Unable to create value on their own, these banks are a financial suck.
Once they collapse, they depend on outside value - government money - to survive.
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After reading this article, I'm wondering if marriage is the zombie institution of the cultural marketplace:
Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?While the article reads somewhat cathartic and effusive and personal, it does pose some compelling questions.
Is marriage an effective institution when it comes to investing the cultural assets of our lives? or does it set us up for failure?
I really dunno.
People haven't seemed to give up on the institution writ large.
Yet the scenario sounds familiar: in spite of systemic failure, an institution manages to subsist on the edge of sustainability, with many external costs.
If marriage is a zombie institution within the cultural marketplace, what exactly are the forces keeping marriage solvent anyways? (Other than people making a lot of money off weddings of course...)
And does zombie marriage back us into the possibility that we are in the middle of a cultural downturn?
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It will be interesting to see if raising children becomes more decoupled from marriage and romantic relationships in general.
Came across this article in CNN which resonates.
longevity is higher among married men (i don't know stats on women, i think we do okay either way), poverty is higher among single parents, there are reasons why we pay people to be married (tax credits and shared benefits). being married may be as good for one as not smoking.
ReplyDeleteMarriage seems to only be beneficial for financial purposes nowadays. It seems to me that more people are thinking of marriage as more of a business transaction than one where you are with someone you love.
ReplyDeletethere really is a lot more to marriage than money and love. at least in america, marriage is a legal institution. there are legal implications that people don't consider. it also varies between states. that person becomes your "next of kin" with the same rights as immediate family members. it probably really depends on how much money you have, ie what quality of lawyer you can afford. for example, at least in colorado as of a few years ago, if your wife gets pregnant by another man, you have parental rights and responsibilities to that child (presumed father). i'm not sure how that would really play out with a couple together, but i can tell you i saw how it effected people first hand in adoption situations.
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