:35:33.040 And, and they're like, well, it's because you're young.

00:35:35.260 This hits when you hit your early 40s.

00:35:37.500 I guess.

00:35:38.440 Yeah.

00:35:38.600 My friend's parents started getting divorced around like the fifth grade, you know, it's

00:35:45.460 10, 11 and all of our kids are super young.

00:35:50.080 So give it time, I guess we'll see to be determined.

00:35:54.880 Let's continue.

00:35:55.760 So he writes, breaking the bargain, pillars one and two of the solution remain intact.

00:36:01.900 Western countries are still formally monogamous and marriage is still by mutual consent, though

00:36:08.300 without any broad religious or philosophical justification, this may change.

00:36:12.200 Popular support for legalizing polygamy has surged in the 21st century US.

00:36:17.240 But pillars three to five were systematically demolished by mid 20th century, mostly between

00:36:26.420 1916, 1980.

00:36:27.940 Yeah.

00:36:28.140 So here you see a graph.

00:36:30.160 And what this graph shows is the chronology of events in the women's rights movement in

00:36:34.540 the US.

00:36:35.320 He says, I include the scare quotes here because this movement should be seen as a zero sum

00:36:40.260 struggle for political and economic power.

00:36:42.540 Affirmative action.

00:36:43.320 He put women's rights in scare quotes.

00:36:45.420 Yes, correctly included as a major achievement by Goblin.

00:36:49.040 And if you look here, you see most of the major changes happened between 1965 and 19, let's

00:36:58.680 say, 80.

00:36:59.520 And then you see there were some after that, but the vast majority, 1965 and 1980.

00:37:04.560 So you're looking for things that happened post then.

00:37:08.380 And this is where you see women just gaining a huge amount of power in society. 1.00

00:37:13.080 Gosh, yeah.

00:37:13.520 He writes, this is a chronology of laws because lies are laws are highly legible.

00:37:18.280 What matters is people's behavior.

00:37:20.980 Sufficiently strong social norms are indistinguishable from laws and laws are interpreted by judges,

00:37:27.260 meaning legal practice may change dramatically without any significant change to official

00:37:32.440 statutes.

00:37:33.300 That's true.

00:37:34.660 The sexual revolution.

00:37:36.220 There are there no longer exists any expectation of chastity until marriage, but within marriage,

00:37:42.440 there's still the expectation of fidelity, though without any enforcement mechanism beyond

00:37:47.240 social stigma.

00:37:48.100 This reverses the sexual incentive to marry rather than a gateway to sexual opportunity.

00:37:53.660 Marriage has become a chain restricting it.

00:37:57.320 He shows a graph of women's sexual partners before their first marriage from the 1970s to

00:38:03.500 the 2010s.

00:38:04.480 He writes, note that these numbers are lower than reality because they are self-reported.

00:38:10.980 When hooked up to a lie detector, women claim about one more sex partner than they do when 1.00

00:38:15.740 asked normally.

00:38:16.660 The graph shows that the number of women who have one partner before marriage has allegedly 0.81

00:38:24.480 plummeted from a little over 40% in the 1970s to around 22.5% in the 2010s, whereas four to

00:38:34.640 five partners has increased from about 6% in the 1970s to about 28% in 2010s.

00:38:41.700 I think what people are missing here is how rare even historically virgin women were before

00:38:46.100 married, and this is even when they might be lying, were in a historic context.

00:38:50.400 If you look at the 1970s, it was only around 20% of women were virgins before marriage.

00:38:55.720 Yeah, this doesn't even show two partners.

00:38:57.920 I'm sorry, zero partners.

00:38:58.820 It doesn't show zero partners.

00:38:59.920 It does.

00:39:00.200 It shows virgins before marriage.

00:39:01.340 Oh, virgins before marriage. 0.89

00:39:02.300 Okay, I see.

00:39:03.440 It's literally the rarest potential thing.

00:39:05.460 They started out as 20% and now they're at like 5%.

00:39:09.040 Oh, look at you, Malcolm.

00:39:10.880 I mean, not that I was, we were-

00:39:12.340 You're a 5%-er. 0.89

00:39:13.800 Yeah, we weren't married though, so I guess I would still

00:39:15.940 count as-

00:39:16.660 In the 2010s, so we'd be maybe past then.

00:39:19.020 I don't know.

00:39:19.580 But the point is, oh yeah, well, no, I think that this is what it's asking.

00:39:23.880 Like-

00:39:24.440 Maybe.

00:39:25.320 Yeah, a partner other than spouse probably is what they need to be asking about.

00:39:28.940 But also what's notable is that having over 10 partners was maybe around 2.5% of women

00:39:34.580 in the 1970s and it's up to about 20, like 18%, almost 20%.

00:39:42.000 Well, and then another, hold on, hold on.

00:39:43.840 Another 20% is four to five partners.

00:39:47.040 Yeah.

00:39:47.520 And then another-

00:39:48.740 20% have had over four partners.

00:39:51.580 Yeah.

00:39:52.160 Which is-

00:39:53.460 Well, no, no, no, no.

00:39:54.700 More because 6% to 9% is at, what is that, like 14%?

00:40:00.640 Oh, Lord.

00:40:01.140 Yeah.

00:40:01.300 Okay, yeah.

00:40:01.960 Well, okay.

00:40:02.580 Anyway, people are sleeping around more.

00:40:04.460 So he continues.

00:40:05.180 Whereas the pre-'70s dispensation aligned sex drives with pair bonding desired for raising 0.90

00:40:11.800 children, the present one sets them in conflict with each other.

00:40:15.440 So I really want to pull this apart because I find this particularly interesting and I'm

00:40:20.000 not denying that this is happening.

00:40:22.000 I just don't know if realistically the way he wants to nudge culture is the only way to

00:40:27.800 fix this or even the most realistic way to fix this.

