Comment on: Competing for Love: Applying Sexual Economics Theory to Mating Contests

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318768331_Competing_for_Love_Applying_Sexual_Economics_Theory_to_Mating_Contests

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701630277X


This was an interesting paper.  One thing that the paper does not discuss is the influence of the government in sexual economics.  The highlights on page

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701630277X

include

•

Men compete both individually and in groups to amass resources to exchange for sex.

•

Because men can compete as groups, male competition is less zero sum than women’s.

The fact that men cooperate with other men in groups is highlighted, apparently meant to indicate that women do not cooperate in groups.  Indeed the paper comments

"The deficit in women’s cooperation with women has been apparent throughout history and continues to be evident among modern samples ... "

In my view the authors are ignoring some hugely successful cooperative strategies among women.  The authors talk about why cartels are not too effective for women, but ignore what has been very successful for women.  Collectively, women have been able to use the government to block, or at a minimum impede, a  man's capability to get a market price for his resources.  This is especially true for  men with substantial resources.  Consider:

A woman marrying a much more financially successful man has essentially no legally enforceable marital obligations and no financial obligations upon divorce.  The man often has huge financial obligations to supply the woman her "entitlements."  So, it is obvious that she is getting entitlements, but what is he getting? She has no obligation to supply children, sex, or even companionship.  He gets nothing remotely commensurate with his obligations.  

Even when women enter prenuptial agreements,  the women are often able to use government power to void or alter the prenup, thus removing a  man's capability to get a market price for his resources. Women also cooperate, sometimes successfully, to use the government to increase the demand for the group's sex by (among other ways)

1. Making prostitution illegal
2. Making it more difficult for men to obtain "mail order brides."  For example, some women in the United States are cooperating with each other against the interests of many competing foreign women who desire an American husband.  (Interestingly, this puts American women in collusion with very patriarchal societies [e.g. the Philippines] that want to keep "their" women from obtaining fair market value.)
3. Restricting substitutes like pornography and fembots

By and large, groups of women have been reasonably successful at using government to distort the market in their favor. As with most government distortions in marketplaces, there are winners and losers, with the losers attempting to counteract the government action.  For example, see

• The Defense of Default Marriage Entitlements and Epicycles
  https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2017/10/marriage-entitlements-and-epicyles.html
• Marriage Entitlement Ideology - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
  https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/01/marriage--no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html

• Beggar Psychology and Family Law Psychology

  https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/01/beggar-psychology-and-family-law.html

A Female Preference for Irrationality? The Pure Nonsense of FEMINISTS & CONTRACT DOCTRINE

A Female Preference for Irrationality?  FEMINISTS & CONTRACT DOCTRINE


https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/ILR/pdf/vol32p1247.pdf

"Therefore, it should not be surprising that “law” incorporates and reflects male gender traits. Some of these traits are identified as the preference  for rationality over other ways of knowing (e.g., intuition); for objectivity over subjectivity; for abstraction over contextualization; and for hierarchical decision making over consensus or compromise. Contract law, like law more generally,  is said to be male-gendered because of the perceived presence of these traits.  In other words, contract law is not neutral; it is one of the many social structures that supports a male preference. Further, it is not objective; it has a perspective, but its point of view is masked."

In addition to being strange reasoning,  this seems to be self-contradictory. It is a male preference for "objectivity over subjectivity" but the law incorporates male gender traits and "it is not objective?" So if the law is not objective, how does the law incorporate the male preference for objectivity?

Perhaps, one must be irrational to make sense of this apparent contradiction?

Rationality versus other ways of knowing?  For something to be knowledge, it must be true. A belief that is demonstrably false cannot be "knowledge." A belief that is unsupported by objective evidence cannot be termed "knowledge" because it might not be true.  Intuition may be based on knowledge, but intuition itself is not knowledge. Sometimes intuition is not correct. When the intuition is objectively shown to be factual, then it becomes knowledge.

