Where wealth is revered, all that is honest is despised: loyalty, integrity, shame, modesty…
Salpustiy
The society we live in is not monogamous. The laws and rules of our society imply that a high-ranking male is capable of having multiple wives, not simultaneously, but sequentially, without deviating from moral norms and laws. Male attractiveness in the sexual market is primarily determined by a man’s investment capabilities rather than his age. Thus, an investment-capable man does not lose his appeal after a divorce and remains a suitable candidate for marriage to a younger wife. By “investments,” we should understand not only purely material resources, such as financial stability and ownership of movable and immovable property, but also aspects like culture and the time a man is willing to spend on caring for and raising his children. A genetically sound male sexual strategy, in the presence of external demand for his genes and resources, would require him to part ways with his aging wife in order to marry a new, younger one. Moreover, if moral norms allow, he may also seek to acquire “official mistresses.”
Emotionally, this may manifest as a “cooling of relations” or a growing hatred and impatience towards one’s spouse, but the economically rational motives driven by instincts are quite simple – it’s better to have more diverse offspring carrying your genes than to continue reproducing with the same female.
In such conditions, high-ranking males monopolize women who are at the most attractive age in terms of fertility. On one hand, this reduces the number of childless women, but on the other hand, it does not provide women with any lifetime guarantees. In a polygynous society, a woman can expect to rely on the resources of a high-ranking male for life, even if those resources are shared with co-wives. However, in a society with sequential polygyny, a high-ranking male’s wife is likely to lose him once her value to him has been exhausted: after having given birth to several children who are now independent and no longer require constant care. If we consider that the “average duration of a woman’s utility” is about 10-15 years, a man aged 25 to 75 can easily monopolize access to the eggs of 3-4 women. All of these 3-4 women share the same fate as single mothers, without any lifetime guarantees from their husbands.
The presence of one high-ranking man with 3-4 wives means, in addition to an increasing number of “divorcees,” that low-ranking males are left with no women at all. The less a man can compete as an investor with others, the lower his chances of marrying an unused and childless woman. Moreover, in modern society, where women can earn money independently and hire nannies to raise their children, the market attractiveness of low-ranking males tends to approach zero.
Despite the fact that logically, a financially secure woman should not be concerned about her husband’s ability to invest in offspring and could focus on other factors such as her partner’s cultural level, physical appearance, or excellent performance in bed, a woman’s instinctive drives demand that her husband be wealthy. This, by the way, explains the large number of single women among those who have built successful careers or businesses on their own. A husband’s wealth is a relative measure, and women naturally assess it in comparison to their own financial status. Thus, the more stable a woman is on her own, the fewer choices she has among men who are instinctively attractive to her. The subconscious evaluation of a man’s investment potential also explains the almost inevitable cooling of relationships in couples where the primary income is generated by the woman.
Therefore, the surplus of men in society creates a shortage of quality men in the social group to which a particular woman belongs, especially if she leads an independent lifestyle and earns her own living. Unwanted men tend to accumulate at the bottom of the social hierarchy, as the shortage of women created by status-driven males trickles down the hierarchy to the very bottom. A man, as an investor, will always be in demand by women who are even lower than him in terms of wealth. And considering the pyramid structure of any hierarchy, there will always be fewer desirable suitors for women of a certain social level than there are women themselves.
It is worth focusing on the fate of a large number of impoverished single men who have not entered into marriage and find themselves at the bottom of the social ladder. As mentioned in the article about moral values, a greater number of single men intensifies competition among them, provokes aggression, and makes society unstable. This situation automatically fills the population with men who, in the absence of family, are prone to engaging in risky activities and lack long-term strategic goals—such as war, crime, vagrancy, antisocial behavior, alcoholism, and drug addiction.
Of course, such a situation is possible in societies with significant wealth inequality.
Only a significant difference in the investment attractiveness of men can sustain demand in the sexual market for divorced high-status men. It turns out that certain clearly kleptocratic regimes, characterized by high levels of stratification, provoke mass unrest by creating a large population of aggressively inclined unmarried men, which can escalate into armed conflicts if the ruling elite resorts to force, or lead to “velvet” revolutions if the elite hesitates to actively suppress the rebellion. The presence of a large number of bachelors provides the necessary participants for such a deadly folly as war, especially in the context of modern weaponry. In contrast, married and family men are much less prone to aggression or risk, and a larger proportion of married men acts as a stabilizing and pacifying factor in society.
It is important to note that a highly stratified society, where the demand for low-status men in the sexual market decreases, leads to even greater social stratification. Unsettled men sink further down the social ladder and drag down their victims of antisocial behavior: those who have been robbed, injured, raped, or who have fallen into alcoholism “for company,” or who have become clients of a well-developed drug distribution network. There is a chain reaction with positive feedback at play. Additionally, the presence of many “used” divorced women with children does not contribute to egalitarianism.
In such conditions, the options for the ruling elite, who wish to maintain their position, include the genocide of their own male population through the organization of war, redirecting the aggression of discontented males towards some external imagined or real enemy, or eliminating aggressive potential in other ways, such as supplying people with large amounts of cheap alcohol. A seemingly viable solution to the problem might be the promotion of “family values” to ensure that every man has a “lifetime” woman. However, this is not a true solution, as the elite themselves are the ones creating the shortage of women suitable for reproduction, rather than just for recreational sex.