00:40:30.800 So the point that he's making here is marriage now constricts sexual access rather than gives

00:40:38.480 sexual access.

00:40:39.700 So if I am a man and I enjoy sleeping with lots of women, now when I get married, I get 0.56

00:40:46.100 less sexual access than I had before married.

00:40:49.900 Yeah.

00:40:50.520 Which, I mean, I think for high-value men, but only for high-value men because no one

00:40:54.720 else gets to sleep around, it does act as a disincentive to marry. 1.00

00:40:58.420 And here I note for anyone who wants to be like, well, sex in marriage is more magical.

00:41:03.320 You know, you can have better relationships with just one partner.

00:41:07.100 And it's like, look, this might be true with women, but just statistically, this is obviously 0.85

00:41:12.560 not true with men.

00:41:13.660 If you look at the studies on this, men prefer variation in their sexual partners.

00:41:18.960 And the evolutionary reason why is really obvious because multiple women can carry your 0.97

00:41:24.620 kids simultaneously as a man, of course, you're going to have preference for sleeping with 0.83

00:41:29.840 a woman who is different from women who you have recently been sleeping with. 1.00

00:41:33.520 I say this because if the way that you are attempting to motivate a potential behavior is through

00:41:40.220 lying to an individual, e.g., well, as a man, you're really better off just sleeping with

00:41:45.660 one woman.

00:41:46.280 That will be more pleasurable for you.

00:41:48.020 You will eventually fail if a person makes major life decisions around a false promise

00:41:54.940 and then comes to realize that.

00:41:57.120 It very much acts as a disincentive to marry.

00:41:59.700 And for women, it is the same thing. 1.00

00:42:02.840 It is a disincentive to marry if they enjoy sleeping with lots of partners. 0.98

00:42:08.020 Yeah.

00:42:08.260 Or if they enjoy sleeping with a high value partner who they couldn't get to marry them

00:42:13.200 and is sleeping with other females, which is more likely.

00:42:15.740 Now, the question is, are there other ways around this outside of convincing all of young

00:42:24.460 people to be more chaste?

00:42:25.840 Because that seems like a very losing battle, especially if I am talking to, like, let's

00:42:31.440 be honest here.

00:42:32.100 If I am talking to me as a kid, like, this is what I try to imagine my kids as being.

00:42:37.120 And I was like, hey, it's like better for society, man, if like that girl, look, I know

00:42:43.160 she's hot, I know she's willing to sleep with you, but like, don't sleep with her because 1.00

00:42:47.720 like in a vague, like social sense, this is sort of better for the low value men.

00:42:52.760 When she does marry, she'll be better. 0.64

00:42:54.740 I'd be like, you can write off. 0.95

00:42:57.420 This girl is down a clown and I have access to her tonight and I might not have access 1.00

00:43:03.720 to her tomorrow. 0.81

00:43:04.520 And you can write off because how do you convince a young guy of this, right?

00:43:10.700 Or, oh my gosh.

00:43:12.100 You know, so it's really, really, really, really hard because you don't really have something

00:43:15.840 big to offer them.

00:43:17.060 Now, young woman, I can at least say, oh, you'll have access to better partners for

00:43:23.800 marriage if you don't sleep around a lot now.

00:43:26.380 And then the young woman will say to me, you don't understand.

00:43:29.660 Like high value guys will not really consider dating you these days if you're not sleeping

00:43:35.000 with them, even the ones who are willing to be monogamous.

00:43:38.260 And I'd have to say, that's kind of true.

00:43:41.660 I mean, there are a few like really religious guys, but I'm thinking of your average high

00:43:45.620 value male.

00:43:46.780 They're going to have a really like me, for example, right?

00:43:50.660 Would I have seriously considered marrying you if you didn't date me for like a year beforehand?

00:43:56.160 No, I wouldn't have. 0.84

00:43:56.920 Would I have dated you for a year if we weren't having sex? 0.64

00:44:00.240 Absolutely not.

00:44:01.540 So when you remove this, you cause a lot of damage within the existing social structure

00:44:06.800 in terms of actually finding partners.

00:44:09.340 And so then it's like, okay, well then how do you actually solve this problem?

00:44:13.880 And it is remembering that sexuality and arousal is vestigial and unimportant to finding purpose

00:44:24.020 in life or what you should want for your life.

00:44:26.260 When you go to a kid and you demystify sex, not through saying sex is evil or sex is scary

00:44:33.560 and stay away from sex and everything like that, but you're just like, sex is totally 0.68

00:44:37.900 unimportant. 0.98

00:44:39.260 And to be honest, masturbation, if you just want arousal is generally going to be easier. 0.94

00:44:46.200 It's generally going to be better. 0.86

00:44:47.860 It's generally going to be easier.

00:44:49.180 And it's going to be a much more efficient use of your time.

00:44:52.320 Much more convenient.

00:44:54.020 Yeah.

00:44:54.420 More convenient.

00:44:55.760 And when a guy like accepts this or a girl accepts this because they have slept with other

00:45:00.320 people and they're like, oh wow.

00:45:01.280 Yeah. 0.99

00:45:01.440 Sex is kind of clunky and boring. 0.99

00:45:04.320 And I don't know. 0.92

00:45:04.660 Well, I just, I slightly disagree with this for a lot of people.

00:45:08.420 In fact, you, even yourself, are you in the Pregnant's Guide to Sexuality? 0.96

00:45:12.220 Sex for men. 0.99

00:45:14.160 Oh boy. 0.98

00:45:16.000 Sex for men is largely, for many men at least, about proving a narrative to themselves. 0.98

00:45:21.480 I agree.

00:45:22.260 It's not really about enjoyment.

00:45:23.260 And then sex for women, I think often, like those women who have higher sex drives, it's 0.99

00:45:28.700 more about the dynamics and not about the actual physical action.

00:45:31.500 I agree.

