
A link between polygamy and war - sohkamyung
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732695-plural-marriage-bred-inequality-begets-violence-link-between-polygamy-and-war
======
a2tech
A neat (for lack of a better word) thing to look at is bride prices-this
article briefly touches on it but it was something I discussed a lot with our
exchange student from Turkmenistan last year. Prior to our conversation I had
never spent much time thinking about how buying a bride would work in
practice, but it turns out that it ends up being a fine (although horrible)
example of capitalist endeavor.

So in Turkmenistan its expected that the grooms husband will provide a 'gift'
to the parents of the bride. This 'gift' is negotiated between the parents and
is for all intents and purposes a bride price. The bride's family obviously is
looking for an adequate return on their investment, while the grooms family is
looking to get the bride for as cheap as possible. My exchange student's
parents are both well educated doctors and her older sister is a US trained
economist with an excellent high paying (for Turkmenistan) job, who will in
all likelihood inherit an apartment in the city core, and is in fine physical
shape.

These are all fine qualities and ones that her parents have invested heavily
in over the years with the assumption that her bride price will reflect the
investments in her. However, the exact OPPOSITE thing happened. The men in
Turkmenistan have no interest-like people the world around they want the best
deal possible, so they instead go to the villages and buy a bride from there
for a few goats and a handful of cash (our exchange student thought this was a
shamefully small amount of money, but for the people in the villages its
significant). The men don't expect their wives to work, and aren't looking for
intellectual equals. Her parents have effectively improved them to such a
point that they've now been priced out of the market.

~~~
sethammons
Complete aside, and I looked in your profile for a way to pm you instead of
making this comment where I am sure to burn karma. I noticed in two separate
comments that you are improperly using hyphens.

> ... no interest-like people the world ...

Hyphens join two words. This sentence was hard to parse and was nonsensical
until I realized the hyphen was intended as a separator. Consider spaces
around hyphens when joining parts of a sentence. I was stuck for a spell
wondering what an "interest-like" person was - was it a person with a return
on value?

Cheers.

~~~
a2tech
Thank you for the info I’m aware that the hyphen used that way is a personal
quirk. But I’m always looking to improve my written communication so I’ll use
them correctly going forward.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
FWIW sometimes I'll do an emdash -- which allows a conceptual aside -- by
using two hyphens, but always with spacing so as not to confuse the usage with
word-joining.

~~~
okintheory
When an em dash is used to indicate a pause, it's most often used without
spacing between words and the em dash—except in newspapers [1].

[1] [http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-
dash.html](http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yes, my usage would normally be with endash in traditional media AFAIAA.
Punctuation, like grammar, serves the user in my mode of writing.

------
whack
I'm opposed to polygamy for the obvious humanitarian concerns, and other
issues raised in the article. But at the same time, I'm curious about the
long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy.

IQ and many personality traits have been shown to be correlated significantly
with genes (many of these studies are based on adopted children, for whom
genes and upbringing are decoupled). In monogamous societies like in America,
someone who's highly smart and industrious, will likely end up with the same
number of children as someone on the opposite end of the spectrum. In
polygamous societies, someone who's smart and industrious can easily end up
with 2-10x the number of children as the average man. In terms of natural
selection, this clearly puts significantly more selective pressure on
intelligence and personality-traits.

Over a few decades, I doubt this will amount to much. But over a couple
centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race
of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous
dolts.

~~~
pitt1980
Its an interesting thought -

couple thoughts, its assumes a cream rises to the top, such that your mating
success will correlate with whether you're smart and industrious

I suspect that there might be a tendency in polygamous societies for there to
be a lot of effort put into setting up structural barriers to prevent mating
competition from smart and industrious competitors.

Such that you actually weed out a lot of smart/industrious genes.

\---------

Its not the case that history doesn't have examples of monogamous societies
competing with polygamous societies over the time span of centuries/millennia.

And from a back of the envelope scorekeeping, it doesn't appear that the
results are polygamous smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes outcompeting
monogamous dolts.

~~~
whack
Regarding the historical analysis, we do seem to be in a provably unique point
in history. For most of human history, population was constrained by the
availability of resources. Ie, the Malthusian trap. The number of healthy
children one can raise, was constrained by the amount of material resources
one had at his disposal. Not to mention that even in monogamous societies,
birth-control was rare, and mistresses/children-born-out-of-wedlock were
prevalent.

It's only in the past 100-200 years that the nature of population-control has
changed so dramatically. Due to the widespread availability of birth-control,
the increasing taboo against mistresses, and the abundance of
food/shelter/medical-care, the number of children one sires is no longer well-
correlated with financial prosperity.

Luckily, the effects of improved education and nutrition have drowned out any
potential genetic effects from the above. But I suspect any potential
consequences in natural-selection will take several centuries to fully pan
out.

