[mvncleaninst]

These types of articles are doing the opposite of what they're trying to do. How exactly is framing marriage in purely economic terms supposed to encourage marriage? How is reducing people down to an income stream, a college diploma, genitalia, etc going to encourage marriage?

Take this for example:

> not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability.

It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other... no, they talk about economics. They talk about "what's good for me and my bank account"

The tone of this article: it reads like it was written by a sociopath. You ask the author "why do people get married" and hear this stupid shit about economics and "benefits to society", nothing about love or trust or any of the actual reasons. People can't just get along for some reason, economics has to insert itself into everything and liquidate whatever trust and spontaneity it can find

[rayiner]

> It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other...

That’s how poor people think. Marriage is one of the most important economic decisions you’ll make for yourself and your children. And if you look at what the country’s economic elites actually do, they very much take economics into account, even if indirectly. A huge fraction of my friends from law school got married to other people from school. Part of that is that they’re around their classmates. But the social structure around then also gently nudges them into those decisions. My Asian parents didn’t hide the fact that my wife’s credentials played a major role in winning their approval, but I suspect the same dynamic manifested in a more subtle form among my classmates with American parents.

[userinanother]

Because initial burst of love only lasts so long. After that it’s friendship, economics, co dependence and the other things that keep families working tougher as one unit

[bobbylarrybobby]

Initial bursts by definition only last so long, but is it really so crazy to think that love might persist indefinitely?

[userinanother]

Yes, initial love and later love might be the same word but they mean different things. It’s a deficiency in our language and terminology

[avar]

Because at the end of the day, marriage is primarily about economics.

You can be in love, be in a stable long term relationship, raise children together etc. without being married.

Being married means entering a trilateral pact between two people, and the state. It can make sense to do so for a lot of reasons, e.g. tax benefits (in particular in the US, as opposed to many other OECD countries).

That people conflate this arrangement with the government with what's going on in their personal lives is just fluff. It's understandable given cultural inertia, but if you really get down to it that's all it is.

[skissane]

> It's really disgusting what they're doing here. They don't talk about whether you love the other person, or whether you complement each other...

> The tone of this article: it reads like it was written by a sociopath

The mediaeval Catholic philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas argued [0] that the primary purpose of marriage is for the good of children, by giving them certainty about their own paternity. A long way from modern ideas about “marriage for love” or “compatibility”-but I don’t think it it is sociopathic

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5041.htm#article1 - that is the Supplement to the Summa so not written by Aquinas himself, rather written by his students after his death - although it is believed to be based on their notes and recollections of his lectures

[mvncleaninst]

Oh wow, Aquinas opining about something he himself had never experienced. I'm sure this has some merit. Let's spend a couple hundred years trying to figure out what he meant, I'm sure we'll get somewhere

[skissane]

I used to think marriage was pointless. Aquinas helped me change my mind about that. And now I am married with two children. But one of those children is older than the marriage is. (Actually both if we count from conception as opposed to from marriage.)

[skissane]

> Actually both if we count from conception as opposed to from marriage.)

I meant to say “from birth” (think one word type another; a “thinko”?)