Election 2020 Did covid-19 save American democracy?

The scary thing is, absent covid-19, Trump would almost certainly have won and continued converting the USA to an autocracy and perhaps a de facto, or outright, dictatorship. Had Trump's covid policy only been a tiny bit less insane, Trump almost certainly would have won.  

I had thought that American democracy was very robust.  After seeing the checks and balances, norms, and laws that Trump has been able to subvert and/or ignore,  it appears that democracy is substantially more fragile than I had thought.

 Putin sure got his money's worth interfering for Trump in 2016.

Feminist Schemes to Deny Men Prenuptial Choices - Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs

If financially successful men did not alter their behavior, then feminist schemes  that use government power to deny men the ability to protect themselves in marriage might artificially decrease men's bargaining power relative to less financially successful women.  This appears to be the goal of feminist family lawyers who wish to dissuade, impede, or prevent men from protecting themselves with an objective and enforceable prenuptial contract.  But, men are very likely to change their behavior.  What happens if they do?


Despite the fact that "women need men like fish need bicycles," there are continuing assertions about "bargaining power imbalances" associated with prenuptial contracts. Presumably women should be in a very strong negotiating position because men that want to father their own children absolutely need women as a matter of simple biology.  If women do not need men, and men do need women,  it is fair to ask what power men do have in prenuptial negotiations?

Men seem to have bargaining power because of the financial resources they can provide.  Financially successful men with high incomes are in much higher demand than men with low incomes.  Among the benefits of marrying financially successful men versus average men are:

1. She gets a higher standard of living during the marriage.
2. She gets more resources to provide for any children. 
3. Upon divorce,  there will be more joint assets to divide.
4. Upon divorce,  she will get  more child support.
5. Upon divorce,  she will get  more spousal support.
6. There may be a way to get some of his premarital assets,  or gains on those assets.

If a man chooses to marry a less financially successful woman compared to a similarly successful woman:

1. He gets a lower standard of living during the marriage.
2. He gets fewer resources to provide for any children.
3. Upon divorce,  there will be less joint assets to divide.
4. Upon divorce,  he will pay more child support.
5. Upon divorce, he will pay more spousal support.
6. He is more likely to lose some of his premarital assets,  or gains on those assets, because these assets can be attacked based on her needs.

Not surprisingly, women often have a much larger desire to get married to successful men than the successful men have to marry them.  Indeed, (http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UWSLawRw/2003/6.html#Heading84)

"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."

This reduction in bargaining power using the "desire for marriage" argument results in some very strange reasoning:
https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/11/prenups-and-strange-reasoning-about.html
But, leave the strange reasoning aside.

Regarding marrying a less financially successful woman, note that negative items 1-4 usually just "come with the territory" and it is hard to do much about those negatives.  But, prenuptial contracts can often protect men and have a positive impact on items  5 and 6.  Default marriage contracts and schemes like "feminist relational contract theory" attempt to deny men the ability to protect themselves from being legally plundered in divorce. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jols.12132  ,  https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2020/06/feminist-relational-contract-theory-new.html)

Leaving aside discussion on whether schemes that deny men choice to protect themselves are tyrannical or fair,  who do these schemes help and who do they hurt?

The schemes are designed to help women at the expense of successful men.  But, successful men can (usually) evade these schemes either by not marrying or by marrying only similarly successful women. With an ever increasing number of successful women, today it is not so difficult for successful men to to marry successful women.  The real winners with these schemes (denying men the choice of protecting themselves with an objective and enforceable prenuptial contract) are successful women.  The real losers of these schemes are the less financially successful women whose bargaining power is further decreased.  Their chances of marrying a successful man and enjoying the benefits of his higher income are substantially reduced.  Demanding money and entitlements after divorce,  keeps a less financially successful woman from benefiting from a successful man's higher income during marriage because he is less likely to marry her.

This demand to keep benefiting after divorce is reminiscent of the "Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" story.  (http://www.read.gov/aesop/091.html)   Plundering the goose may appeal to feminist lawyers,  but the goose understandably sees it differently.  If the goose is not kept ignorant of it's fate,  the goose will not supply the golden eggs.  For this reason, feminists want to keep the marriage contract subjective, unknown, vague, and unpredictable. Could this be the reason that men are not required to have legal counsel about the negative financial consequences before they marry? (See: https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/01/marriage--no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html)

Successful men historically have tended to marry successful women. This is known as "assortative mating."  Marrying a financially successful woman already is far more beneficial for men than marrying a less financially successful woman, even with an objective and enforceable prenuptial contract.  Removing the protection of an enforceable prenuptial contract, further drives successful men away from less financially successful women toward more financially successful women. "Assortative mating" becomes even more beneficial than in the past.

