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Women get pregnant. Men do not. That means that, one way or another, men have to support women financially. Traditional marriage is one way, prostitution anothe

Women get pregnant. Men do not. That means that, one way or another, men have to support women financially. Traditional marriage is one way, prostitution another. However, in our culture there seems to be a bias that marriage is somehow better than prostitution. I find that odd. Traditional monogamous marriage seems incredibly boring. The biggest problem with prostitution, I think, is STDs, because each prostitute has sex with so very many men. I wish there was some sort of solution somewhere between traditional marriage and prostitution. Maybe the reason why our culture has this bias in favor of monogamous marriage, is that the majority of the population is not easily bored?

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> Maybe the reason why our culture has this bias in favor of monogamous marriage, is that the majority of the population is not easily bored? Then again, you see the proliferation of divorces and many married people end up having lovers on the side. So I'd say our culture is getting increasingly easy-bored. I think the main reason for this bias is that marriages in the past were primarily an economic construct, merging the wealth of two families, where the married couple were only the vehicle for binding the contract. This, plus of course the economic benefits of spawning and raising kids. You can see this today in parts of the world where people still do arranged marriages. Compared to prostitution, this would be like the difference between a cozy corporate job and freelancing in an unstable market. In the first case, you get insurance, health benefits, stable and predictable salary, and you expect to be employed for long time - so you and your family can make long-term plans. In the second case, you don't get any of that, and your main concern is whether you'll earn enough money now to last through an unpredictably-long period of time where there won't be any work for you to do - so you can't plan ahead at all.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> Maybe the reason why our culture has this bias in favor of monogamous marriage, is that the majority of the population is not easily bored? Then again, you see the proliferation of divorces and many married people end up having lovers on the side. So I'd say our culture is getting increasingly easy-bored. I think the main reason for this bias is that marriages in the past were primarily an economic construct, merging the wealth of two families, where the married couple were only the vehicle for binding the contract. This, plus of course the economic benefits of spawning and raising kids. You can see this today in parts of the world where people still do arranged marriages. Compared to prostitution, this would be like the difference between a cozy corporate job and freelancing in an unstable market. In the first case, you get insurance, health benefits, stable and predictable salary, and you expect to be employed for long time - so you and your family can make long-term plans. In the second case, you don't get any of that, and your main concern is whether you'll earn enough money now to last through an unpredictably-long period of time where there won't be any work for you to do - so you can't plan ahead at all.