I came across some interesting statistical observations recently regarding singles [6], that show that for the first time, the number of singles are outnumbering the people in relationships. While the decline in marriage can be explained through concepts such as risk. Meaning that in the current climate a man can be “zeroed out” as Rollo put it, quite easily if he makes a poor choice in mate, but largely I think it comes down to men intuitively avoiding marriage due to having seen their families, and friends go through bitter divorces. If one watches 9 people jump off a cliff, splat against the ground, and then is told “I’m sure you’re different”, a sensible person would step away from the edge.

From a needs-perspective this is very interesting though, because the needs that are satisfied by marriage, have to be sated somehow. The sexual need can be satisfied outside of marriage for both sexes, the same is true for the need for friendship and companionship to some extent. Even reproduction outside of marriage is possible through the use of surrogates and sperm donors. The one need that persists though, is the same that men have always provided for women, namely provision and protection. Likewise, it is probable that if women could be entirely provided and protected without having to contract a Beta male to do so, they would prefer to share Alpha males.

However, the need to consolidate comes when a women realize that they are no longer commanding the same market value as they did in their younger days, and feels that she must settle down now in order to avoid being left on the market.

The question is, how can women ensure provision without having to make the trade with men?

The Way Forward

I recently caught The Sharpe Reality with Rollo Tomassi where they posed an interesting question, during a discussion of the recent storm of sexual impropriety allegations being launched against famous, well-to-do men. The lead in was that the marriage rate has been dropping for quite some time [1], at the same time the divorce rate has also been going down, but these two are naturally linked, after all of nobody every got married, one would have a divorce rate of 0. The same trend can be seen in Europe, where the number of marriages are declining while the number of divorces and the number of children born out of wedlock are increasing.

One can theorize the “why” behind these numbers, are men finally realizing that divorce court is biased against them, and works to transfer resources from men to women. Is our increasingly liberal culture leading towards a rejection of traditional relationships towards co-habitation, and what are the effects of this? As one of the functions of social groups and societies has been the transfer of resources from men to women, I found myself wondering what the next steps would be, after all with marriages dwindling, there will be fewer women collecting divorce settlements and alimony. As Donovan and Rollo outlined, absent of such a payout, women may opt to accuse a man of sexual impropriety and collect a payout from either the man or the company where the alleged impropriety took place, or both.

However, my background indicates that if companies start to see a rise in such payouts, they will respond to this for instance by including terms in their contracts of employment that the company is not to be held liable for such cases, or by other means. The business world employs thousands, perhaps millions of lawyers to avoid taxes and liabilities in all other areas of operations, I expect them to do the same in cases such as this. My suspicion is therefore that the State will be weaponized to a much larger degree through two different avenues.

One being to make the rights previously reserved for a spouse applicable to cohabitation, and by making such an arrangement “opt-out” rather than as with marriage “opt-in”, thus the woman does not have to have a man commit to her, the commitment will be default and the man will have to formally not commit to the woman. The second avenue being the enlargement and expansion of the welfare state to a much larger degree than at present.

The concept of “Opt-In” and “Opt-Out” will be quite familiar to anyone who has worked in marketing. For instance, if you want to maximize the size of your newsletter list, make it “opt-out”, few people decide to opt out, however if you make it “opt-in” expect the opposite to be true. One could argue that humans have a bias against action, in that they will just leave whatever is put there by default [5]. Doing this with marriage, means that the state regards a couple that co-habits or are in a relationship as de-facto married, meaning that in order for this not to apply them, men would need to formally “opt out”, this is in fact the case already in some areas.

In doing my research, and somewhat to my surprise merely cohabiting with a girlfriend can lead into some fairly extensive legal consequences, especially those regarding property. One would think that without entering into marriage, a live-in girlfriend has no real rights, however this is not the case. As I’m familiar with “accidentally” falling into a long-term relationship, I decided to do some research: For instance:

Eviction: The law in most states says that if someone has been living with you for a certain number of months, he or she has a legal right to live there (even if the person isn’t on the lease or deed). You have to go through a formal eviction to remove the person from the premises. You will have to go to your local courthouse to file a “Complaint for Eviction” or something similar. [2]

Likewise, if the couple has joint-accounts, one partner could become responsible for the debts accumulated by the other partner. This also goes in cases where one party owns property, and the other pays for renovations or does work on that property. The mingling of assets is often difficult to avoid in long-term relationships, and anyone can make a claim that they should be compensated after the relationship ends. For instance, if a man helps his live-in girlfriend with her car- or house payments every month, but the deed is in her name, then it would be difficult for him to untangle that without a legal battle post-breakup.

