I'm sure I've read it in reputable newspapers presented as an argument for keeping consenting polygamous relationships illegal - 'all the high status men will get multiple wives and low status men won't have wives and will be troublemakers'.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/case-ag...
> monogamy's main cultural evolutionary advantage over polygyny is the more egalitarian distribution of women, which reduces male competition and social problems.
It's this 'distribution of women' that seems dark to me. That can't be that much of a crazy opinion as people here seem to think?
It's a very analytical, "cold" way to phrase it, yes, but you get this effect with many "human" problems that are studied scientifically, whether poverty, starvation, etc. Also note the same researchers can, and do, refer to the 'distribution of men' when discussing female mating preferences.
> incentivised instead marry someone else, someone you presumably did not really want to marry.
At a macro level, this is obviously true statistically. But do people experience it as such? You live in a non-polygamous society -- do you or the women you know feel like their spouses were forced on them? Because, to some degree, statistically, they were, as you correctly point out. But the mechanism is just via an accepted, background social norm... there are no arranged marriages, all marriages all voluntary, and everyone retains the option not to marry.
He can divorce and marry you, but that "frees up" his ex-wife to appease the roiling crowd of violent men. I'm being facetious, of course, because who thinks about it like that? No one. We just experience a cultural norm where people only marry one other person. And mostly no one complains.
And yet indirectly this norm has a macro statistical effect of keeping the peace.
Yeah I know - that's the situation I'm talking about. I know nobody seems to complain in public but I guess there are people out there is applies to. Maybe one day it'll change and people will be free to marry who they want.
People don't complain in private either. I've literally never heard it, even 2nd hand.
You're making it sound like a law against marrying someone of a difference race. It is nothing like that. Most Western women would be appalled at the idea of being someone's 3rd wife.
There is tiny subculture of poly-amorous people. Maybe some of them complain? But they can still be with who they want, just without the official seal.
Where are they illegal? Or are you talking about marriage?
Polygamy means multiple marriages at the same time.