Feminist attorneys do not hold women responsible for protecting themselves from bargaining power inequalities in negotiations.  It is up to successful men to protect women from bargaining power inequalities by not marrying women with substantially less bargaining power.  A man should marry only a similarly successful woman who has enough bargaining power to provide him something in the bargain commensurate in value to what he provides her in the bargain. People have bargaining power in a negotiation based on what they can offer that the other person values. If a woman cannot offer enough,  find a woman who can. Always get a written contract with objective and enforceable terms. One should never sign a contract with unknown, vague, or subjective terms, unless one wants to be the subject of legal plunder.

As an aside, note that in the above paragraph,  women are absolved of responsibility to protect themselves, for  which they should be responsible,  and instead,  men are are held responsible. This transfer of responsibility from women to men seems to be a pattern in feminist thought.  See:

1. Adult Behavior and Personal Responsibility Versus "Affirmative Consent" and Other Lunacies (https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2016/04/adult-behavior-and-personal.html)
2. Sexual Harassment and Swimsuit Calendars - Dishonest Nonsense (https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/12/sexual-harassment-and-swimsuit.html)
3. “NO MEANS NO,” EXCEPT WHEN A MAN SAYS NO (https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/11/no-means-no-except-when-man-says-no.html)    The Pros and Cons of Forced Marriage in Canada (https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-pros-and-cons-of-forced-marriage-in.html)

In conclusion, informed men usually (but see items 4 and 6 below) still retain the bargaining power to refuse marriage contracts that are too financially dangerous to them.  Ever-changing new feminist legal theories attempt to preserve the non-negotiated entitlements and ambiguity of unwritten and unspecified default marriage contracts.  Who is helped and who is hurt by these feminist schemes?  Consider:

1. Already,  successful women are in high demand giving them high bargaining power.  Preventing successful men from protecting themselves in marriage to less financially successful women increases the supply of successful men for successful women. This gives successful women even higher bargaining power.  Thus, more financially successful women are helped by denying men the option of objective and enforceable prenuptial contracts.
2. Already,  less successful women are in low demand giving them low bargaining power.  Preventing successful men from protecting themselves in marriage to less financially successful women decreases the supply of successful men for less successful women. This gives less successful women even lower bargaining power. Their chances of marrying a successful man and enjoying the benefits of his higher income are substantially reduced.  Thus, less financially successful women are hurt by denying men the option of objective and enforceable prenuptial contracts.
3. The new theories often work by exploiting men's ignorance,  resulting in men "buying a pig in a poke" because of this ignorance. (Note that there is no requirement that men have legal counsel to understand default marriage contracts nor how new legal theories impact the default contracts.) Over time, men decrease their ignorance about current theories, so ever newer theories are required to maintain ignorance.
4. The new theories are often applied retroactively,  especially without a prenuptial agreement.  Even if men protect themselves against the current default terms when they marry,  they are not necessarily protected against ex post facto terms, that they never agreed to, tyrannically being forced upon them.  
5. New theories sometimes simply preclude writing clear, objective, predictable, and unambiguous marriage contracts. (See: https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2020/06/feminist-relational-contract-theory-new.html)
6. What if men are aware of items 1-5 above and  refuse to marry and submit to legalized plunder?  What if men will not give their explicit consent to marriage and perhaps even publicly state so?  The trick in this case is to force marriage or marriage-like terms upon men without their explicit consent.  This is advantageous because marriage entitlements (that the men must provide), which caused them to eschew marriage in the first place, can now be forced upon them.  For the moment, this would seem the pinnacle of plunder.  It is one thing when men, in their ignorance,  are plundered because they sign a default marriage contract without legal counsel.  It is quite another thing when men,  in their ignorance,  are plundered because they do not obtain legal counsel about not signing a marriage contract.  This elevates exploiting  ignorance to an entirely new level.   See: https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2015/11/no-means-no-except-when-man-says-no.html

Feminist Relational Contract Theory - A New Model for Legalized Plunder

Comments on:



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Feminist Relational Contract Theory: A New Model for Family Property Agreements

by

SHARON THOMPSON



https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jols.12132



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328817349_Feminist_Relational_Contract_Theory_A_New_Model_for_Family_Property_Agreements



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As long as a "feminist relational contract" were just one of the choices that could be freely chosen by both parties, I would have no objection to it.  But, the purpose of a "feminist relational contract" is not to provide  choice for women, but rather to preclude choice for men and force a "feminist relational contract" for all marriages.