00:45:32.400 So I don't, I guess you could use, I mean, women do use like romance novels and various 1.00

00:45:37.660 like fantasy scenarios to just do that in their imagination.

00:45:40.320 But I do think that some women find it hard to not do that with that reality. 0.99

00:45:44.300 Here is that it is easier if I am talking to a young man to break the narrative that sex

00:45:51.420 has value in or out of marriage, not that, oh, wait for marriage so you can get this awesome

00:45:57.280 sex because this causes problems. 0.78

00:45:58.460 Like this is why if you look at like the girl defined sisters, like one of them seems to

00:46:02.440 be in like a very serious crisis was their marriage because they thought that sex was

00:46:05.960 going to be like this amazing thing when they got married.

00:46:08.560 Instead, they're pretty solid.

00:46:10.080 Yeah.

00:46:10.200 But like they went through an adjustment because she did wait until marriage for sex and then 0.86

00:46:16.060 they expected sex was going to be amazing and then it wasn't.

00:46:19.780 Instead, what you tell them is sex is like I go to this young guy. 0.97

00:46:25.240 He's like, I get to have sex with this girl. 0.99

00:46:27.080 And I'm like, I want you to really focus on having sex with this girl and ask yourself 1.00

00:46:31.680 afterwards. 1.00

00:46:33.300 Did you just waste a whole day seducing this girl? 1.00

00:46:37.540 Would you could have just stayed at home and masturbated? 1.00

00:46:40.600 Video games. 0.99

00:46:41.320 I mean, like, yeah, there are other.

00:46:43.020 Yeah.

00:46:43.740 Masturbated and played video games.

00:46:45.060 Was this better than that?

00:46:48.520 And we need to parse out marriage from pleasure. 0.99

00:46:51.340 Like there are more efficient ways to inject pleasure directly into your bloodstream.

00:46:55.520 I'm not talking about the use of substances, but I mean, like metaphorically.

00:46:59.420 And then you need to separately figure out your life and your values and your legacy.

00:47:03.800 The point I'm making is if you motivate marriage with sex, you're going to have a bad time because

00:47:10.360 it causes people to focus on the wrong traits in marriage.

00:47:13.120 Well, and it gets people also to anchor marriage around pleasure in general and enjoyment when

00:47:18.840 that's not what marriage has ever been about.

00:47:21.400 If you know, say sex does not matter that much.

00:47:28.680 You may use it to try to increase your feeling of self-worth or your personal narrative.

00:47:34.440 But if you are doing that, you are living a life that is pointless and without value.

00:47:40.020 You may use it because you're not like objectively getting more pleasure than it from like good 0.98

00:47:44.640 masturbation because with good masturbation, you can do literally anything. 0.88

00:47:47.400 You can be in literally any scenario. 0.99

00:47:48.860 So like you, you're not getting more from it than that.

00:47:53.140 And so it's not a magical thing in or out of marriage.

00:47:56.900 The point of marriage where you will get more pleasure and more fulfillment from marriage

00:48:01.240 isn't the sex you're going to have on your marriage night.

00:48:04.380 It is from the children that you will have with your partner. 1.00

00:48:09.640 Children are strictly better than sex or masturbation. 0.99

00:48:14.420 Well, you're literally creating the future of humanity. 0.90

00:48:16.760 And that's the other thing is I think it's, there's way too much anchoring in the discussion

00:48:21.860 of family planning and prenatalism in general around children, having children, because it

00:48:27.340 takes the focus away from how profound it is, what you're actually doing.

00:48:30.460 You're creating people who are going to live full lives and have impacts on the world and

00:48:36.000 in turn have children.

00:48:37.120 Like you are creating the equivalent of yourself, you know, a fully conscious adult human, you know,

00:48:44.560 God willing, if they can make it that far.

00:48:46.920 Right.

00:48:47.280 So it's just so much more meaningful.

00:48:50.520 Like imagine everything you've experienced in your entire life and double.

00:48:54.680 Yeah.

00:48:55.140 But this, this, this, this, this argument here is around like the magic of sex. 0.97

00:49:00.020 Like if you wait to get married, oh, you'll have this magical sex. 0.93

00:49:02.780 Don't say that. 0.62

00:49:03.560 Don't say that.

00:49:04.200 No, it's not magical. 1.00

00:49:05.380 So stupid. 1.00

00:49:06.180 Yeah. 1.00

00:49:06.360 No, because it also, all these people end up like seriously disillusioned with their

00:49:11.140 religion, with their, with their, that's true.

00:49:13.680 Yeah.

00:49:14.160 A big argument that Malcolm has made to sum it up more quickly is if you, if you build

00:49:20.540 your religion around a bunch of lies that are easily disprovable with the internet or

00:49:25.580 life experience, you're going to get a lot of detractors because children are magical.

00:49:31.720 That that's provably wrong just opens you up to vulnerability.

00:49:35.460 That's why politicians don't answer questions straight.

00:49:37.800 The point here is tell kids the truth, not that sex was in marriage is magical, but children

00:49:43.300 was in marriage are magical.

00:49:44.680 Yeah. 0.97

00:49:44.900 And sex is largely pointless and vestigial in humans.

00:49:48.420 And that you can generally, if you're arousal maxing, do that without using another person

00:49:54.760 as a human fleshlight.

00:49:55.920 But the point of marriage and what is magical for marriage isn't the, the, the, the marriage

00:50:02.160 night sex.

00:50:02.920 It is the kids that you will have, whether those kids are created through sex or something

00:50:07.900 else like IVF, et cetera, given how hard it is for many couples to have kids.

00:50:12.080 Unilateral divorce.

00:50:13.280 The most obvious effect of unilateral, i.e.

00:50:15.860 no fault divorce is more divorces. 1.00

00:50:17.760 He includes a graph ratio of divorces to marriages in the United States, ranging from 1860 to

00:50:25.500 the year 2020.

00:50:27.080 He describes the graph with there's much talk about the decline in us divorce rates since

00:50:32.920 the eighties.

