On Marriage

How Do Family Structures Vary?

The family structure determines:

• the amount of inbreeding
• the inheritance system
• the private property rights that originate with the inheritance system
• the degree of trust extended to non-family members, with inbreeding producing
• lower overall trust, and outbreeding higher trust.
• the degree of authority necessary to maintain order (prevent violence in retaliation for unethical and immoral actions.)
• the level of corruption demonstrated by members of the government since they are merely members of society in a position to abuse authority.
• the mobility of labor, since the larger the family structure the harder it is to move it to capital.
• the economic velocity of the polity (wealth).

Conversely, increases in family size determine:

• The degree of alienation and loneliness, since family members treat you almost always better than others will.
• The stress of raising children, since sharing child-rearing across generations is so much easier.
• The redistribution family members provide each other with.
• The insurance from the vagaries of the economy and life
• The demand for the state to provide all of the above in the absence of the family that the state has destroyed in pursuit of economic velocity.

List of Family Structures

Small Homogeneous High Trust Privileged Societies Can Tolerate Highly Redistributive Governments

State Financed Single Parent Family – Medium-term and short term pairings with or without a marriage ceremony that produces offspring, whereupon the parents cease cohabitation, and state redistribution finances directly or indirectly the support of the mother’s household.

High Trust Societies with Higher Economic Velocity, Can Tolerate Libertarian Governments

Absolute Nuclear Family – The “absolute nuclear” family is liberal and non-egalitarian (that is, indifferent to equality). Children are completely free upon adulthood, founding independent families. Inheritance is freely distributed by will.

Nuclear Family, Egalitarian Nuclear – The “egalitarian nuclear” family is liberal and egalitarian. Children are completely free upon adulthood, founding independent families. Inheritance is equally distributed, implying at least a vestigial necessary link between parents and children throughout their lives.

Medium Trust Marginal Societies with Medium Economic Velocity – Require Social Democratic Governments

Extended Family, Stem Family, Authoritarian Family – The “stem” family is authoritarian and inegalitarian. Several generations may live under one roof, notably the first-born, who will inherit the entirety of property and family headship (and thus perpetuate the family line). Other children typically leave the home to get married or become priests/soldiers.

A family that extends beyond the immediate family, consisting of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all living nearby or in the same household. The stem family is sometimes associated with inegalitarian inheritance practices, as in Japan and Korea, but the term has also been used in some contexts to describe a family type where parents live with a married child and his or her spouse and children, but the transfer of land and moveable property is more or less egalitarian. In these cases, the child who cares for the parents usually receives the house in addition to his or her own share of land and moveable property.

Low Trust, Poor Societies with Low Economic Velocity – Require Authoritarian Governments

Traditional Family, Communitarian Family – The “communitarian” family is authoritarian and equal. Several generations live under the same roof until the eldest die and the inheritance is divided equally.

Hetaeristic Monogamy – Monogamy with frequent extra marriage sexual relations.
Pairing Family, Serial Marriage – Medium-term pairing of individuals either in patrilineal or matrilineal property systems.

Consanguine Family – three generations of interrelated individuals live together (pre-polynesian) without any prohibition on relations. Property is irrelevant in this system.

Marriage is a Corporation

I won’t go into the full analytical treatment of it here, but under Propertarian analysis, marriage is a name for a corporation for the purposes of:

(a) reciprocal insurance of participant; and in modernity;
(b) power of attorney over one another, in the case of the incapacity of the other;
(c) a political requirement that one eschew free-riding in one’s reproduction by requiring self-supporting production;
(d) a political incentive for males, who would otherwise act without incentive to preserve order (production); and
(e) a legal incentive to prevent violence over mates by treating the corporation of marriage as property that cannot be infringed upon (or rather, justifying violence if it is imposed upon.);
(f) and finally, a political strategy that forces the resolution of differences in reproductive strategy into the family, and conversely, to insulate politics from the differences in reproductive strategy between the genders.

Now, just so we are clear on whose interests are affected by these rules, (c) is meant to control female instinct to bear children of her choice, but to place burden of them on the tribe. (d) is meant to domesticate males so that they do not overthrow the existing order. (e) is largely to constrain females from destroying (a,b,c,d). So in this light, the institution of marriage is in large part necessary for the prevention of free riding that is natural for all females, and out of that prevention we obtain property rights, and peace.

Various societies construct and enforce these properties of the corporation. No societies do NOT suppress female parasitism, since societies that do not suppress female parasitism cannot survive competition with those that do. So while we tend to think in terms of suppressing the more visible threat of male violence, the central problem of producing prosperity is not male aggressiveness, but female reproductive free riding. This turns the criticism of demonic males on its head, such that short term male aggression and violence and long term female parasitism and gossip, are resolved in an equilibrium we call ‘marriage’.

However, once such an institution such as Marriage{a,b,c,d,e,f} exists, it is somewhat difficult to deny others other than male and female pairings, from access to the formation of their own corporations. My argument is that they are not equal to the purpose of marriage in all dimensions, but certainly: reciprocal insurance, common property, and power of attorney are rights we cannot deny people. In fact, I cannot imagine why we cannot create many such private institutions with however many members we desire. That seems to be something we can all benefit from – and which weakens the state, and state-corporatist power over us.

So what is important, and what I think is the proper subject for debate, is not this thing we call marriage that we argue in terms of traditional ceremonies and our own traditional intuitions, but instead, how to we grant (a) and (b) including community property if so desired, while preserving (c),(d),(e) and (f) – the prevention of these corporations from exercising political power with which to extract rents (parasitism), or by which they can export costs(parasitism).

Those of us who seek individualism in politics are wrong of course. We must construct law individually since only individuals can act, and be punished for action; but policy must be constructed familially, because the purpose of policy by any intertemporal judgement is familial: reproductive. So conservatives are correct in their attempt to preserve familialism in government. That is because the central problem of any society is the perpetuation of generations. So as long as any corporation is eugenic (meritocratic), and therefore possesses equal interests in government, then there is no problem with participatory government except that of class – and we can solve class conflict with houses of government established by property under one’s control.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN
It means that we should articulate the properties of marriage as I have stated above, and state those which we grant and require of any corporation: we will defend these rights, as long as you hold to these other obligations.

If those are established, then by all means, one can form a private corporation for the purpose of mutual insurance at a minimum. And for the purpose of reproduction if possible. As long as one does not export one’s differences into the political sphere by engaging in rents (redistribution) or externalities (exporting of costs).

Under this analysis I see no reason to do other than encourage the greatest number of these alliances (corporations) regardless of constituency, regardless of gender, as a means of decreasing individualism and therefore incompatibility, in the production of policy.

All families have similar interests. All individuals have dissimilar interests. A family is the smallest possible tribe we can form: a man and a woman. And a jury (government) that treats all families equally save for differences in wealth is very different from a management organization (government) that attempts to calculate the impossible diversity of interests of individuals, when those interests are largely parasitic.

CLOSING
This may be a bit hard to digest, especially in short form. However, what I am advocating is that we have as many marriages as possible, and that we encourage as many forms of marriage as possible, as long as such a grant of property rights to one another is also met with obligations to one another: that we do not use government to compensate for our productive differences.

My view of Aristocracy takes the same approach to mankind: all tribes are the same, and we can cooperate as long as we do not engage in parasitism. If we do this, reproductive rates will solve our problems and man will evolve into a fairly equal creature regardless of race and gender.