[Link] More ominous than a [Marriage] strike

And they didn't even provide data to support that this single incentive explained anything.

Why not at the very least least compare marriage data across countries with different child support laws?

This is a really frequent thing that I see in current events / social policy / social trend analysis...there's a lot of great thinking by clearly smart people but it's on very slim supporting evidence - even when evidence is available it's not used.

Really, is there anything that should cause us to privilege this hypothesis over something simpler - like, for example, increasing affluence tends to delay age of marriage and prolongs "childhood" in terms of earning?

Well, everyone who gets married is irrationally overoptimistic about the likelihood of divorce.

Also, part of the problem is that nobody knows what divorce law actually says - I'm an American, but I'm not any better informed about divorce law than you are. Studying up on divorce law in preparation for marriage is just not something people do.

Because if this would all be true, I think no rational man would marry under such conditions, ever.

Have you considered making a LW poll to test this? State these facts and ask men whether they would be willing to legally marry under modern circumstances. For extra fun, make another poll a few years later and ask how many men who said "no" in the original poll are now married.

EDIT: Though, come to think of it, this probably tells us more about the level of rationality of the average LW user than about what a truly rational man would do in this situation.

After divorce, a man must financially support not only his children, but also his ex-wife.

This depends very, very heavily on state. At least by statute, the rule is gender-invariant, and focuses on the income of both parties and any disparity between the two (there's a belief that family law judges seem biased toward women in heterosexual unions, and toward caregivers in homosexual ones, but I'm unaware of trustworthy studies on this). Most states have fairly strict statutory limitations on alimony, generally limiting the duration of payments and the minimum length of a union. Some states, including New York and California, however, leave more discretion to the judge.

A judge may decide to ignore the prenup, and there is no way to defend against it.

Prenups are civil contracts, and like all civil contracts can be voided in certain circumstances, but there are defenses. The most relevant way to void a prenup is to show that it was signed without knowledge (in which case, you can defend yourself by showing that you demonstrated reasonable information) or that the prenup was unconscionable (in which case, you can defend yourself by showing that the prenup was not highly lopsided. Jurisdiction matters on this one, though: "unconscionable" varies highly from state to state.)

The money paid to his ex-wife may easily exceed 50% of his income. For example, if the man's income increases, the judge will increase the payment to the ex, but if the income decreases, the payment remains the same.

Again, depends on state. Many states limit combined alimony to a certain percentage of income, and while most states will set alimony based on the expectation of higher income potential, most don't allow post-divorce recalculation of alimony without a "significant change of circumstances", which as a term of art doesn't cover the alimony-payer getting a raise. The few states that do allow it, require that the change in income be somehow related to sacrifices by the alimony-receiver during the marriage -- helping pay for college classes is the prototypical example.

Different states have different rules for divorce, which can be abused by filing for divorce in a different state where the rules are more on your side.

Different states have different rules, but the filing processes are not as simple as just looking in a legal atlas. States only have jurisdiction over a divorce when one of the parties is currently domiciled in that state. In most cases, this requires that the plaintiff live in that state for a minimum of a six months (usually a year). If you live in Texas, and your husband or wife tries to establish residency in California and New York, this is pretty obvious.

As a young woman, if you marry someone and divorce him, you have unlocked the Early Retirement Extreme achievement, and as long as the man lives and has a decent income, you don't have to work anymore. You should avoid getting married again, unless you want to level up to a man with better income. But living with a boyfriend and having children with him is okay.

In New York and California (as well as a large number of other states), alimony generally terminates on evidence of cohabitation, excepting extenuating circumstances. So this /probably/ only works if you're willing to give up the live-in boyfriend.

After divorce, a man must financially support not only his children, but also his ex-wife.

This is not true in general. This may be true in certain cases.

The money paid to his ex-wife may easily exceed 50% of his income.

Not "easily". It is theoretically possible but not very likely.

A judge may decide to ignore the prenup, and there is no way to defend against it.

Well, you can "defend against it" by the usual courtroom arguments, but yes, you cannot choose to ignore court decisions just because your private agreement with another party said something.

Different states have different rules for divorce, which can be abused by filing for divorce in a different state where the rules are more on your side.