00:50:33.460 But the reason for this is that marriage rates have also dropped note that the rise in divorce

00:50:39.080 post-World War II corresponds to marriage becoming much less selective with the spike post no fault

00:50:45.380 divorce corresponds to the institution becoming much more selective.

00:50:50.100 So what you'll see here, and this is really interesting.

00:50:52.420 And if you look at this, this graph here, yeah, you see the divorce rate rising over time, but

00:50:56.320 when no fault divorce was introduced in the, it looks like 19, like 73 or four here, you

00:51:03.740 immediately had a spike.

00:51:05.760 And I think this is the like ratio of divorces per year per marriage of around 0.3 to around

00:51:11.940 0.5.

00:51:12.840 And what's fascinating is this around 0.5 number that it settled at, this was before

00:51:17.560 the 1980s.

00:51:18.540 So like 1975 has stayed steady until about today, it looks like.

00:51:23.620 So what we're actually seeing is not a drop in divorces, but a drop in marriages, which

00:51:31.360 makes it look like we have a big drop in divorces as a society.

00:51:34.240 Yeah.

00:51:35.020 Okay.

00:51:35.900 And continue.

00:51:36.660 He writes, it's worth considering what is, what this actually means.

00:51:42.000 Each divorce represents years of effort and investment wasted and often perpetual and

00:51:47.120 unwanted obligations.

00:51:48.920 It often means broken families and the misery that accompanies them.

00:51:52.360 In the United States, only 52% of first marriages survive the first 20 years required to raise

00:51:58.620 children.

00:51:59.920 And he includes a table of the probability that a first marriage will remain intact to

00:52:05.260 survive at specified durations among women aged 15 to 44 years by selected characteristics.

00:52:10.680 This is using United States data from 1995, 2002, and 2006 to 2010.

00:52:17.560 Hmm.

00:52:18.860 Okay.

00:52:19.400 Well, let's see what this actually means.

00:52:20.520 The characteristics include all women and then broken down by Hispanic origin and race, 0.97

00:52:25.940 age at first, marriage, education, religion, race.

00:52:30.300 He describes, hold on, let me scroll.

00:52:34.040 Well, hold on.

00:52:34.800 I'm just looking here to try to find out what it is.

00:52:36.840 Okay.

00:52:37.040 So it was white couples.

00:52:38.200 I'll just look at this.

00:52:38.900 Okay.

00:52:39.660 Well, no, no.

00:52:40.280 He, well, he explains, he says, this table also shows why marriage has become an upper

00:52:44.280 class institution.

00:52:45.940 Murray society no longer works to keep marriages intact, meaning it requires a certain amount

00:52:51.420 of foresight and a lack of impulsiveness to maintain it.

00:52:55.420 You want to move around?

00:52:56.900 You can move around.

00:52:57.700 Okay.

00:52:57.820 So this table shows why marriage has become an upper class institution. 0.99

00:53:02.240 Society no longer works to keep marriages intact, meaning it requires a certain amount

00:53:07.040 of foresight and lack of impulsiveness to maintain one.

00:53:10.400 And so we just, you know, being white people, I'm going to use the white group here. 0.57

00:53:13.940 If we look at what percent of marriages are surviving for five years, you're looking at

00:53:19.040 80%.

00:53:19.660 But once you get to 20 years, you're only looking at 54%, which is much lower than I

00:53:24.660 thought.

00:53:25.140 Now, keep in mind, this includes marriages of the older generation, because it's looking

00:53:29.480 at 20 years from 2006 to 2010.

00:53:32.060 And in truth, when I look at older people, they get divorced at really high rates.

00:53:36.420 So when I look at like our friend group, like basically no one gets divorced.

00:53:38.880 I genuinely believe that this rate is falling because when I at least think it's going to

00:53:44.160 stick.

00:53:45.300 What?

00:53:46.120 You think it's going to stick that people are not going to get divorced later in life.

00:53:48.820 I do not think they're going to get divorced later.

00:53:50.620 When I think of my friends who are married, I just know so few of them that I can imagine

00:53:54.240 getting divorced.

00:53:54.600 Yeah, they're solid.

00:53:55.680 Yeah.

00:53:56.120 But I felt that way about my friend's parents until they all got divorced.

00:53:58.840 So what do I know?

00:54:01.400 Right.

00:54:01.840 Well, okay.

00:54:02.500 Let's look at education, right?

00:54:04.320 So, oh, this is interesting.

00:54:05.860 If both partners have a bachelor's degree, the probability that they will still be married

00:54:11.200 in 20 years is 78%.

00:54:13.940 That's Arctotherium's point, that this is a social class thing now.

00:54:18.160 Well, how does this make sense that you like stay married for so long?

00:54:25.000 Yeah.

00:54:25.460 How does that?

00:54:25.900 What?

00:54:26.280 Explain.

00:54:27.300 Like, what do you mean it's a social thing to not get divorced?

00:54:29.520 I think there may be stronger, perhaps stronger social norms, maybe more conscientiousness

00:54:36.620 of thought into the marriage in the first place.

00:54:40.480 Interesting.

00:54:41.300 Or maybe better sourcing of resources?

00:54:43.500 I don't know.

00:54:44.280 If you're like, I'm religious, this will protect me.

00:54:47.220 If you are not religious at all, the probability that, like, most people are atheists, right?

00:54:51.980 The probability that they'll still be married in 20 years is 43%, all right?

00:54:56.920 So, that's low, right?

00:54:58.220 Like, I'm like, that's less than half.

00:54:59.800 So, you're like, oh, it must be much higher for Protestants and Catholics.

00:55:02.820 For Protestants, it's 50%. 0.89

00:55:04.260 And for Catholics, it's 53%. 0.79

00:55:07.300 And you might be like, wait, that sounds even lower than, like, the average.

00:55:11.080 Well, what's going on here?