~~~
soundwave106
This might end up as a "nature vs. nurture" question.

The flip side of this argument, is that in modern monogamous societies
(especially with birth control enabling easy family planning), the smart and
industrious couple will probably have the ability to devote more time and
resources to the relatively small amount of children they have.

Whereas, the smart and industrious polygamous male (traditional polygamy tends
to almost always be patriarchal)'s resources will be spread more thinly among
their X wives and Y babies.

At present, I'm not aware of a current polygamous society that is known for
technological or intellectual sophistication. In addition to the above, the
overall social structure in polygamous society seems to be negatively
impacted, owing to the large quantity of unmarried, potentially violent, men
that need to be dealt with somehow (as alluded to in The Economist article).
Consequently, I'm _also_ not aware of a polygamous society which embraces
liberal values politically, or embraces democratic style political structures.

In other words, from the evidence I see, it seems likely to me that the
negative consequences of polygamy wipes out any potential genetic benefit.

------
blunte
I cannot find the excellent psychologist essay about this topic from a few
years ago, but here's a relevant summary of the concepts:
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resolution-not-
conflict...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resolution-not-
conflict/201109/how-do-sex-and-power-abuses-lead-terrorism-and-war)

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Now you've got me interested, look harder! (:

~~~
blunte
If I find it, I'll post it. I did just find this, however, and it touches on
the same concepts (and may lead you to relevant content):
[https://medium.com/homeland-security/the-sexual-origins-
of-t...](https://medium.com/homeland-security/the-sexual-origins-of-terrorism-
ab29878db9a5)

------
mrleiter
> Wherever it is widely practised, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking
> of multiple wives) destabilises society, largely because it is a form of
> inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of
> young men.

I expected that the sentence ends with "...of young women", because they are
obviously seen as objects of a man's wealth and not as individual beings. It
is an inequality not only of rich and poor but also one of male and female.
How can one not see this?

~~~
antientropic
Polygyny may actually be advantageous to most women, while being bad for most
men: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200707/ten-
politica...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200707/ten-politically-
incorrect-truths-about-human-nature). This is because it allows many women to
have a more desirable mate than they would otherwise have, while many men end
up with no mate at all.

From that perspective, it's no wonder that many patriarchal cultures outlawed
polygyny.

~~~
Melchizedek
In a way we reverted to this situation after women's sexual liberation. Before
the time comes to have children, the most attractive men acquire most of the
sex. And this is during the time in which women's attractiveness is at its
highest.

It is not until it is time to have children that most women settle down with a
man of equal attractiveness (and sometimes not even then since the state will
step in to provide resources to single mothers).

~~~
valuearb
You seem to be unaware of how many western wonen in their 40s and 50s are
having multiple partners.

------
captainmuon
Of course, this applies only if the polygynous marriages are exclusive. I find
it in any case hard to imagine how to support four or more wives not just
financialy, but also emotionally by myself (unless you think of them as just
property). Most people spend hardly enough time with their one spouse.

One could imagine that actually polyamourous marriages would reduce violence
in such a country. Why don't let your fifth wife be happy when you are busy
with the others, or doing warlord stuff... I imagine people thought modern
contraception would remove a lot of social norms and taboos around sex and
marriage, but that didn't happen. I guess some things die hard.

~~~
a2tech
You'll find from the article that in many cases the wives work at some task
and the husband takes the money. So supporting them isn't entirely one sided
(ie the husband isn't entirely providing). So you could look at wives in a lot
of these cases as productive assets-they work, they provide you with children
and raise them, and since they have no/little legal rights you can treat them
however you want.

~~~
swombat
Polyamory (mentioned by captainmuon) is a universe away from what's described
in the article.

I recommend reading the book "Sex At Dawn" for a thorough (if somewhat
evangelical) dive into polyamory (as opposed to polygamy or monogamy), and how
it has been used throughout human history and prehistory to construct stable
societies with strong social bonds.

