More cows, more wives • Hacker News Board

Re: More cows, more wives

#11

Post by n1b0m » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #6

> So how does one explain the parts of the world, like Europe and large parts of Asia, that are unequal yet predominantly monogamous? Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men. How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And isl…

Polyandry exists mainly in isolated, agrarian, or mountainous regions like Tibet, Nepal, and parts of India to preserve land and family resources. It is also found in some African communities and among indigenous groups.

The most common form is where a woman marries a group of brothers to keep family land and assets united. It is often a strategic economic decision for survival in difficult conditions, rather than just a cultural preference.

Re: More cows, more wives

#12

Post by russdill » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #9

geremiiah wrote: post #8

Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be ta…

75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.

The divorce mechanism is the legal end of the partnership. It's not an indication of who initiated the termination of the partnership itself.

Re: More cows, more wives

#13

Post by mandevil » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever. > In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate…

TFA talked about the difficulty of division, and waved at the idea that farming was different from pastoral societies because of the ease of division: farming land is more valuable as it is concentrated (because of the well known dangers of having many very small plots that are difficult to work and improve) but a herd (or fishing tools) can be split and merged far more easily. So agriculture drives to unigenture.

A blog post like this is mostly hand-waving at complex ideas, but that was her argument for it.

Re: More cows, more wives

#14

Post by CalRobert » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #9

geremiiah wrote: post #8

Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be ta…

75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.

The question, of course, is whether that means women want divorce more, or men fear divorce more.

Re: More cows, more wives

#15

Post by bell-cot » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

geremiiah wrote: post #8

Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be ta…

From divorces among family & friends - yes, those concerns exist. But they are also worst-case scenarios, and there are many "friendlier" divorces. Or divorces after the kids grow up - where none of the paternity, left-to-raise, and visitation issues really apply.

Vs. even if marriages were magically 100% secure - the costs of having kids in most modern societies have skyrocketed over the past half-ish century or so.

Re: More cows, more wives

#16

Post by voakbasda » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #9

geremiiah wrote: post #8

Enjoyable read. I've long since been wondering whether the low birth rates have something to do with the insecurity that surrounds modern day marriages. If you're a woman you don't want to invest in children, only to be divorced and left to raise the child of your now No.1 enemy. If you're a man, the insecurity is around whether the child is yours and also whether your wife will later divorce you and your child be ta…

75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.

This does not surprise me, as the courts are flagrantly biased toward women in these matters. Almost without exception, they come out ahead in every measurable metric.

Re: More cows, more wives

#17

Post by ramesh31 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

I mean it makes sense, all you really need are cows and wives to turn sunshine into children. What more could a man need.

Re: More cows, more wives

#18

Post by bell-cot » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

mandevil wrote: post #13

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Not an anthropologist - but instead of "How farming promotes inequality", I'd frame it as "How resource-producing capital promotes inequality". It could be livestock in a migratory herding society, or boats and nets when those were critical for fishing, or whatever. > In contemporary Western societies, unigeniture is either considered wrong or is illegal; we no longer differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate…

TFA talked about the difficulty of division, and waved at the idea that farming was different from pastoral societies because of the ease of division: farming land is more valuable as it is concentrated (because of the well known dangers of having many very small plots that are difficult to work and improve) but a herd (or fishing tools) can be split and merged far more easily. So agriculture drives to unigenture. A…

Based both on family history (farmers both sides) and experts such as https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an... - I have grave doubts as to the downsides of having many small plots of land in early agricultural conditions. The critical issue is having enough total land (measured by productivity) to feed your family in bad years.

And whatever nice-sounding things TFA might suggest about diving a herd, it's obvious that 8 cattle are worth 4X as much as 2 cattle. And any "leave 1/4 of my herd to each of my 4 children" division will result in a 4X downgrade to the next generation's standard of living.

(Oh, yeah - the TFA has plenty of optimistic hand-waving.)

Re: More cows, more wives

#19

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #6

> So how does one explain the parts of the world, like Europe and large parts of Asia, that are unequal yet predominantly monogamous? Note that when we talk about polygamy in the past, it's about, like in TFA, a man with many wives. Not a woman with many men. How does the modern "free" and "liberated" world reconcile that with feminism? When we talk about modern-day polygamous societies, it's basically islam. And isl…

I don't know the feminist take, but just to explain: the reason there is much much more polygyny than polyandry is basic reproduction mechanics. Women max out at ~13 kids, the most reproductively successful men have had thousands. So, a single well-resourced man can keep a bevy of wives at close to their reproductive limit no problem.

(Well, problems come when you do this as a society and create an age group of young men who have no shot at a wife because of 50/50 birth ratio. They get violent.)

Re: More cows, more wives

#20

Post by giantg2 » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

russdill wrote: post #12

dyauspitr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% of divorces are initiated by women in the US. If college educated that number jumps to 90%. Divorce as an mechanism, is almost entirely used by women.

The divorce mechanism is the legal end of the partnership. It's not an indication of who initiated the termination of the partnership itself.

Do you have evidence to back up the implict claim that those two are not strongly correlated?