00:55:12.480 It's other religions that are boosting it, being 65% for other religions.

00:55:17.420 I assume this is because there's more first-generation immigrants in the other religions

00:55:20.500 categories, which have, you know, more traditional mindsets around things.

00:55:23.860 And so, it's like, where, what is this other religion?

00:55:25.640 It's probably, like, Muslims, first-generation immigrants, Hindus, stuff like that, arranged

00:55:29.820 marriages.

00:55:30.560 Anyway.

00:55:32.520 He continues, but unilateral divorce doesn't just destabilize marriage.

00:55:36.920 It also changes the power dynamics within marriage from favoring the more committed partner

00:55:41.960 to favoring the less committed partner.

00:55:44.500 Hence, quote, under unilateral divorce, the distribution of resources within marriage

00:55:50.380 favors the spouse who wished to divorce, end quote.

00:55:53.540 This is from Reynoso in 2024.

00:55:56.400 In addition to destabilizing marriage, unilateral divorce incentivizes poor behavior within it,

00:56:01.680 since the threat of ending the marriage on unfavorable terms for the undutiful partner

00:56:06.800 no longer exists.

00:56:08.680 This, quote, weakens the bargaining power of dutiful partners who wish their marriage to

00:56:13.360 continue, who wish to end their marriage because of serious mistreatment by the other partner,

00:56:18.500 end quote.

00:56:19.320 That's from Rowthorne, 1999.

00:56:21.480 He continues, unilateral divorce is sometimes portrayed as an advance in human freedom,

00:56:26.540 but this is a mistake.

00:56:28.080 By removing the ability to credibly commit to a long-term relationship, unilateral divorce

00:56:33.060 prevents couples from reaching a mutually beneficial bargain that greatly assists in raising children.

00:56:39.300 Without forced marriage, which has never been a part of the Western tradition, unilateral

00:56:43.920 divorce actually removes an important choice.

00:56:47.120 In the words of Robert Rowthorne, quote,

00:56:49.540 To get married is no longer such a major commitment and no longer offers the degree of security,

00:56:56.080 which it once did.

00:56:57.360 Since divorce is now relatively easy and the responsibilities and rights of the married and

00:57:01.980 unmarried are increasingly similar.

00:57:04.240 These developments are often presented as an advance in human freedom since they allow individuals

00:57:09.820 to exit unilaterally from unhappy relationships at minimum cost to themselves and with the minimum

00:57:14.900 delay.

00:57:15.880 However, this is a one-sided view since it ignores the benefits and freedoms associated with trust

00:57:21.560 and security.

00:57:22.240 The fact that individuals can now exit easily and unilaterally from a relationship that makes

00:57:30.780 it difficult for couples to make credible commitments to each other.

00:57:34.060 They can promise anything they want, but most of these promises are no longer legally enforceable,

00:57:38.900 and many are undermined by social policies, which reward those who break their promises.

00:57:45.360 So that ends the quote.

00:57:46.640 Because it no longer guarantees security or anything else, marriage is much less useful

00:57:51.160 and therefore less appealing, writes Arctotheria.

00:57:53.900 So this is a really important point.

00:57:56.460 And I think it's made really powerfully here, more powerfully than I've seen in other places.

00:58:01.480 Because what we're seeing here is that as soon as, and this is actually really interesting

00:58:06.460 about the introduction of no-fault divorce laws, is while divorces spiked on like a per-year

00:58:11.800 level after no-fault divorce laws going into the 1980s, they then stayed stable. 0.94

00:58:18.100 And yet they had been rising for a long time before that.

00:58:21.820 It's almost like they reached their natural level of I might trade up or intend to trade

00:58:26.740 up.

00:58:27.020 And he's saying that as soon as you get this, marriage becomes dramatically less useful to

00:58:34.560 both partners.

00:58:35.880 And if you're like, oh, well, if I do the valuable thing and like get Mary Young and move forwards,

00:58:42.720 the marriage rate, remember I was talking about like, oh, don't really start dating until 19,

00:58:48.140 right?

00:58:48.700 Yeah.

00:58:48.980 If you marry at under 20 years old, the percentage of those marriages that still exist within 20

00:58:54.040 years is only 37%.

00:58:55.020 So you're looking at an, like a fairly small, you're really taking out a bet against yourself

00:59:01.980 with this sort of thing.

00:59:03.600 And this is, is helped by these effects that we have talked about.

00:59:07.620 The person who is being less like, okay, if one person is investing less in the relationship

00:59:14.000 than the other person, the person investing less is the person most advanced by the divorce.

00:59:19.100 So if I am a guy.

00:59:20.700 Most advantaged by the divorce.

00:59:22.360 Yeah.

00:59:22.960 So if I have a guy and I have like a really dutiful wife who's really working to care for 1.00

00:59:26.660 the kids and everything like that.

00:59:28.040 And I'm sleeping with my secretary and I'm sleeping with like a bunch of other people.

00:59:33.480 And my wife doesn't know about this. 1.00

00:59:34.880 And then she finds out about this and she gets angry at me and I'm like, whatever, I want to

00:59:38.200 keep doing this.

00:59:39.680 I, as that guy am benefited from divorcing that woman. 0.93

00:59:42.740 If I am a woman and I am adding very little to the relationship and I'm just really toasting

00:59:47.880 off of the money that relationship offers me and I just don't want a job and the husband's

00:59:52.260 like, well, you know, we really got to pull together.

00:59:53.980 Like you need to get a job, et cetera.

00:59:55.660 I am advantaged because I can get money from him.

00:59:58.160 I can get in terms of alimony, in terms of child support by ending that marriage.

01:00:01.480 Whoever is the freeloader in the relationship, whoever is breaking more of the terms of the marriage

01:00:07.860 contract is the person by no false divorce law being normalized.

01:00:14.940 Okay.

01:00:16.540 All right.