------
dingle_thunk
Worth pointing out that in most of the schools of thought in Islam, it’s not
advisable to have more than one wife, except in situations where there are
significantly more women than men. Islam and polygyny have a long and complex
cultural history which is pretty interesting. And there is also polyandry in
Christian countries like Nigeria, where cultural exceptions have been made. It
seems to be mostly an African & Indian subcontinent thing...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny_in_Islam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny_in_Islam)

~~~
bonesss
> ... in most of the schools of thought in Islam, it’s not advisable to have
> more than one wife

I think this holds true in the general case.

I understand the fantasy, but I imagine the reality to be a lot closer to...
well, to having two wives.

------
golergka
> every time a rich man takes an extra wife, another poor man must remain
> single

Or he could simply be already dead from all the warfare. These two things
connect in positive feedback loop: men dying in war create gender misbalance
that would push more women to become second and third wives as well.

~~~
louithethrid
Everytime a woman marrys a second or third cat - some poor men must become a
culture warrior.

------
t3rmi
This looks like a case of correlation vs causation. The author tries to link
polygamy as a factor to unstable states. I would say poverty is a far more
common factor among the countries presented. A counter example would be Saudi
Arabia which has polygamy but is stable due to its wealth.

~~~
svantana
You consider Saudi Arabia "stable"? They just had a coup d'etat this month,
and have been involved in plenty of wars in the region, most recently in
Yemen.

~~~
zajd
I'm not sure "being involved in war" has anything to do with being stable,
seeing as the US has been "involved in war" for the past 250 years.

Also, Saudi Arabia did not have a coup d'etat by any reasonable definition.
MBS "purging" his political opinions does not a coup make.

~~~
svantana
I only mentioned wars since the article was about wars.

------
stared
Related: "8,000 Years Ago, 17 Women Reproduced for Every One Man"
[https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-
success](https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success)

------
lkrubner
This suggests that political stability depends on young men being able to
pursue their romantic dreams. This would apply in any country, not just
African countries. In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the
ability to get one's own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to
average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when
people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by
coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was
the best year in history to be a young white male in the USA. It was the year
when it was easiest for an 18 year old male to get out of high school, get
their own apartment, marry their high school sweetheart, and start a family.
And of course, young people did this in huge numbers, which is why 1958
remains the peak year for teenage pregnancy in the USA.

But rent has been rising faster than the average male wage since 1958, and
politics in the USA has become angrier and angrier. The mechanism that this
article suggests, that polygamy leads to war, would also suggest an angry
impulse in a country that has transformed from one where 18 year old men have
their own apartment to a country where most men don't achieve their own
apartment until their late 20s or 30s.

There certainly has been a change in the tone with which men talk about women.
Nowadays you can find Pick Up Artist web sites where men in their 20s and 30s
can supposedly learn tricks to win over women. The tone suggests that women
are far away, and need to be tricked into things. In 1958, a woman was a
person you lived with and shared your life with, starting when you were 18.
Early marriage had its own problems, which have been picked apart in endless
comedies, but according to this article, the ease of marriage in the 1950s
would have explained the contentment that the American people expressed
regarding their own government and way of life.

The other implication of this is that Consumer Price Index is a lousy way to
track people's standard of living, because it tends to treat socks and lettuce
and bicycles and apples and houses and automobiles and Xboxes and Nintendo
consoles as all having the same weight to each other as their price. But if
this article is right, that men need women or they become war like, that would
suggest that one item (housing) has an emotional weight that makes it much
more important than any other item. If we adjust the median male wage with the
CPI then it seems male wages in the USA have been stagnant since 1973. But if
we gave housing the kind of weight that this article seems to justify, then we
could say that men have seen a declining standard of living since 1958. That
is, the abundance of socks and lettuce and bicycles and apples and automobiles
and Xboxes and Nintendo consoles does not make up for rising rent.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
I think you confused a few points. You mention both men getting apartments so
they can form families with their already existing relationships and men who
don't have relationships turning to online resources to try to understand how
to have them. These seem distinct phenomena. Especially since in many other
cultures newly wed couples would live with one set of parents in a multi-
generational household. This means while it would go contrary to current
social expectations and there would be some stress from doing such, not having
an independent home for a relationship should be considered separate from not
having a relationship. The latter is what mimics polygamous societies, and if
the theory about the disability they cause those societies is true, should
give us cause for concern in our own.

That there is a correlation between the availability of housing and effects
you mention might be driven by a third hidden factor.

------
DyslexicAtheist
fascinating article. These 2 were mentioned in the comments give additional
insight:

    
    
      - Article on brideprice: https://today.tamu.edu/2017/08/08/what-is-brideprice-and-how-is-it-linked-to-terrorism/
    
      - Paper: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00289

------
tabtab
I've heard variations of this called "Blue-Balls Theory". Reproduction for
males becomes a high-stakes all-or-nothing prospect such that using violence
is often a better reproductive strategy than "peaceful failure".

------
MechEStudent
This has implications for the economy of prostitution, and pornography.

------
hullsean
correlation does not equal causation.

the article does not seem to consider open relationships and the many other
non-traditional arrangements that are becoming more common & widespread.

------
murtnowski
You’ve reached your article limit