The paper raises the question "why an individual would knowingly sign a bad agreement?"  This discussion (and other discussions in the paper) seem to be written almost entirely from the standpoint of bad agreements that women sign.  But, for decades men have signed onto unwritten default marriage agreements without understanding the legal implications that the default contract could mean different things at different times and in different places to different judges.  The default contract had men "buying a pig in a poke."  The paper does not seem at all concerned that in many cases the default is outrageously unfair to men nor that the men were not required to have legal advice before signing such contracts.

So far, no self-identified feminist lawyer seems one bit concerned that men sign default marriage contracts with essentially no understanding of the negative legal implications for the men.  Instead of any concern about men signing unwritten and unspecified contracts that men don't understand,  the lawyers are concerned about women signing written prenuptial contracts with specified terms (after legal advice) that women do understand.  In the interest of transparency, equality and fairness, all (default or prenup) marriage contracts should be written and both men and women should be required to have legal advice before signing.

To some extent, this lack of concern about men not having legal advice seems to be shared by the general society. I suggested to one millennial woman (not a lawyer) that both men and women should have separate legal advice about any marriage contract, prenuptial or default contract.  The woman seemed not to like the idea because "it was hard enough to get a man to marry without having an attorney explain to the man all possible negative consequences of the default marriage contract."  Of course, women should have all possible negative consequences of a prenup explained by an attorney ...

Prenuptial contracts give women and men choice about specifying contract terms.  Giving men choice is a problem for many feminist lawyers.  In fact, a prenup based on "Feminist Relational Contract Theory" tends to make the contract so subjective and so open to later interpretation as to render the contract terms unpredictable and almost worthless from the standpoint of understanding the marriage contract.  In fact, this problem is basically similar to problems associated with default contract.  So "Feminist Relational Contract Theory" is essentially just another way to take away male agency and prevent men from having predictable, understandable, and objective contracts. "Feminist Relational Contract Theory" uses the immense power of the government to ensure that any marriage contract is a bad bargain for successful men.


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.
3. The default marriage contract basically compensates a woman more for "marrying well" than for anything she contributed. Does anybody doubt that a woman who marries a billionaire and makes no sacrifices for the marriage and does absolutely nothing will be "entitled" to much more in divorce than a woman that sacrifices much time and energy for the family, but who does not marry a rich man?  For successful men, the default contract is simply legalized plunder.

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 essentially  no legal obligations. She is not obligated to have children, sex, or even give him companionship.  He is given nothing by the marriage transaction.

Now the paper comments:

...  Applying this view of agency to nuptial agreements such as prenups means that if a party is disadvantaged by the terms of an agreement but does not cancel the wedding, they have not necessarily acquiesced to those terms. Cancelling the wedding or leaving the marriage is not the only alternative to a bad agreement – another option is for the parties to negotiate an agreement that is mutually beneficial.

Part of this makes sense, the rest is absolute nonsense.  If she doesn't like the terms of the prenup she can offer terms that she thinks are fair and see if he agrees. If he doesn't agree, then there is a fundamental disagreement about fairness and a marriage between people with fundamentally different ideas of fairness makes no sense and should not happen.  If he signs a prenup with her terms, he has then acquiesced to her terms and is bound by them. If she signs an agreement, and gets married she has also acquiesced to the terms in the agreement, either the original or her terms.

If her terms are  a "feminist relational contract," and he signs off on those terms fine.  But if he does not sign onto terms of a "feminist relational contract," then it would be tyrannical, not to mention unfair,  to force "feminist relational contract" terms at a later date.  Very few financially successful men would sign a "feminist relational contract" if there were other marriage contracts available. Presumably, this is the reason that non-"feminist relational contracts" must be precluded.