01:00:17.600 Arctotherium writes, the welfare state, given that women will do most child rearing and that

01:00:22.840 men are more, most will involve some sort of reforce transfer from men to women. 0.88

01:00:29.480 As with all redistribution, this would seem to carry the risk of punishing work.

01:00:34.940 Yet in the case of marriage, it doesn't.

01:00:36.980 A man provides for his wife and children who he has some legal and social claim on, as 0.97

01:00:42.980 well as an obvious genetic interest in the welfare state changes this.

01:00:47.220 And of course you've talked about this all the time with that concept that really blew

01:00:49.880 my mind.

01:00:50.340 It's like single women really being nuns married to the state. 0.94

01:00:53.780 He shows a graph of net fiscal impact per capita broken down by women basically are negative 0.69

01:01:02.900 except for a little slight positive between the age of like 45 to 64.

01:01:11.400 So all women are a drain on the state except for women between the age of 44 and 64. 1.00

01:01:19.900 All other women are a net drain on the state that are helped by men between the ages of around 1.00

01:01:26.980 25 and 69, where men are net contributors to the system.

01:01:32.300 This is mind blowing.

01:01:33.380 This is mind blowing.

01:01:34.020 Also, this graph is a great argument for euthanasia because while children cost a little bit in the

01:01:40.460 beginning of 20 years of their lives, the cost to the state of people over the age of 70

01:01:47.220 just gets huge.

01:01:49.180 Like honestly, if people were euthanized at the age of like 70, the state would be so much

01:01:56.400 better off.

01:01:57.040 God, it's terrible.

01:01:58.540 Even, even, yeah.

01:02:00.320 Something that was pointed out on the discord that I thought was really funny is that Simone

01:02:04.340 is so much more interesting to listen to than Malcolm because when Malcolm says something

01:02:09.220 that's like crazy or out there, you know that he's heavily motivated by trying to entertain

01:02:16.060 the audience or shock people or troll people.

01:02:20.940 But when Simone says something, you know, every time she's totally serious.

01:02:26.140 And I feel like we play into the stereotype we're developing of just for every problem, 1.00

01:02:32.560 the solution is, well, can't you just kill them? 0.99

01:02:36.000 This is literally Simone right here. 1.00

01:02:39.220 I had the group liquidated, you little shit. 1.00

01:02:41.580 They were insolent. 1.00

01:02:43.200 Gosh, you're right.

01:02:43.900 I think it just went out.

01:02:48.640 You fix so many of society's problems if you euthanize people at 69.

01:02:55.940 Well, I mean, I guess you could just say, are they still contributing or not?

01:02:58.560 Because a lot of people still contribute after this age, right?

01:03:00.760 That's true.

01:03:01.200 Yeah.

01:03:01.360 And you can just, you could also, I mean, the state could also just say, you know, actually

01:03:05.680 a fairly pernative policy that I hadn't thought of before is just be like,

01:03:09.060 after age 70, you get no social support from the state, which would really motivate people

01:03:14.660 to invest in children as like, yeah, is the only thing that's going to support me after

01:03:18.800 I'm 70 because the state's not going to do it.

01:03:21.160 That, ooh, ooh. 0.73

01:03:23.520 Did I solve social security for the United States?

01:03:25.900 Euthanasia for everyone who doesn't have over. 0.99

01:03:28.720 No, no, no.

01:03:29.160 I mean, sure.

01:03:29.820 The only free state service you can get is humane euthanasia.

01:03:34.840 Everything else is off the table.

01:03:37.720 I mean, come on.

01:03:38.680 It would.

01:03:39.620 Anyway, yeah.

01:03:41.140 He continues.

01:03:41.920 Rather than merely supporting their own wife and children, men are expected to support women 0.77

01:03:45.720 to whom they have no relation and from whom they can claim nothing in return.

01:03:50.900 Not only is this much less motivating, but it also removes a major incentive for women 1.00

01:03:55.760 to marry in the first place, to your point about women being married to the state.

01:03:59.720 The state can simply extract a potential husband's wealth and transfer it to her. 0.97

01:04:04.080 No marriage required. 0.92

01:04:05.500 In the long run, this is bad for women too. 1.00

01:04:08.460 Even if they can raise children alone with support from the state, very few women want 1.00

01:04:12.980 to do this.

01:04:13.840 And by making marriage less attractive, the welfare state misaligns the short-term financial incentives

01:04:18.940 of young women with their long-term social incentives as potential mothers.

01:04:23.360 I think these are very valid points.

01:04:25.880 Yeah.

01:04:26.500 The Western solution, a brief summary.

01:04:29.640 If the Western European marriage pattern represented a cooperate-cooperate solution to the prisoner's

01:04:35.320 dilemma of human reproduction, our current dispensation represents an attempt to force a cooperate-defect

01:04:41.440 equilibrium on men.

01:04:43.320 Men are expected to spend their lives working for women and children that are not their own. 0.96

01:04:48.240 They can be ejected from the marriage at any time for any reason.

01:04:51.620 And by default, will lose their children in the process.

01:04:55.180 It is little wonder that, as in the Roman Empire, quote, marriage became unfashionable,

01:05:00.300 especially among the men.

01:05:01.780 But perhaps it would be more just to say that marriage on these terms was despised, for there

01:05:07.140 seemed to be few advantages to be gained, many to be lost, unquote.

01:05:12.380 Unwin, 1934.

01:05:14.000 Conservative commentators often lament this attitude and blame influencers like Andrew Tate, but

01:05:18.980 they confuse the cause for the effect.

01:05:20.840 Men didn't suddenly change their attitude toward marriage.

01:05:24.400 Marriage itself changed, and men's attitudes have slowly adjusted to the new reality.

01:05:29.420 Brow-beating and hectoring, man up, can't replace the old incentives.

01:05:34.900 Consequences of cooperate-defect.

