[extropy-chat] The meanings of marriage

Robert Lindauer robgobblin at aol.com
Sun Jul 24 01:51:44 UTC 2005


On Jul 22, 2005, at 11:20 PM, BillK wrote:

> On 7/23/05, Robbie Lindauer wrote:
>>
>> There are LLP's.  Marriages are, in many ways, like LLP's, in other
>> ways like LLC's, in other ways like sole proprietorships, in some ways
>> like a slavery arrangement sometimes.  The absurd example given before
>> by someone else isn't so absurd.  The paperwork that would have to be
>> created (and therefore understood to be something other than fraud) by
>> the various parties would be so extensive as to make a marriage a near
>> impossibility.  If someone could understand the paperwork involved,
>> they probably simply wouldn't do it.
>>
>
>
> If ordinary people had to understand all of marriage law and divorce
> law then they simply wouldn't do it.

Marriage predates civil society in the sense of predating marriage law 
and divorce law - marriages existed before laws were codified.

>
> Marriage was designed for rich families to combine estates and keep
> their families getting richer and richer through the generations.

Modern "american" marriage was certainly so designed from a legal 
perspective, but that's just because the US is so materialistically 
based.

>
> The law still applies to poor people. Poor people can get married and
> divorced easily because they have no assets, so there is nothing for
> them to argue over and nothing to pay the lawyers.

Actually, the easiest way to get unmarried to to have a civil 
dissolution if you had a civil union in the first place.  Notice that 
this has NOTHING whatever to do with marriage in the sense of "I 
promise to have you as my lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, for 
richer or for poorer, for better or for worse till death do us part" 
which while among the most often broken promises, is still an oath - an 
oath that even a 3-year-old can understand.


> But, as seen in celebrity divorces, marriage can be a method for a
> starlet with little income or property to enter the millionaire class.
> It does work as well for 'toy boys' nowadays, though it is less
> common. Lower down the scale, marriage law gives an income and asset
> poor partner a big claim  to acquire a lot (often up to half) of the
> income and assets of the richer partner.

I noted before that the original meaning of marriage - e.g. the merging 
of interest of two separate persons into one - is all but gone in 
modern American Civil Society but this doesn't mean that it is 
completely gone - the meaning of the term "marriage" has been diluted 
from its original social and moral and religious meanings to a having a 
purely civil and legal meaning.  This may in itself go a long way 
toward explaining the divorce rate, for instance.

Note in particular how it is the wealthy that tend to have these kinds 
of issues be central to a marriage vow whereas the poor, when they 
marry, don't marry with the intention of getting rich usually but, more 
often than not, someone is pregnant because someone jumped the gun, so 
to speak.  If you want to go primitive - marriage exists primarily to 
enable efficiencies in child-rearing as well as to promote civil 
relationships between people (so while I'm out hunting the wife doesn't 
go out hunting for another man, and assumes that I'm not out hunting 
for another woman).

Best wishes,

Robbie Lindauer




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