The paper mentions "agency" many times.  It seems awfully important to preserve female agency. What seems to be overlooked is that "feminist relational contract theory" intentionally and maliciously deprives men of agency by not allowing men to negotiate objective prenuptial contracts that are enforceable.

One thing in common with both default entitlement schemes and  "feminist relational contract theory" is trying to use government power to obtain a better agreement than could be negotiated.  Prenuptial contracts are often despised by women and their lawyers precisely because it is almost always impossible to negotiate more than the default entitlements.  What does it say about fairness to men that the default entitlement men must provide is always more than the woman could obtain by negotiation?  So prenups allow men to negotiate terms and "feminist relational contract theory" tries to defeat the whole purpose of the negotiation by making the terms unenforceable. With the government's heavy thumb on the scale, women are then still able to get better terms than they could otherwise possibly negotiate.  This is just another iteration in the never ending struggle of the marriage entitlement ideology.


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

The arguments about unequal bargaining power seem simply contrived to justify legally plundering successful men.  No woman has to sign a prenuptial agreement.  If she is truly concerned about unequal bargaining power,  she can solve this problem in at least two ways:

• 1. She can only date and marry men that do not have more bargaining power than she has.  In fact, there are more such men looking for marriage than there are women willing to marry them.

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.

• 2. She can pursue the same career paths that successful men have pursued.  For example, instead of pursuing education in low paying specialties (e.g. underwater basket weaving?),  she can pursue education in the science, technology, engineering, or mathematics fields.  She will then be much more desirable to men, both because her income provides more to the family during marriage and because her high income makes her a safer choice for him if she divorces him.

In fact, marriage statistics seem to indicate that well-educated and high earning women are more likely to marry than other women.

From my personal experience, it is not clear that feminists care more about avoiding "bargaining power inequalities" or simply plundering men.  Protecting women from "bargaining power inequalities" by only considering marriage to women with similar bargaining power,  is not always appreciated and sometimes elicits absolute ire from some women. The fact that I avoided legal plunder was the thing that really seemed to matter to some women,  not bargaining power.  For example, see:

My Chinese Wife and Marriage Entitlement Ideologues

https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/05/my-chinese-wife-and-marriage.html

Does "Affirmative Consent" Contribute to Systemic Racism?

I have a number of concerns about "affirmative consent" rules on college campuses.  The effect, indeed the purpose,  of these rules is to remove the presumption of innocence and to remove the requirement for objective evidence.

1. There is no presumption of innocence and the burden of proof is upon the man to demonstrate that a woman's claim is false.
2.  There is apparently no evidence that "affirmative consent" actually works:     https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2020/01/rape-culture-and-affirmative-consent.html
3. Because no evidence, other than a woman's assertion is required, the panel making the "expulsion from college" decision must decide whether the woman's story is more credible than the man's story. If the man is black, will that make a difference to the panel?  With no evidence required, what role does underlying racism (even if unintentional) play in these expulsion decisions?

I don't know the answer to point 3, but  not requiring evidence seems to open up Pandora's Box for possible systemic racism.  What are the statistics?  For instance:

1. Are black men more likely to be accused of not obtaining "affirmative consent" than other men? 
2. Among accused men, are black men more likely to be expelled  than other men?

Also, consider that some women are trained to be against rationality and objectivity:


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...  "

When people of good will are asked to make judgments, the careful consideration of evidence can  act as a restraint against their biases, whether conscious or not. When objective evidence is  not required and the presumption of innocence is removed, can justice possibly prevail?  Judgment  by intuition and subjective feelings?

https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/2018/11/female.irrationality.html

Feminism Saving the Planet: Women's Value as Equals Versus as Sex Objects

(Note:  There are many strains of "feminism." This post commending feminism saving the planet is "equal opportunity" feminism and not the more malicious and tyrannical forms.)

Growing up in the 1960's,  before the birth control pill and the women's movement,  one huge problem was overpopulation.  Indeed, China was so concerned that China enforced a draconian one-child policy.

It appears that a better solution to overpopulation is simply providing equal opportunity and equal pay for the same jobs (not "comparable worth" nonsense).  Throughout the developed world most women have, like men,  chosen paid work outside the home.  When women get equal pay for equal work, they tend to have fewer children.

Fewer people on the planet means

1. Less industrial activity and hence less pollution and less greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
2. Less demand for more agricultural products to feed a reduced population so forested land need not be cleared to grow food.  
3. Less stress on almost all planetary resources.

