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A neat (for lack of a better word) thing to look at is bride prices-this article briefly touches on it but it was something I discussed a lot with our exchange
by a2tech 9y ago
A neat (for lack of a better word) thing to look at is bride prices-this article briefly touches on it but it was something I discussed a lot with our exchange student from Turkmenistan last year. Prior to our conversation I had never spent much time thinking about how buying a bride would work in practice, but it turns out that it ends up being a fine (although horrible) example of capitalist endeavor.
So in Turkmenistan its expected that the grooms husband will provide a 'gift' to the parents of the bride. This 'gift' is negotiated between the parents and is for all intents and purposes a bride price. The bride's family obviously is looking for an adequate return on their investment, while the grooms family is looking to get the bride for as cheap as possible. My exchange student's parents are both well educated doctors and her older sister is a US trained economist with an excellent high paying (for Turkmenistan) job, who will in all likelihood inherit an apartment in the city core, and is in fine physical shape.
These are all fine qualities and ones that her parents have invested heavily in over the years with the assumption that her bride price will reflect the investments in her. However, the exact OPPOSITE thing happened. The men in Turkmenistan have no interest-like people the world around they want the best deal possible, so they instead go to the villages and buy a bride from there for a few goats and a handful of cash (our exchange student thought this was a shamefully small amount of money, but for the people in the villages its significant). The men don't expect their wives to work, and aren't looking for intellectual equals. Her parents have effectively improved them to such a point that they've now been priced out of the market.
- sudhirj 9y agoThere’s also an expectation that women will marry ‘up’, even in first world countries, I think. It’s very ironic that women who develop themselves have a smaller option pool of mates.
- a2tech 9y agoIf they were willing to marry internationally I think their options would be much nicer, but their parents aren't allowed to leave the country and they're very close so that puts a pretty big barrier in place for them to leave.
- debacle 9y agoIt's not really an expectation. There have been studies on this, and women do tend to prefer mates at or above their social status (whether that means educationally, professionally, economically, etc). It makes finding a spouse late in life for successful women incredibly difficult.
- user5994461 9y agoCorrection: Finding a spouse [of higher status] late in life is incredibly difficult for successful women [who have insane requirements and won't settle for less].
- nitwit005 9y agoExpectations aren't about what you prefer, it's about what other people want you to do. There are definitely women encouraging their daughters to pick someone wealthier.
- geodel 9y agoWhy is it ironic? Isn't it simple default that there are fewer successful people in most commonly used metrics like financially, socially, culturally etc? So if a women is successful they will have less mates to choose from.
- belorn 9y agoIf we pick that as the default, then is it then not ironic that successful men (using financial metrics) have a larger option pool of mates? I personally don't find either ironic, but rather a very clear difference between the genders in the correlation between financial success and dating. The really interesting part is the causes of this difference, and whom is driving it.
- geodel 9y agoI think larger option pool is not equal to larger option pool to 'marry up'. What I have seen is that successful males often execute option of selecting prettier females instead of successful ones. This thing is far more common in poorer non-western societies but I imagine western societies wouldn't be totally immune to this.
- watwut 9y agoIt is trophy wife thing. You marry to signal to other guys that you are above them sexually, but you are not actually looking to do things together with wife, spend time with her or anything like that.
- user5994461 9y agoNo, it's not a default. The default is that successful women have a bigger pool to choose from and they really do. What happen in practice is that they refuse to consider anyone who is not more than themselves, effectively ignoring the vast majority of the pool. The more successful and pretty, the bigger the pool, which they balance by being even more selective.
- 9y ago
- jrmurad 9y agoWhat definition of "capitalism" are you using to refer to this as a "capitalist endeavor"? The "return on investment" (as you put it) aspect? Wouldn't, say, a communist make similar justifications? For example: "we provided your education as a child so you'll abide by our directives as an adult."
- a2tech 9y agoI don't think buying/selling women was a communist cornerstone. The reason I say this is a capitalist endeavor is the recognition of an asset (the daughter), the want to see the most return (as large of a bride price as possible), and then seeking to improve the asset through education, travel, and competition to lead to a better selling price.