Additionally, due to the rise in crime and aggression, there is an increasing demand for law enforcement personnel, which serves as a convenient factor channeling “excess” men. However, the growth of the apparatus of violence does not solve the problem; it merely postpones it. Firstly, aggression does not disappear; on the contrary, it becomes mobilized. Typically, in such societies, the “law enforcement agencies” do not focus on maintaining public order but primarily protect the ruling elite—this is precisely why they are hired in large numbers, given the obvious threat posed by single men. Secondly, law enforcement officers are still the same risk-prone, impoverished, and unmarried men, more concerned with enhancing their attractiveness, meaning their financial status, than with fulfilling their professional duties. For them, this is ultimately more important than questions of life and death. For their genes, it is the only chance to be part of the next generation. Under these conditions, the police force is likely to be prone to corruption and collusion with crime. Such a force not only consumes the elite’s resources, bringing the crisis of power closer, but also contributes to the development of aggression within society. It is also worth considering that a violence apparatus that has grown into an independent force could stage a coup. This is very likely, as there is essentially no one left to “back” the thieves in power.
An alternative to “manual control” is the presence of societal organizations that impose administrative barriers on high-ranking males in their pursuit of sequential polygyny.
This could be a system in which men and women can only marry within their social class. When market demand and supply in the sexual market are restricted to such a class, men appear to be roughly equally well-off and thus do not compete with each other for women. The division of society into social classes is ensured by a caste system, characteristic of India.
A system that prohibits men and women from premarital and extramarital relationships, regardless of social status, can be stable. However, in the presence of contraceptives and established paternity, there seems to be little justification for such prohibitions on extramarital sex. Yet, similar systems existed in the past, with a striking example being Victorian England, which had a cult of the virtuous and chaste woman, and correspondingly, the pure-hearted gentleman.
The third method is the organization of a society in which material goods are redistributed from the rich to the poor. In this case, both the rich’s ability to practice polygamy is reduced, and the competitive advantages of the poor are improved. However, such societies deprive the rich of the incentive for entrepreneurship and the poor of the motivation to work, resulting in a lower gross national product compared to those where free competition and purely capitalist relations thrive. At the same time, these societies tend to cultivate humanitarian values and are less aggressive and more prosperous. For example, progressive or even repressive taxation of the wealthy and the widespread use of social benefits in the countries of Northern Europe.
The fourth method is a practice where the husband, upon divorce, gives all his property to the wife and takes the children older than infancy for custody. In this situation, the wealthy husband becomes burdened with too many obligations to be considered a serious competitor in the marriage market, at least for a certain and sufficiently long period of time. This is how divorce proceedings occur in a number of Islamic countries, particularly in Iran.
It turns out that the higher the social stratification of a society, the more likely it is to have strict restrictions on sexual activity. It is usually believed that the more backward and impoverished a society is, the stricter its sexual taboos. However, this is not the case. Firstly, there are poor and free communities. Secondly, there are wealthy and strict ones. The number and severity of sexual taboos are determined more by the degree of egalitarianism. The more equal a society is, the more freedom is expected in inter-gender relationships.
Modern post-industrial societies contain, to varying degrees, all the elements that restrain the uneven distribution of women among men: these include social barriers, legally enshrined monogamy combined with a certain societal intolerance towards extramarital relationships, a taxation and social benefits system that ensures the redistribution of material wealth from the rich to the poor, and legal practices that require husbands to divide property and provide financial support for children until they reach adulthood.
However, there will always be some societies where all these restraining factors are practically absent for historical reasons: the idea of alimony and property division does not work when most people receive “black” salaries and do not have significant assets. The concept of redistributing material wealth is blocked by the very power represented by the super-rich, who advocate for tax cuts for the wealthy or, in general, for creating conditions under which the rich can evade taxation altogether through various “schemes” that are inaccessible to the middle class and the poor. The idea of intolerance towards extramarital relationships is not supported by any religion, or the religion is tolerant of such behavior, and the idea of social stratification does not function because the wealth distribution curve among the population is very steep, making it nearly impossible to identify a closed social group where individuals do not differ in wealth by several times. In other words, even if we take a hypothetical and relatively small group of “oligarchs,” the poorest oligarch will be ten times, if not more, poorer than the richest. In such conditions, competition among high-ranking males still persists, especially in the absence of clear administrative barriers separating social groups, and in a context where most wealthy individuals are former poor people who have maintained their social and familial ties and, de facto, belong to a lower social group.
Such societies, for the reasons mentioned above, are not sustainable and will experience uprisings, revolutions, and wars. In these societies, there will be an increase in theft, murder, rape, drug addiction, and alcoholism, making it dangerous to go out on the streets in the evening. These societies pose a threat to their neighbors due to the accumulated aggression within them. They are doomed, and sooner or later, other societies will emerge in the territories they occupy, societies that have figured out how to limit the sexual activity of high-ranking males in one way or another: from the introduction of Sharia law with a nod to monogamy or other religious laws to the egalitarianization of society and the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor.
In essence:
• Our society is not monogamous. One way or another, “sequential polygyny” is present.
The shortage of women, provoked by the top of the social pyramid, has intensified and cascaded down to the very bottom, creating a large mass of unsettled men.
A large number of unsettled men creates instability in society.
To counteract this effect, different societies invent various tools. All tools have their own shortcomings.
• There may be young societies where customs and morals have not developed enough to counteract the negative effects of unsettled males. Such societies are unstable and either establish appropriate institutions and morals or dissolve among the surrounding, more stable communities.