01:05:37.080 Men have the power to collectively force women into disadvantageous marriage contract when

01:05:42.500 they give up men in exchange for little, although Western men did not do this historically.

01:05:47.440 But the reverse is not true.

01:05:48.620 Men have always had the option not to marry, and the alteration of marriage norms has made

01:05:54.300 marriage less attractive for women, too, with predictable results.

01:05:58.100 And he includes a graph.

01:05:59.520 This graph is insane right here.

01:06:01.880 So if you look at the graph, if you look at the number of people who are married, you

01:06:06.180 can see just how much we should expect marriage rates to drop going forwards.

01:06:10.640 So if you're looking at the number of people per decade who got married, yes, you saw little

01:06:16.120 drops between the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and then a slightly more modest drop until the

01:06:21.920 1980s, but you see an astronomical drop going into the 1990s, where it is looking like you

01:06:30.440 may only have, by the age of 30, around 25% of people born during, oh no, it's higher than

01:06:39.560 25%, what is that, because this is like a logarithmic graph here.

01:06:43.420 It looks like it might be like a 35%, 35% of people born in the 1990s married by the age

01:06:53.060 of 30.

01:06:53.680 Now, if you contrast this with people who were born in the 1980s, how many were married?

01:06:58.560 It was over 60%.

01:07:00.520 It looks like around 65%.

01:07:02.120 So you're looking at 35% one decade later being married at the age of 30, whereas like

01:07:07.620 62% or 3% being married for people born in the 1980s.

01:07:13.560 And it's like, what if you go one decade before that to the 1970s, just to see how quickly we've

01:07:17.840 fallen?

01:07:18.720 There, it looks like we're looking at around 75% to our, what, 35%?

01:07:24.760 This is horrifying drop.

01:07:27.340 It takes generations to see the effects in full.

01:07:29.460 Not only are we the product of millennial, of selection for marriageability, social norms

01:07:34.380 are sticky.

01:07:35.600 At first, men see their fathers who worked hard to get married and their older acquaintances

01:07:42.340 doing the same and they imitate them.

01:07:44.980 Women aspire to marry as their mothers did. 1.00

01:07:47.300 Even when laws have changed, the norms do not immediately disappear, but they get weaker

01:07:52.000 every generation.

01:07:53.140 People see that marriage no longer offers stability.

01:07:55.480 They see their peers and parents ruined by divorce.

01:07:57.940 They see that they can get the economic and sexual benefits of marriage without giving

01:08:02.380 up options.

01:08:03.460 And the old norms erode.

01:08:05.480 Current marital status.

01:08:06.600 And this is a graph here that divides whites and African-Americans.

01:08:10.060 So you can see that this hit the African-American community earlier, which used to be in a better 1.00

01:08:14.580 position, as you can see in these graphs.

01:08:17.120 But when I say better position, I mean more of them were getting married and staying married,

01:08:20.780 but the trend hit them sooner.

01:08:23.140 Just provides a good illustration of what I mean. 0.91

01:08:25.620 When the incentives change, marriage collapsed among Blacks who are not the product of millennium 1.00

01:08:31.640 of selection for Western marriage, almost overnight. 0.98

01:08:35.840 Oh, that's an interesting take on why it collapsed so quickly for Blacks.

01:08:39.060 I don't, is it that advantage, no, I think it's that wokeism hit them further, but whatever.

01:08:45.240 Yeah, I mean, like we went through these, like, well, one in the conversation with Curtis

01:08:49.220 Yorvin, and then I think in another episode where it's just like the civilization of Black

01:08:52.460 culture.

01:08:52.880 Check it out.

01:08:53.360 Great episode.

01:08:54.160 Yeah.

01:08:54.540 In whites, it has lasted longer, but each generation is less marriage minded than the 0.97

01:08:59.060 last.

01:08:59.500 Everyone is responding to new incentives, but not at the same rate.

01:09:03.040 I'd actually say that what we're actually seeing here is a little different than what

01:09:05.860 he's describing.

01:09:06.420 Because when I see our generation, I do believe that we will see this in our generation.

01:09:10.540 Marriages will, like, divorce rates are going to plummet.

01:09:13.120 Because again, I just look at, like, the people I know who are married, like, none of

01:09:16.040 them seem at all likely to ever get divorced.

01:09:18.580 And it's that we had a generation where people expected the scaffolding of the legal system

01:09:25.300 to make their marriages strong and protect their marriages in the way it did the previous

01:09:29.540 generation.

01:09:30.120 And that's the way the boomers were about so many things.

01:09:32.680 And now we're entering a generation where people are like, oh, I actually need to be responsible

01:09:37.700 for who I choose as a partner in making this a solid marriage, which previous generations

01:09:42.780 didn't feel as drawn by.

01:09:46.360 Just a quick pause.

01:09:47.420 If there's a ton more, and I think there is, Indy, like, I'm not going to get a word

01:09:51.140 in edgewise for, like, another 30 minutes at this point, because Indy's really tired.

01:09:55.320 So should we just pause this?

01:09:56.800 No, I actually think we should make the rest of this a separate episode.

01:10:00.500 I don't know.

01:10:01.680 This episode is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01:10:03.800 That's a long episode.

01:10:04.880 I'm going to say we'll make another episode on marriages falling apart and why that's

01:10:12.960 terrible for society.

01:10:14.820 I don't know, because, like, I still haven't really gotten to this so what.

01:10:17.800 I guess the so what for this is, like, when you have no-fault divorce, things fall apart.

01:10:24.960 Is that kind of what we've concluded?

01:10:26.360 Because he's looking at more than just that.

01:10:28.700 But I think we've converged on no-fault divorce being the issue.

01:10:32.000 I don't think no-fault divorce is the issue.

01:10:33.800 I think that this is one of the issues that he points to.

01:10:36.380 I think no-fault divorce is when the societal scaffolding is no longer holding a marriage

01:10:39.700 together.