So -- Equity feminism looks like a large part of the solution to saving the planet.

On a societal level here are a few speculations:

1. Birth control pill - People can increase sexual activity outside marriage without pregnancy concerns.  This increases sexual availability for people without the financial commitment of supporting a spouse and children.
2. No-fault divorce  -  Permitted people, primarily women, to divorce without cause.  Alimony often was insufficient to maintain  the standard of living without working.  More women thus entered paid work in the labor market.
3. With sex more readily available to men without commitment,  men reduce their valuation of women as sex objects and increase their valuation of women's financial contributions.  (In this sense, men start assessing the value of sex vs financial contributions more like women traditionally did.) Even women who might have preferred not doing paid work outside the home are now competing against working women that are more financially attractive to men in marriage and less dangerous to men in divorce. (See "  Beggar Psychology and Family Law Psychology"
   https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/p/beggar-psychology-and-family-law.html and "Marriage Entitlement Ideology - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"  https://smolyhokes.blogspot.com/p/entitlement-ideology-no-good-deed-goes.html)
4. These incentives lead to more stratification in the marriage market. People tend to marry financially comparable spouses even more than in the past.
5. Additionally, the financial dangers (e.g. alimony and premarital asset plunder)  via no-fault divorce of people "marrying down" increases the number, and value, of prenuptial contracts.
6. With their increased financial earnings (and therefore independence from men) and with their value as "sex objects" diminished anyway,  women did not need to cater to men's desire for physically appealing women.  Women became progressively fatter.  
7. With many women becoming less physically appealing to men, men's pursuit of happiness no longer required generating more income than they needed for themselves.  Men reduced their investments in education and their participation in the paid labor force as money became less important to them.  Their pursuit of happiness could substitute other, less expensive things,  for unappealing women. Video games,  online pornography, and (in the future) perhaps sex robots.
8. So long as women get equal pay for the same job, women are ready, able, and willing to take up any slack resulting from men's decreased educational investment and participation in the labor force. 
9. Item 6 diminished women's desire for men and item 7 diminished men's desire for women.  With desire diminished on both fronts, it should not be surprising that birth rates declined dramatically,  ameliorating the overpopulation problem that is putting so much stress on the planetary environment.

Women's Studies Thesis: Do Campus Rape Training and Affirmative Consent Work?

Suggestions for a Women's Studies Thesis on Campus Rape Training and Affirmative Consent Results.

It has now been 4 or 5 years (?) since campus rape training and affirmative consent rules were implemented on many college campuses.  I have been unable to find any statistics about the effectiveness of  campus rape training and affirmative consent rules.  Women's Studies programs should investigate this.

In particular:

1. Is there a graph or table as a function of time showing the reduction in sexual assault on college campuses that instituted affirmative consent and rape training?
2.  Are there comparisons over the same time period between colleges that did and did not institute affirmative consent and rape training?

In the absence of reliable statistics,  one can only speculate about both the effectiveness of the training and any possible negative side effects of the training.  From a skeptics point of view:

1. It seems unlikely that the type of men that commit rape are going to be deterred from rape simply because of this training.
2. On the other hand, men who would never commit rape, with or without the training, may get far more cautious about dating in general because they believe that there is no way to prove they obtained continuous affirmative consent.  Probably the dating pool of men on campus shifts toward more aggressive and less risk averse men and away from less aggressive and more risk averse men. (Note that this risk averse behavior has been seen in the response to the #metoo movement.  Men are becoming increasingly more careful dealing with women at work. Unlike the workplace where men need to work with women despite the perceived risk,  men do not have to date campus women if the perceived risk is too high. There are plenty of off campus women to date.)
3. Given item 2, has overall sexual activity decreased on campus?
4. Given items 1 and 2, has the fraction of sexual assaults (per say in every 100 dates) increased?
5. Does hookup culture increase because more cautious men reduce their dating?

Possible secondary side effects for study:

1. Men's enrollment in higher education is declining.  Does the training cause men to feel unwelcome on campus?  The decline could be simply coincidental.  Perhaps men, both those that did go to college and those that did not,  should be interviewed to determine what part, if any, the perceived atmosphere on campus played in their decisions.
2. Do women want the training to continue even if it is not effective?
3. If the atmosphere on campus is partly responsible for fewer men on campus, does it matter?