True, though filing in a different state is not trivially easy.

I think no rational man would marry under such conditions, ever.

Marry someone you trust wouldn't be a bitch.

This largely matches what I understood as well. The only real difference is the prenup, which as I understand it will generally hold up if it's not insane and you throw enough lawyer time at it.

However: IANAL, and only did a cursory investigation when I was considering marriage. I do not know how much different states vary in their laws.

End result: I decided to not get married or have children under the current regime, and did an initial investigation on how to transfer and hide my resources to keep them safe should the situation arise.

The problem Dalrock is outlining is a severe breakdown of trust. The reason folks might choose not to marry is not because they would be getting a bad deal if they did (if that was the issue, the incentives would simply adjust in some way), but because they have no way of trusting the deal they are going to get. In the absence of a way of re-establishing this kind of trust (and AIUI, commonly proposed solutions, say pre-nup agreements, are highly imperfect), there is no hope of avoiding a comparatively very bad outcome.

It's basically the same reason why societies with undeveloped or untrusted legal systems always have terrible economies: there's no way of trusting the contracts you get into, hence no basis for real development.

You would say child support laws for example accurately reflect our values? They certainly don't reflect mine. I consider them grossly unfair.

Why is this a problem? I genuinely don't understand.

Me neither.

I'm assuming things in the US are very different than they are here in my country (or I am particularly oblivious), because the comments on Dalrock's blog post fail to resonate with me at all, and I'm a male -- and yet Konkvistador seems to know what this all is about, even though I guess his country is even further away from the US than mine [EDIT: looks like I was wrong] (but he's much less oblivious than me on this kind of things).

Yeah, I see this as mostly a correction of the wage gap -- compared to women, men as a class have historically pursued money over things like creature comforts, social status, personal safety, and time with friends and family. This is what correcting that trend looks like.

Correct insight. But I'd assume that some part of our values is geared toward a stable economically viable society. At least if you basically agree with your societies values.

The USSR was technologically advanced until the end.

Stealing technology from the West help significantly.

(Even Slovakia produced computers those days. Sure, they were merely copies of foreign computers, but it didn't reduce our pleasure from playing games on them.)

I guess in another discussion this could be an argument for abolishing patents: If you ignore the patents (as the communist countries did), you can have cool technology even when your people starve; so probably if you could feed them well, it would be even better.

Back to the original topic... in an alternate universe, where it would be impossible to copy the West, Soviet science and technology would be much worse.

The article you linked to contradicts the point you want to make. It explicitly says that lack of marriage is bad for countries that have a sizable underclass, which is most countries.

we should expect such a change in culture to [result in a] decrease in very exceptional achievements.

Agreed.

We should expect [a] push in the direction of more violence as well.

No. At least not by the arguments brought forth in the post. Young men go for violence because - in the absence of showing off their ability as provider - fight for an alpha male position via force (I will look up references if needed). In the absence of pressure to show ability the violence should reduce by the same amount.

It seems to me that rewards to outliers are increasing overall. In addition, high achieving men also tend to be high-earning people and marriage rates are persistently higher and divorce rates are persistently lower for high-income people.

C'mon, how many of the Field medallists were doing maths in order to earn as much money as possible in order to get a bride? (I agree that that's probably what's going to happen in the medium-long term, but for different reasons.)

It appears to be this.

Of course! Innovations such that we won't need to work as much are great, but innovations such that they won't need to work as much are awful! Didn'tcha know?

It appears this is a little earlier than the 19th century. The author of this passage is John Billingsley), writing in 1795. The whole pamphlet, "General View of the Agriculture of the County of Somers," is here. There are a lot of old books, by many different authors, with the title "General View of the Agriculture of the County of X," they seem to be reports for the predecessor of MAFF).

In spite of the ugly quotation, the wikipedia article makes him sound like basically a good person (but kind of a historical nobody).

Edit: I didn't get the links to webpages with parentheses in them working. Add a ')' at the end of the first and third.

Edit 2: Oops, Multiheaded gives two quotations in the two paragraphs. I only tracked down the first.

Do you know of anyone who argued both that the lower classes should be kept busier and that inherited wealth was bad because it discouraged industriousness?