When I read Wretchard at Belmont club describe the effect of John Edwards affair on the nature of politics in general, I couldn't help but see a real formidable analog in the effect it must have had on the marriage institution:
The cost of lying, according to Tobias Lindquist of Stockholm University, “increases with the size of the lie and the strength of the promise”. A classic example of “the bigger they come, the harder they fall” is Bernie Madoff; or if you are inclined to institutional examples, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which everyone knows were “too big to fail”. There may be even more striking examples about, but this is not the place to talk about them.
But even if the liar is not caught, the very prize he seeks to obtain is cheapened by the falsehood. It’s not poetic justice, its economics.
If I were to merely key off of the phrase "too big to fail", and the assurances that marriage will not change with the major alteration to its definition, it wouldn't be the first time that I have noted such a parallel. Both the adulterer and the proponent of neutering marriage believe that the health of their marriage, or the institution of marriage, is to momentous to be taken off course by their own infidelity.
Similarly, I've also covered the ground of how the prize if marriage itself is cheapened in the process of neutering it. I've often said that neutering marriage does no one any good -- and it is especially cheapened for the people who buy into the newly neutered definition. The same goes for the adulterer who believes that their new open expression of sexual conduct is anymore meaningful then the monogamous life long commitment they could have had.
But Wretchard charts a metaphor with an established economic principle which also has application in this debate. It dovetails nicely with Jane Gault's recognition of the marginal case in charting just how marriage could be devalued if it were neutered.
He points to the "Market for Lemons", a paper based on the market for used cars. The Wikipedia offers as a synopsis:
There are good used cars and defective used cars ("lemons"), but because of asymmetric information about the car (the seller knows much more about the problems of the car than the buyer), the buyer of a car does not know beforehand whether it is a good car or a lemon. So the buyer's best guess for a given car is that the car is of average quality; accordingly, he/she will be willing to pay for it only the price of a car of known average quality. This means that the owner of a good used car will be unable to get a high enough price to make selling that car worthwhile. Therefore, owners of good cars will not place their cars on the used car market. This is sometimes summarized as "the bad driving out the good" in the market. "Lemon market" effects have also been noted in other markets, such as used computers and the online dating "market".
The quality of a marriage is different, perhaps even completely different then the quality of a companion's commitment to marriage. However, the quality of the marriage institution is perhaps very comparable to the institution of online dating or buying a used car. All involve an investment and a continued commitment to an uncertain future. All involve the recognition that you may not know what you are getting into while the purveyors will have a much better clue. And the people most exposed to the poor quality are less likely to even join the effort to find the real quality to begin with.
A recent exchange in our comment section brought out the question of why Queen Elizabeth the First never got married, in spite of numerous petitions and suitors. The other commenter claimed of Elizabeth, "She knew that re-marrying would cause her to become subject to her husband". As I mentioned in my reply there are many problems with this assumption. In fact, the structure so strongly resembles the institution of marriage as a Lemon Market, I can't quite put it down.
Before Elizabeth sat on the throne of England, her sister Mary was Queen. One would think that if there was such a cause for concern that Mary would, perhaps, have the same fear? However as the Wikipedia reports...
At age 37, Mary turned her attention to finding a husband and producing an heir, thus preventing the Protestant Elizabeth (still her successor under the terms of Henry VIII's will) from succeeding to the throne.
It is important to note that her marriage did make her unpopular due to the foreign entanglements it caused. And so I'll leave quickly on the table the postulate that their marriage was simply a bad example for Elizabeth in matters of state, and move on.
Other theories include that Elizabeth feared she was infertile, and felt no advantage to marriage. The way she would have known this, according to the theory, was from how an uncle molested her regularly as a teenager (those generous to the proceedings call it just an affair). All ripe for a lemony understanding of marriage, but that isn't even the strongest source of potential sourness towards marriage.
The conjunction of famous qualities has given Elizabeth a lasting legacy and lore. She being a woman monarch in England, and unmarried her whole life, might just correspond to another notorious first -- her father was none other then King Henry the VIII, who is famous in being the first King to divorce (or rather go even further and divorce) his wife.
There are good marriages, and bad marriages ("lemons"). The good marriages are the ones that express selfless devotion to the person they combine with to have children with. The good marriages are the ones that equally recognize, with tolerance and compassion, the rights and responsibilities of both partners in raising the children they have together, and the rights those children can claim from their parents care. This generational gift of love by example is what has given marriage a reputation beyond the lemons occasionally found in it.
Those ideals have constantly been eroded by the selfish goals of sexual liberty. No clearer case is where the adulterer (or in the case of divorce for sexual liberty, the abandoner) causes that marriage to go sour. Instead of giving the gift of love and tolerance to the next generation, it causes callous and churlishness. The reason this applies to neutering marriage is in the effect of removing of its expectation of equality. And I mean specifically the equality in how both genders relate to each other in each marriage. Which, when eroded or even neutered, only instills and even subsidizes those principles that make marriages go sour.
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