In parts of Europe the cases may be even worse:

Rights and obligations In EU countries which recognise de facto unions, you will also have rights and obligations concerning property, inheritance and maintenance payments following a separation. [3]

Perhaps the worst example I found while researching the case comes from Australia

“There’s no timeline and there’s no minimum time period,” she told Ryk Goddard on ABC Radio Hobart.

“As long as you and your partner consider yourselves in a considered or committed relationship, and as long as other people recognise that, then you’re in a de facto relationship.” By law, you do not even have to live full time with the person you are in a relationship with for it to count as de facto. “There’s a relationship called de facto by distance,” Ms Scharrer said. “Which means that even though you may not be living together exclusively and full time, as long as you stay in each other’s house or home when you’re in each other’s local space, then you’re definitely considered in a de facto relationship.” [4]

In essence, if any of my readers are Australian, you risk being placed in a situation where:

“If there’s no formal agreement at the end of a de facto relationship, then one of the couple may make a claim on the finances or assets for up to two years [after the split].” [4]

This means that you have to go through a divorce without ever being married, so in Australia marriage has gone from being “Opt-in” to “Opt-out, and this is also likely to be the case in parts of the European Union.

Bachelor Nation

The concept of a bachelor nation is one in which men adopt varying levels of MGTOW in a sense, some electing simply to avoid marriage and/or long term relationships, and some electing to avoid all contact that they can with women in general. In the present climate, I would personally advocate that to minimize risk, a man should perhaps consider the “Pence Rule” in the workplace as a way to avoid falling victim to false accusations. In the case of the “soft MGTOW” the position would in essence be that of a man who enjoys his liaisons with women throughout his life, but builds a wall between his relationships with women and the other parts of his life such as financial. This would mean not getting married, taking precautions against the legal consequences of “de facto relationships” as outlined above, in order to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the risk of financial damage done by his relationships.

The second aspect is reproductive, it would mean that such a man would have to take precautions to avoid “ooops pregnancies” as prenuptial agreements and various other legal contracts can be thrown out in court based on “the best interest of the child”, in the same way child support payments serve as de-facto alimony. If a product such as Vasagel [7] made it to market, this would put men in complete control of reproduction, in essence any man who could afford the treatment would be safeguarded against ever having claims made against him.

This is when I suspect the idea of a “bachelor tax” [8] will re-emerge in our society and culture. How this would be implemented is hard to envision given that a law purely taxing single men and not single women would likely violate discrimination law. However, the use of the state as a resource transfer mechanism from men to women is likely.

Summary and Conclusions

The modern welfare state does function to provide for women many of those things for which they used to rely on men. Support for single mothers, health-care, housing, and various other things are provided by the Government instead of by husbands and fathers. In an earlier post I talked about the tax gap, which is more or less the sum of how much you pay in taxes and how much you get in services from the state. What research from New Zealand showed was that women receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes for most of their life, only paying more than they receive between the ages of 40 and 59 on average. Whereas men pay in more than they receive on average between the ages of 25 and 65.

As men can find ways to secure themselves, such as never getting married, applying the “Pence rule” at work and in work-related settings, using vasagel when it comes out, or being diligent about contraception, these avenues are short-term solutions at best. The long-term solution would be the weaponization of the state. All it would really require is that women (and men trying to please women) vote to increase and add social programs, that are disproportionately funded by men and that benefit women.

Governments have to pay for the services and goods they provide to the population, and the main avenue unless one is a state with a small population and abundant natural resources is through taxation. However, this also presents a catch 22, it presupposes that men will continue to contribute on the same level for a smaller reward. After all, if men realize that the main market of women they are after (20 – 26) are generally not concerned with provision but with alpha genetics, this influences their energy investment. We are already seeing this in part with MGTOW and herbivore men, working just enough to finance their alcohol, food, shelter and hobbies. In a sense, this is quite sensible one could argue that if you earn enough to live an acceptable lifestyle working 10 – 20 hours a week, the extra free time may be worth it.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

As always you can buy my book Gendernomics at Amazon.com as both paperback and Kindle

Sources:

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm

[2] http://family.findlaw.com/living-together/cohabitation-property-rights-for-unmarried-couples.html

[3] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/family/couple/de-facto-unions/index_en.htm

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-22/de-facto-myths-and-tips-after-a-split/8641622

[5] https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/the-applied-guide-how-behavioral-economics-makes-everything-better-vol-2-part-2-7-1054

[6] http://www.upcisam.com/about/singles-statistics/

[7] http://www.medicaldaily.com/male-birth-control-vasalgel-closer-becoming-reality-heres-everything-we-know-so-far-343032

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax