Reddit reviews Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population (Belfer Center Studies in International Security)

>None of your points here address the problem I raised: they all assume that making polygamous marriage legal magically makes people want to be polygamous.

You want me to say, "You are right, making polygyny legal will not make everyone magically want multiple spouses." However, I am saying IT DOES NOT MATTER. It does not take a majority of the population practicing polygyny to destabilize society. It in fact only takes a small percentage of the population practicing polygamy to cause significant problems.


political scientists, Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. in their book Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population state that societies become inherently unstable when sex ratios reach something like 120 males to 100 females. The United States as a whole would reach that ratio if, for example, 5 percent of men took two wives, 3 percent took three wives, and 2 percent took four wives. Numbers that are attainable if polygamy is legal for long enough (say a generation or two.) Throw in a several multimillionaires and billionaires seeking really large numbers of mates and those numbers skew even smaller.


In particular communities — inner cities, for example — polygamy could cause problems with just a few polygamists. Even a handful of what they called "Solomons" (high-status men taking multiple wives) could create brigades of new recruits for street gangs and drug lords.

As to this:
>why in the world would societies where women have been emancipated over centuries, suddenly decide to restore one of the most outdated patriarchal tradition?

The same reason they always have: security. Given the choice of being the second or third wife of the successful businessman and ensuring that you and your children will always have enough to eat and a good education vs. marrying the guy next door who barely graduated high-school and has few job prospects. and more than a few women will take the wealthy man. Even today in our oh so advanced and liberated world. You even allude to this in your own argument when you mention millionaires and billionaires "keep a bevy of young women who trade their companionship for financial gain."


As for:
>There would be no reason to think that matriarcal polygamy wouldn't be just as popular as patriarcal polygamy

Sure there is: History & Biology. With very few exceptions (I can think of only one, a small minority group in China,) polygamous societies have all practiced polygyny and not polyandry. And as for the biological imperative, men cannot guarantee a child will be theirs in polyandrous relationships. Most men prefer to ensure their own reproduction. This is not a point that has ever been a concern for women; they know very well that any child that results is their own.

While I will concede that some polygynous marriages would probably be offset by group marriages or chain marriages involving multiple husbands, and there is no way to really know how large such an offset might be I will state that it will not come anywhere near compensating for the polygynous relationships. And remember: Every unbalanced polygynous marriage, everything else being equal, leaves some man bereft of the opportunity to marry, which is no small cost to that man.


>how would the prospect of legal marriage make the billionaire's situation any different?

The point is to keep the gender ratios from becoming too imbalanced, and billionaires and multimillionaires already are already skewing the gender ratio, and legalizing polygamy will take the brakes off and add in several other people.

Further, these problems I am talking about are not hypothetical, and they are not even merely historical. They are not even exclusive to countries where polygamy is legal. Right here in the U.S.A., in northern Arizona, a polygamous Mormon sect has managed its surplus males by dumping them on the street -- literally. More than 400 teenage boys in order to ensure they don't compete for the young women in the community have been dumped in neighboring towns.

Check out Bare Branches by Valerie Hudson

Basic theory is by either cultural beliefs (India) or state policy (China) the preference for male children over females leads to a unnaturally unbalanced population, and on the whole this makes their foreign policy more aggressive and prone to conflict.

While the article is very good and everyone must read it, I want to add my opinion about another blind spot: Whenever there has been an excess of males in society, wars have followed. India and China both have 35+ million men more than women. Destined to die single. It will be a miracle if there is no war of some sort.

Especially given the situation of climate change (Syria started after 5 years of drought)

Or maybe a helpful virus will do the needful.

EDIT: theories:
https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21688587-young-single-idle-males-are-dangerous-work-and-wedlock-can-tame-them-men-and-mayhem

Gunnar Heinsohn: https://www.scribd.com/document/310263543/Gunnar-Heinsohn-Demography-and-War

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bare-Branches-Implications-Population-International/dp/0262582643

And to argue against, here is a critical analysis of the youth bulge = war theory:

http://www.trykkefrihed.dk/interview-a-continent-of-losers.htm