- jrmurad 9y agoSorry, I'm not an economist but I'm not seeing a connection. It seems like you just may not like the idea of capitalism and are trying to connect it to something else which you consider to be bad. Turkmenistan's recent history is as a (Soviet) socialist republic and it ranks very, very low on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom. I'd need further convincing that this practice is reflective of a culture which embraces capitalistic ideals like free markets and voluntary exchange.
- dahart 9y agoI took the comment to mean that some marriages are an economic exchange, a trade of money for goods, as opposed to an emotional bond of love between people. The specific economic system mentioned isn't super relevant, I'd guess he didn't mean to fit such a literal definition of capitalism.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSurely the attempt to elicit a higher price via marketing is indicative of a capitalist ideal. Under a communist ideal (ie not necessarily a real system that's ever existed on Earth, AFAICT there has yet to be a state that's fully embraced communism; dictatorships don't count) improvement would be sought in order to better the collective good, rather than elicit a particular family's profit. That a transactional system exists in a dictatorial regime that bears some communistic characteristics doesn't mean that transactional system (bride price) isn't "Capitalist".
- sethammons 9y agoComplete aside, and I looked in your profile for a way to pm you instead of making this comment where I am sure to burn karma. I noticed in two separate comments that you are improperly using hyphens. > ... no interest-like people the world ... Hyphens join two words. This sentence was hard to parse and was nonsensical until I realized the hyphen was intended as a separator. Consider spaces around hyphens when joining parts of a sentence. I was stuck for a spell wondering what an "interest-like" person was - was it a person with a return on value? Cheers.
- a2tech 9y agoThank you for the info I’m aware that the hyphen used that way is a personal quirk. But I’m always looking to improve my written communication so I’ll use them correctly going forward.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoFWIW sometimes I'll do an emdash -- which allows a conceptual aside -- by using two hyphens, but always with spacing so as not to confuse the usage with word-joining.
- okintheory 9y agoWhen an em dash is used to indicate a pause, it's most often used without spacing between words and the em dash—except in newspapers [1]. [1] http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoYes, my usage would normally be with endash in traditional media AFAIAA. Punctuation, like grammar, serves the user in my mode of writing.
- ashark 9y agoI believe the punctuation you intended was the em-dash—so called because it is the width of an "m" in typical typography—which acts as a kind of weaker replacement for semicolon or parentheses. You can type it with option+[-] on an Apple device. If you can't or don't know how to type the character on the device you're using, a pair of hyphens are conventionally understood to represent the em-dash, as "--". No spaces are required on either side of this mark in any case, though if you choose to use a single hyphen to represent it then including spaces would certainly be better (clearer) than not including them.
- MechEStudent 9y agoI wish parents raised children because they love their children, instead of treating them like human cattle. I wish that in-laws were looking to maximize lifelong success of their grandchildren by the selection of the character, aptitudes, and excellences of his wife. A man who is not a coward and not a weakling should find a wife who is better than him, in many ways, who forces him to be his best self and grow in capabilities even when it is painful. He would never give himself so much power over her identity and strength as one gets by "buying" her. This makes a culture of rape. If the woman is a commodity and her "no" or any other word or personal desire is, in nearly every other context, a doormat to be walked upon then it makes the "valley" between a meaningless no in every other context and the forcing upon her the meaninglessness of a no in a sexual context an inconsequential crack in the ground. Her "no" should always be heard, and that only comes when she is treated as a human, not as a commodity; that only comes when her voice is always heard and valued as much as every other voice.
- watwut 9y agoThe wishes and actions of the sister somehow don't enter this analysis at all. Reading this, it is not even her hard work and effort that got her education and job - the emphasis is on her parents efforts. And I mean, they contributed, just like all parents contribute to offsprings success or failure. But, we don't talk about it that way normally - especially people in HN like to frame themselves as self-taught or at least as someone who got where he is due to own effort. I haven't seen a single comment here so far that would put that much emphasis on parents work and that little on geeks agency when talking about highly educated geeks without partner.
- user5994461 9y agoThe "self-taught" is just a gentle way to say that they didn't attend college. The outside world would jump to the conclusion of being too broke or not capable.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago> Her parents have effectively improved them to such a point that they've now been priced out of the market. Out of that market. They're now in a different market. Perhaps it's a smaller one. (And perhaps it's a market where "bride price" isn't the way things are done...) There's still a market for Mercedes-Benz cars, even though they cost more than Chevrolets...