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Approved Posture's avatar

Polygamy requires a very disruptive process where surplus males are gotten rid of.

The polygamous LDS factions expel a lot of teenage males for being disruptive. This works because they can be absorbed into a massive surrounding population of white Americans who are monogamous.

But I do not know how it would work at societal level.

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bertrand russet's avatar

Aside from my nit below, a few notes

1. Consideration of this question should engage with the issues of porn consumption and chatbot companions. My sense is that delayed loss of virginity is partly due to heavy porn consumption by young men. Inasmuch as this removes men from the active dating pool, it could _increase_ the extent of polygyny (and perhaps has contributed to its rise in the US). I'm unsure what to expect from chat companions other than less amory at all

2. Not that many people have to be polyamorous for it to have an effect on the experience of dating. I admittedly live in Berkeley, which is the epicenter of the polyamory movement, but it's impossible to date, or frankly go anywhere, without running into these people. Unlike normal young adults, who might be single and looking 1/4 of the time, they're just always on the market, and so heavily overrepresented. They also seem not to have the social sense to know when not to be on the prowl

3. Friends who are more sensitive to social currents than I am tell me that polyamory is becoming passé among the social vanguard. I haven't been able to discern this myself (cf Berkeley, above), but the polyamorous obviously incur a lot of drama, and it's easy to see how this could be self-limiting

4. imo the example of the LDS supports the notion that mating patterns are more culturally determined than biologically determined, and I don't think that we should weight Europe's history of monogamy too strongly here. It does seem clear that we've been in a period of rapid social change for the past 10+ years, and it's too soon to know how it will shake out

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