(On a serious intellectual note, the many men – one woman thing would be – and I know nothing about history – pretty unprecedented outside of the world of beehives. And it’d have to be included if this is going to be done in the name of equality. Thus, interlocking marriages would make my head explode. “I’m married to three women. One of them is married to two other men. One of them is married to three other men. And the other is married to a woman and to a man, who are also married to each other.” If you don’t think this would happen, visit Berkeley, California. JK.)

Also, there’s a facebook group called “Just Say No to DBs” (and it’s not talking about defensive backs.) I was thrilled to find that a friend of mine was in it, until I realized her membership was more of an aspirational thing, like “I hope someday I can learn to say no to DBs.” Having observed their remarkable and inexplicable success on the singles market, I conclude that DBs will either be stopped by a concerted effort like the facebook group, or . . . I’ll just have to become one.

And, by 2028, shirt collars would not be able to fold down.

off topic, but ames, your last conservapedia post is on the dashboard under science … well done again!

I was going to bring up wives having multiple husbands, but the fact is that the vast majority of societies that encourage plural marriages do so to allow for one man, multiple wives. Similarly, in many cases, societies that encourage polygamy are already societies that limit women’s rights. We have little information to go by on societies that both treat women equally *and* allow for multiple spouses.

Even in the US, we most often hear “Polygamist” when it’s followed by the word “Cult.” Not the best of samples :p

Also, you’re a madman. Your scenario would doom us all :O The douchebag fratboy demographic will out compete all other groups for the highest echelon of women. Then, it cascades down the chain as poor musicians and prodigious investment bankers gather two women here, three there. Then, one of two things will happen: bloggers will, in a fit of rage, man the attack dirigibles and rain hell from the tag clouds on the simian Frat Boy silverbacks, or will evolve into sterile worker drones that subsist on mining for flaws in this week’s Lost script.

Though on a related note, are any of y’all familiar with the Screwfly solution? It uses math similar to the anti-polygamist argument I posted above. In order to exterminate screwflies, scientists irradiated large numbers of males, making them sterile, and released them into the wild. These males competed with fertile males for mates, thus lowering the number of females available to fertile males. Rinse, repeat, and the screwflies were extinct within a few generations.

I’m not saying polygamy would destroy society, but it interests me how slight shifts in male/female ratio can affect a population. Of course, gorillas and lions get along just fine…

You know as well as I do that the 5-10% of men who get left out will not just happen to be left out by bad luck. The good ones will still get taken. The left-out guys will be left out because they are ugly, stupid, irritating, Red Sox fans, or all of the above. Polygamy removes them from the gene pool and stops their ability to plague us in future generations! Rad!

The additional selective pressure would create a eugenics scenario wherein, accordingly, even creationists would be able to observe the effects of evolution. “Well I’ll be damned if there aren’t fewer douchebags now than there were 40 years ago! Maybe there’s something to this evil-ution.”

Polygamy: moving the human race ahead. Moving scientific knowledge ahead. And oh yeah, you can have multiple wives.

I would love to be berated for this view. I’m sure nearly all polygamist relationships in the LDS church are constructive, strong, beneficial bonds. Every mormon family I’ve known (granted, none of them polygamous) has consisted of better people than I am.

But I worry about a society that encourages multiple partners. In many societies that do encourage (and even celebrate) multiple wives, widespread adoption of the practice leads to an under class of males that breeds resentment and anger.

Let’s say you have 100 people — 50 men, 50 women. In theory, all of the men have a good chance of finding a stable relationship. But if you have 10% of the men marry two wives, then suddenly you have 45 men and 40 women available. You have the same fraction of those that don’t marry as before, but an additional 5 men that are left without prospects. If any of that 10% take 3 or more wives, it tilts even further.

Obviously women have a choice in this matter as well. If three people love eachother and want to spend there lives together, I am in no place to judge that. But given human nature, I worry about a society where 5 or 10 percent of men are effectively barred from having male/female relationships.

A friend of mine compares marriage to incorporating (law school girls, hopeless romantics.) And plural marriage makes me think of that. I think there’s a greater potential for abuse of the law in plural marriage than there is with extending benefits to multiple kids. I’d have a legal obligation to care for my multiple kids, so the multiple benefits helps with that.

On the other hand, to provide an extreme example, what’s to stop me from marrying 100 women, who all live in different places and don’t need me, and gaming the system to extend benefits to them? Any limitation on numbers beyond 1+1 would be pretty artificial. (“Four wives is OK, but five would throw the world into a tailspin.”)

Could I marry every single woman in the city of Cincinnati? Hell, since I’m married to multiple women, they can be married to me now and to someone they actually love later. Interlocking marriage structures would get complicated fast.

Another thing to consider is the conservative initiative to end the tax code’s “marriage penalty.” My tax professor demonstrated to me in a way that I can no longer explain that you either have a marriage penalty or a marriage benefit. If plural marriages are on the table at that point (and how could you discriminate against them in the tax code?) it seems you’d heighten the perverse incentive for sham marriages.