If contracts were never disputed, this paper's attack on rationality and objectivity would be moot. But, in any disputed contract, there will have to be an objective judgment of the actions to be taken. The judgment cannot be "subjective" with each party to the contract deciding that the judgment means different things.  That is, in the end, contract law has to be objective.  This paper seems to be arguing against writing contracts that are as clear and objective as possible, in favor of intentionally subjective and ambiguous contracts.  This would seem to be a recipe for ensuring that legal judgments are arbitrary and capricious, depending mostly on the whim of the court, rather than an agreement between the parties.

The Fantastic Assertion that Prenuptial Agreements Cause the "Feminisation of Poverty"

The rather incredible assertion in the links below that prenuptial agreements cause the feminisation of poverty seems implausible.  (Note that my expertise is in the theory of fair games and unbiased results. The default marriage entitlements are both biased and unfair in a mathematical sense.)


Who Gets a Better Deal? Women and Prenuptial Agreements in Australia and the USA

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228146192_Who_Gets_a_Better_Deal_Women_and_Prenuptial_Agreements_in_Australia_and_the_USA

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UWSLawRw/2003/6.html#Heading84

Prenuptial agreements have the potential to 'further entrench' the ‘feminisation of poverty’ upon divorce.[86]

 Perhaps it is different in Australia, but in the USA financially successful men want prenuptial contracts because men perceive  the default marriage entitlements as outrageously unfair. Consider:

A woman marrying a much more financially successful man has essentially no legally enforceable marital obligations and no financial obligations upon divorce.  The man often has huge financial obligations to supply the woman her "entitlements."  So, it is obvious that she is getting entitlements, but what is he getting? She has no obligation to supply children, sex, or even companionship.  He gets nothing remotely commensurate with his obligations.  

Three things are common about prenuptial contracts in the USA

1. Prenuptial contracts are almost always used to level the marriage playing field.  As noted above,  the woman has no obligations to the man.  A prenuptial agreement usually limits the obligations that the man has to the woman to achieve a better balancing of the obligations.  (For instance,  the prenuptial agreement may protect premarital assets.) 
2. A woman  marrying a much more financially successful man with a prenuptial contract almost invariably does better financially, both in marriage and in divorce, than if she marries a man at her own financial status without a prenuptial contract.  Is this really in question? 
3.  A woman marrying a much more financially successful man with a prenuptial contract will not do as well as if she were able to marry him without a prenuptial contract. This does not indicate that the prenuptial agreement is "unfair" to her.  

What fraction (FP) of women divorcing under a prenuptial contract end up in poverty? What fraction (FN) of women divorcing without a prenuptial contract end up in poverty? Unless FP > FN, how can prenuptial agreements be blamed for the ‘feminisation of poverty’ upon divorce?  My guess is that very few women divorcing under a prenuptial contract will be below the poverty line whereas substantial numbers of women divorcing without a prenuptial contract will be below the poverty line.  I am open to evidence, but at the moment, blaming prenuptial contracts for poverty seems to be based on some questionable reasoning.  

Family law provides a perverse set of incentives/disincentives for successful men. See 

• Marriage Entitlement Ideology - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/01/marriage--no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html
• Beggar Psychology and Family Law Psychology https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/01/beggar-psychology-and-family-law.html

Here are my best guesses, absent evidence to the contrary:

• The more courts interfere with binding prenuptial contracts,  the less likely financially successful men are to get married.  If men do marry, they are more likely to marry a woman with similar financial prospects.  (Indeed, this was my case, though some women hated my solution.  "My Chinese Wife and Marriage Entitlement Ideologues" https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/05/my-chinese-wife-and-marriage.html) This leads to stratification in the marriage market with financially successful men marrying financially successful women.  Even with a prenuptial agreement, these successful women are very unlikely to fall into poverty.  
• When less financially successful women marry similarly less financially successful men (without a prenuptial agreement), those women are more likely to be in poverty after divorce. 
• When less financially successful women have children and do not marry, these women and their children are the most vulnerable to fall into poverty.
• Unless evidence is supplied that women marrying with a prenuptial contract are more likely to fall into poverty than women marrying without a prenuptial contract, one can only speculate that the paper's assertion is probably false as it is very counter-intuitive.  My best guess is that the paper and/or its cited references do not have any evidence that (as defined above FP > FN) women divorcing under a prenuptial agreement are at higher risk of falling into poverty.  My best guess is that a simplistic abuse of statistics leads to the paper's improbable conclusion. It might be simple faulty reasoning that because women divorcing under a prenuptial contract get less than they would have gotten by default,  women are poorer than they would have been; therefore,  poverty increases.  But, one cannot conclude that because women got less in the divorce they fall below the poverty line.  For example, if PL is the poverty line, then it might well be that without the prenup the woman would be at 10*PL and with the prenup she would be at 5*PL.

