[flagged]
Abortion is different, you wouldn’t say murder is something only religions prohibit.
The Divorce Colony (2015)
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#12[flagged]
" Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In this case it was actively distracting and impacting my ability to read the text.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
" Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In this case it was actively distracting and impacting my ability to read the text.
You can change the font in your browser, or use reader mode. Reader mode has been an option since last decade for every major browser, built-in or with an extension.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#14It would be interesting to read a charitable case for why divorce was prohibited . We see it written up as women being forbidden from owning land, or perhaps without a marriage, not being recognized as full people with the freedom to own it. It probably had some rational basis beyond cruelty and was likely about incentives, like reducing the reward for spouses to kill each other for inheritances. Maybe it was the epi…
For a long time, the prevention of divorce was intended to protect women. It meant partners can't just be thrown aside if a better deal comes along. Eventually, of course, it became a trap for women (and men). Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#15What an amazing read, about something I had no idea about.
It's such a different tale than what we deal with today, but the same thread. A group of people angry and upset at how other people run their lives, and more than willing to use the state to suppress and deny the others.
Today it's lgbtqia and pro-choice and non-white-people that the state is being coerced into hounding & frustrating, but it's the same wringing of hands scared forces, that can't recognize healthy bounds of what the state should do.
I'm glad to have run across this not-that-far-back bit of historical precedent. In my view, these struggles sap us so, and we would be so much greater if we could socialize better the improperness of using government to intrude on people's lives. Having a good historical basis, I hope, might help.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#16It would be interesting to read a charitable case for why divorce was prohibited . We see it written up as women being forbidden from owning land, or perhaps without a marriage, not being recognized as full people with the freedom to own it. It probably had some rational basis beyond cruelty and was likely about incentives, like reducing the reward for spouses to kill each other for inheritances. Maybe it was the epi…
For a long time, the prevention of divorce was intended to protect women. It meant partners can't just be thrown aside if a better deal comes along. Eventually, of course, it became a trap for women (and men). Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
> Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
That is unnecessarily cynical. Civil marriage provides several conveniences for the participants: it establishes a default common property structure (so there are no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month, or common ownership of assets, especially useful in the case where one dies); if one is injured or sick the other has the authority to sign hospital paperwork etc; handling the legal mechanics of kids (from picking them up from school to paying fees etc) and so on. It also provides some hysteresis in a long term relationship (which will always have disagreements), again especially useful in the case of kids.
Sure, this is a bloodless justification, but is t that the domain of civil law? Yes, you could laboriously set those things up individually if you want, but the bundle is more convenient and takes care of things ahead of time.
And it’s voluntary. If you don’t want a marriage, don’t have one.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#17It would be interesting to read a charitable case for why divorce was prohibited . We see it written up as women being forbidden from owning land, or perhaps without a marriage, not being recognized as full people with the freedom to own it. It probably had some rational basis beyond cruelty and was likely about incentives, like reducing the reward for spouses to kill each other for inheritances. Maybe it was the epi…
A theory I saw is divorce ban is to prevent women from switching husband.
And thus give men a reason to actually marry and have a life within women rules.
When divorce is too easy, then men avoid marriage and focus on random sex, since they aren't the ones that suffer the most if a random child happen.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case it was actively distracting and impacting my ability to read the text.
You can change the font in your browser, or use reader mode. Reader mode has been an option since last decade for every major browser, built-in or with an extension.
It's still a second-class citizen on Chrome, sadly :( And not always available on mobile Chrome.
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a long time, the prevention of divorce was intended to protect women. It meant partners can't just be thrown aside if a better deal comes along. Eventually, of course, it became a trap for women (and men). Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
> Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy. That is unnecessarily cynical. Civil marriage provides several conveniences for the participants: it establishes a default common property structure (so there are no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month, or common ownership of assets, especially useful in the case where one dies); if…
> no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month
I'm not aware of any tax consequences for splitting bills, or for one person paying bills while the other doesn't, or for any such scheme. I'm also not aware of any problem with pooling money. At any rate, I've had joint account owners on my savings account and never had any tax issue. I suppose hypothetically in some situations that it might count as a gift (I do not believe most would) and exceed the gift tax limit, but I doubt anyone ever has paid taxes for this.
> handling the legal mechanics of kids (from picking them up from school to paying fees etc)
Both parents have parental rights whether or not there is a marriage. There's nothing extra marriage provides legally here.
As far as I can tell, the civil benefits of marriage are almost entirely limited to inheritance/estates and hospital paperwork. It's also usually the only way to get someone on your health insurance. Generally, there's not even any tax benefits (except in specific cases with specific credits YMMV, or sometimes if one spouse doesn’t work.)
Re: The Divorce Colony (2015)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy. That is unnecessarily cynical. Civil marriage provides several conveniences for the participants: it establishes a default common property structure (so there are no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month, or common ownership of assets, especially useful in the case where one dies); if…
> no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month I'm not aware of any tax consequences for splitting bills, or for one person paying bills while the other doesn't, or for any such scheme. I'm also not aware of any problem with pooling money. At any rate, I've had joint account owners on my savings account and never had any tax issue. I suppose hypothetically in some situations that it m…
In fact, in the US, there are situations where marriage is a penalty: See old people divorcing because one needs expensive long term care, and Medicaid only takes over after all the marriage's assets have been completely drained.