PRIVATIZING MARRIAGE
Marriage is like any other market - exchange is made when each party sees a benefit to the transaction
BY DOUG FRENCH

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies. Other stories by Doug French

Polygamy is in the mainstream press now thanks to HBO's series "Big Love." For those who haven't seen it, the series features a modern-day Utah polygamist who lives in suburban Salt Lake City with his three wives, seven children and a mounting avalanche of debt and demands. He is the owner of a growing chain of home improvement stores, and struggles to balance the financial and emotional needs of his three wives who live in separate, adjacent houses and take turns sharing their husband each night. 

The series has created such a buzz that at least three syndicated columnists have been published in the local papers recently devoting space to the issue. Charles Krauthammer mostly wrings his hands over the declining state of traditional marriage while contemplating gay marriage in his column "Pandora and Polygamy." 

"I'm not one of those who see gay marriage or polygamy as a threat to, or assault on, traditional marriage," writes Krauthammer. "The assault came from within. Marriage has needed no help in managing its own long, slow suicide, thank you." 

Krauthammer's interesting point is that while gay marriage is gaining acceptance and the resistance to polygamy is much more prevalent, gay marriage has never been sanctioned by any society. Polygamy, on the other hand, was sanctioned, indeed common, in large parts of the world through large swaths of history, most notably the biblical Middle East and through much of the Islamic world."

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milroy used "Big Love" to lament the shortage of black men available for marriage in a recent column, asking if polygamy is worth a try to solve the problem.

Economics, of course, is the reason that polygamy has been common throughout history. 

The marriage market is like any other. Exchange is made when each party, seller and buyer, perceive that each will benefit from the transaction. Available men and women have value in the marriage marketplace. Some are more valuable than others, based upon ability to provide for a family, looks, personality, ability to have children, etc. 

If there is a shortage of women in a particular area, the value of all women will increase. 

Legalizing polygamy, as economist David Friedman wrote in his book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, "allows some men who before wanted one wife to try to marry two instead - provided that they are willing to offer terms at which potential wives are willing to accept half a husband apiece. So the demand curve for wives shifts out. The supply curve stays the same, the demand curve shifts out, so the price must go up. Women are better off."

If men can have more than one wife, the price of wives in the marketplace goes up. Because of this increase in demand, with no increase in supply (the number of women is still the same), men must offer more value to women to entice them into marriage and keep them. 

Some readers may have trouble with the idea that all women would benefit if polygamy laws were abolished. Friedman crystallizes the argument by substituting cars and car buyers for wives and husbands. "Suppose there were a law forbidding anyone to own more than one car," wrote Friedman. "The abolition of that law would increase the demand for cars. Sellers of cars would be better off. Buyers who did not take advantage of the new opportunity would be worse off, since they would have to pay a higher price. Buyers who bought more than one car would be better off than if they bought only one car at the new price (otherwise that is what they would have done) but not necessarily better off than if they bought one car at the old price, an option no longer open to then." 

But "Big Love" is a different economics issue for Utah's tourism officials. Governor Jon Huntsman is trying to counter the "weirdness factor" of the show, which reinforces the idea that Utah has a strange, conservative population that is closed off to outsiders. 

Ironically, Huntsman has polygamist pioneer ancestors. His great-great-great-great-grandfather James had four wives, according to a family historian. More distantly, Huntsman is descended from LDS Church apostle Parley P. Pratt's sixth wife, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Anyone who has seen the show would agree that with the privatization of marriage, there would be a few men (and women) with multiple spouses, but not many. The fact of the matter is most people don't offer enough value for potential spouses to consider sharing. LW