Prenups and the Strange Reasoning about "Bargaining Power"

Assertions by some lawyers that prenups are unfair because of "unequal bargaining power" is fascinating. The reasoning seems circular in some cases?

Take a look at

Mackay, Anita --- "Who Gets a Better Deal? Women and Prenuptial Agreements in Australia and the USA" [2003] UWSLawRw 6; (2003) 7(1) University of Western Sydney Law Review 109

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UWSLawRw/2003/6.html#Heading84

Normally men require prenups with women that otherwise would be financially dangerous to the men. This usually means that:

1. The man is more financially successful in wealth, earning power, or both than the woman.
2. The man perceives that the default marriage contract is so outrageously unfair that he resorts to the time, trouble, and expense involved with a prenup.

In discussing bargaining power, one usually assumes that there is a bargain involved in which each of the parties gets something they value. The definition of a bargain is

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bargain

"an agreement between parties settling what each gives or receives in a transaction between them or what course of action or policy each pursues in respect to the other"

A woman marrying a much more financially successful man has essentially no legally enforceable marital obligations and no financial obligations upon divorce.  The man often has huge financial obligations to supply the woman her "entitlements."  So, it is obvious that she is getting entitlements, but what is he getting? She has no obligation to supply children, sex, or even companionship.  He gets nothing in the marriage transaction.  

Firstly, desire to ensure the marriage occurs reduces a woman’s bargaining power.[60] It may make rejecting a prenuptial agreement outright very difficult if the woman doing so believes that it will result in her fiancé not proceeding with the wedding.

I have seen similar comments about unequal bargaining power because women desire to get married more than men in a number of commentaries/articles. Furthermore, many women especially want to marry financially successful men.  The obvious solution to a difference in desire for marriage is to reduce the default entitlements so that marrying a financially successful man is not so beneficial.  Indeed there seems to be an excess of poor men desiring marriage:

From (Why men are having problems getting married)


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-men-are-having-problems-getting-married/

If it’s universally acknowledged that a single man with a good fortune needs a wife, the American economy may be now illustrating the inverse of that corollary: Poor men with dwindling job prospects are going to lack marriage prospects. 

On the high male income/wealth side there is an excess of women desiring marriage and on the low male income/wealth side there is a deficit of women desiring marriage. Reducing the entitlements would reduce the number of women desiring to marry financially successful men and thereby tend to equalize the bargaining power associated with the desire to get married. As an added benefit, it might also help the marriage prospects on the low male income/wealth side.

But, Anita Mackay indicates that she thinks the background (default) entitlements are inadequate?  This seems a bit of a circular loop.  

1. Financially successful men are in high demand and short supply.  Many women will compete for such men, giving these men high bargaining power in whether they get married, who they marry,  and whether to enter a prenuptial agreement.
2. Financially successful men are disinclined to marry without a prenup because they perceive the default legal entitlements as unfair with no legal benefits commensurate with the value of the entitlements.
3. The woman's bargaining power is low because she desires marriage more than the man.
4. To solve this bargaining power problem, Anita Mackay wants to increase the default entitlements.
5. With the default entitlements increased,  financially successful men will desire marriage even less.
6. The woman's bargaining power is now even lower because she really desires marriage even more, and has increased competition to worry about,  because of the increased entitlements.  Financially successful men are in even higher demand and shorter supply. GO TO 1