01:10:40.200 But I think fixing that societal scaffolding is something we can aspire to but not count

01:10:45.940 on.

01:10:46.520 And I think that we need to build our own scaffolding with the understanding that we

01:10:51.020 won't get what our parents' generation got.

01:10:53.600 You know, we are not them.

01:10:55.520 We are not living in that world.

01:10:57.300 And even before no-fault divorce came onto the table, as you can see from that graph,

01:11:01.880 the divorce rate was going up.

01:11:04.200 So, you know, we were going to hit here eventually.

01:11:08.520 In fact, if it continued to increase at the rate it was from 1880 to 1980, and you project

01:11:14.800 it forward to 2024, we might actually be at the same rate of divorce we are now, even without

01:11:21.360 no-fault divorce. 0.50

01:11:22.280 No-fault divorce just allowed it to jump to, like, its normalized state, which is really

01:11:28.000 weird.

01:11:28.520 I don't know why it hasn't gone up since then.

01:11:30.600 It's when it was going up historically.

01:11:32.620 That's, I don't understand.

01:11:34.180 But clearly, it appears to be at, like, an osmosis point right now, where it's like the

01:11:39.700 natural divorce rate when anyone can screw over anyone. 0.98

01:11:43.400 But I think it's going to go down because I think new social norms are developing.

01:11:46.880 And I think that a lot of these black-pilled people are still approaching marriage the 1.00

01:11:52.960 wrong way.

01:11:53.620 They're approaching marriage around arousal or sexuality and not with the focus of their

01:11:58.340 children and their religion and their tradition.

01:12:01.080 Or they're approaching marriage with that, and then in the middle of their marriage, they

01:12:05.100 change their religion or something like that.

01:12:06.900 In which case, you're kind of the one who defected.

01:12:10.400 Like, even if you're a smart, amazing person and you're like, I just realized this was wrong,

01:12:14.680 I'm like, fine, but, like, the assumed contract when you guys got married is that you were

01:12:20.260 going to continue to follow this value system, right?

01:12:22.980 Like, I don't, like, I want you to do well.

01:12:27.320 Recently, a fan reached out to us with this scenario, and I was like, I feel bad, but,

01:12:31.200 like, yeah, you broke the contract more than your wife did if you're the one who left

01:12:35.580 Christianity and not her. 0.99

01:12:37.260 Especially if that was, like, the foundation of your interest in each other.

01:12:40.460 But, Simone, your, your thoughts.

01:12:44.120 And you can talk over a yelling baby.

01:12:47.820 No, it's bad audio.

01:12:49.700 I, and I can't think straight when I have a crying baby that I can't take care of.

01:12:54.040 All right, all right.

01:12:54.860 I love you.

01:12:55.640 I'm looking forward to dinner.

01:12:56.980 I love you too.

01:12:58.900 Mopi dofu?

01:13:00.120 Mopi dofu.

01:13:02.240 And you can warm up the house a bit, you know, it's a little cold even for me these days.

01:13:05.940 So when I'm literally wearing a full jacket inside.

01:13:08.600 Yes, well, and our bill, literally, despite our house being, on average, well below 55 degrees

01:13:16.380 in all rooms, is over $600.

01:13:19.960 Per month?

01:13:21.100 Yeah, which is insane.

01:13:23.420 It's the middle of winter, sweetheart.

01:13:28.480 Just.

01:13:29.460 Well, maybe we have to actually make.

01:13:34.140 Okay, okay, we'll make the game work.

01:13:36.060 We'll make the game work.

01:13:36.940 We'll make it make so much money.

01:13:39.060 It'll have the most money.

01:13:40.560 The way money works is if you cut your income in half and plan on removing entirely, maybe

01:13:46.840 don't double your heating bill.

01:13:49.380 Or in this case, like triple.

01:13:50.580 This is insane.

01:13:51.640 Although I've seen some social media content suggesting that a lot of people are seeing

01:13:55.760 insane price hikes on their electricity.

01:13:58.100 Not just because of this, but because some states, like the state of New York, have introduced

01:14:03.740 legislation or regulation that requires energy companies to spend a lot of money on green

01:14:09.100 energy infrastructure development.

01:14:10.780 But what these companies are doing is just passing on all of the infrastructure development

01:14:18.640 costs and more to the consumer.

01:14:20.560 They're just kind of like sliding in additional income increases.

01:14:24.040 It's very annoying.

01:14:26.000 And that's also happening with us.

01:14:28.800 That's happening in Pennsylvania?

01:14:29.760 Well, we've received multiple emails from our energy providers saying we've invested in

01:14:35.600 building more infrastructure.

01:14:36.680 And for that reason, you're going to see slightly higher energy costs.

01:14:41.460 But that's tough.

01:14:45.120 I don't know.

01:14:45.520 Like, well, they're kind of like, if you need financial assistance, we have payment plans. 0.99

01:14:51.920 But it's kind of just like saying tough shit. 0.98

01:14:53.980 Like, you're not going to get out of paying for this. 0.99

01:14:56.800 Like, maybe you can.

01:14:59.940 Don't you think one at a time is easier?

01:15:05.920 And you have your rocks.

01:15:11.460 You're a strange, covetous dragon, Toasty.

01:15:15.440 Oh, Titan, you want to steal Toasty's score? 0.96

01:15:17.900 I think she takes great pleasure.

01:15:19.380 Okay, go ahead.

01:15:19.920 Go steal.

01:15:21.160 Go steal.

01:15:22.480 Go steal.

01:15:23.080 Go ahead.

01:15:25.180 Oh, Toasty, that's nice.

01:15:27.500 Titan, you want some of these?

01:15:30.020 Okay, take.

01:15:31.220 Go ahead.

01:15:32.340 Oh, that's so nice.

01:15:33.980 Well, thank you for sharing, Torsten.

Based Camp - February 17, 2025

The Government Destroyed Marriage： The Game Theory of Gender Dynamics

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