~~~
rak00n
Open in incognito.

------
underqwalified
HN is just not equipped to discuss this sort of thing.

~~~
ashleyn
I think that's because an acknowledgement that the kind of marriage one
selects has an "environmental impact" immediately brings the sacred cow of gay
marriage into question.

When it really shouldn't. You still have a fundamental right to select the
type of relationship that's right for you, but you do have a responsibility to
be mindful of its effect on society. This doesn't just mean ban stuff. Perhaps
for polygyny, that would translate into making the relationship non-exclusive,
rather than choosing against it altogether.

~~~
mLuby
Agreed w parent (not GP). Ability to choose your relationship structure is
usually overridden by economic forces. (Related: do cows suffer from
inflation?)

------
khrm
"This is a remarkable article: it literally pins the blame for everything bad
that non-white people do on the one thing white people (read Western
Europeans) have criticized others for for two millennia: polygamy. Violence?
Polygamy. Terrorism? Polygamy. Domestic violence? Polygamy. Child mortality?
Polygamy.

Of course the article is so high on its own supply that it ignores
divorce/remarriage of wives of elite polygamous men and, even more so, that
enormous reality of western life: extra-marital sex. Despite this article’s
claims, polygamy is always relatively uncommon. It would be good to know how
common it is in comparison to men hogging more than one woman in non-marriage
sexual relationships. Temporary? So are, in effect, many polygamous marriages.
I’m stunned this article got published."\- Jonathan Brown

~~~
golergka
> it literally pins the blame for everything bad that non-white people do on
> the one thing white people ... have criticized others for for two millennia

While I don't think that polygamy is the root of all evil, it is a fact that
"white people" countries don't have these bad things happening. Wouldn't it be
logical to suggest that some difference in behaviour might be the reason for
it?

~~~
kazagistar
No. Correlations implying causation are not logical, and there might be
numerous possible other factors causing either or both.

~~~
swombat
It's not necessarily a "correlation implies causation" fallacy when there is
clear and detailed reasoning of how one thing causes the other.

Correlation does not prevent causation either. It's not enough to prove
causation, but it's a hint that there could be something linking the two
factors in some way. I find the article provides a convincing story of how one
factor causes the other.

~~~
khrm
That article is factually wrong. Tunisia had outlawed polygamy and got Arab
Spring. And how many suicide bombs did Iraq had before Gulf War? In Daesh
countries (Iraq and Syria) polygamy wasn't that common.

------
NoB4Mouth
Maybe the topic may sound funny for some but it's not when you experience it.

    
    
      I am currently dating a girl who has been force-married at age 12 to a cousin of his father. The man is two decades older than her but she had nothing to say because her consent is not need according to "traditions". Women are "exchanged" as cattle in their culture. Those transactions build inter-tribal relations. I know a bit about their culture because i read social Anthropology @ uni. 
    
      She run away from the man 4 years ago & came back to live with her parents. The father is still pushing her to go back to the man. He has heard that his daughter is dating someone (Me) and is very treating her shabbily these days. 
    
      Whereas the girl's mother got to know me and we interact regularly. She is a very kind & soft-spoken woman. Her husband is now accusing her of supporting the "dalliances" of their daughter. The father is the one who is supposed to take the bride-price in case of marriage.
    
      I'm currently confused about it. I don't want to marry someone i've not paid the bride-price for. I don't want to leave the girl either because the love she has for me. 
    

Hmmmm I'm confused... I'm really confused... Any help or advice...

