Dudes’ Republic of China
The inhabitants of Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit seem to have developed a sudden crush on the authoritarian Chinese government. Why? Well, it seems that the lovable tyrants have decided to crack down on evil golddigger bitches. According to an article in The Telegraph, linked to in the subreddit,
In a bid to temper the rising expectations of Chinese women, China’s Supreme Court has now ruled that from now on, the person who buys the family home, or the parents who advance them the money, will get to keep it after divorce.
“Hopefully this will help educate younger people, especially younger women, to be more independent, and to think of marriage in the right way rather than worshipping money so much,” said Hu Jiachu, a lawyer in Hunan province.
The ruling should also help relieve some of the burden on young Chinese men, many of whom fret about the difficulty of buying even a small apartment.
Never mind that the lopsided demographics in China today — where young men greatly outnumber young women, making it harder for young men to find wives — are not the result of excess feminism, but the result of a toxic mixture of cultural misogyny and the authoritarian regime’s “one child” program. As William Saletan explains the logic in Slate:
Girls are culturally and economically devalued; the government uses powerful financial levers to prevent you from having another child; therefore, to make sure you can have a boy, you abort the girl you’re carrying.
The result? 16 million “missing girls” in China. Ironically, the skewed ratio of men to women gives young women considerable leverage in chosing whom to marry – and that’s what the Men’s Rightser’s seem to see as the real injustice here.
As Evil Pundit wrote, evidently speaking for many (given the numerous upvotes he got):
Wow. I’ve always disliked the authoritarian Chinese government, but for once, it’s done something good.
I may need to reconsider my attitude.
IncrediblyFatMan added:
China wants to become the next superpower and world leader. They aren’t going to do it by allowing the kinds of social decay that rot away at the competing nations.
Revorob joked:
If they brought that in over here, most women in Australia would be living on the street.
“Or,” Fondueguy quipped in response, “they could learn to work.”
At the moment, all the comments in the thread praising the Chinese government for this move (and there are many more) have net upvotes; the only comment in the negative? One suggesting that the Telegraph isn’t exactly a reliable source.
Speaking of which, here’s a more balanced look at the issue on China.org.cn that examines some of the consequences of the new ruling for Chinese women.
Let’s look at some of those. According to one Beijing lawyer quoted in the piece:
“[H]ousewives, especially those in the rural areas who have no job and are responsible for taking care of their families, will be affected most by this new change,” she said. “If their husbands want a divorce, they are likely to be kicked out of the house with nothing.”
Luo Huilan, a professor of women’s studies at China Women’s University in Beijing, agreed.
In rural areas, she said, men have the final say in family matters. All essential family assets, such as home, car and bank deposits, are registered in the men’s names, and women fill the roles of only wife, mother and farmworker.
“Their labor, though substantial, hardly gets recognition. Without a good education, they have to rely heavily on their husbands,” Luo said. “In case of divorce, a woman is driven out of her husband’s life, home and family, and finds herself an alien even in her parents’ home. No wonder the new interpretation of the Marriage Law has aroused concern among women.”
And no wonder it’s drawn cheers on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Posted on August 22, 2011, in $MONEY$, antifeminism, evil women, gloating, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, patriarchy, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 697 Comments.
Typos:
And the massive wave of economic instability that would come with the changeover, as enough gold has to be bought to back up the trillions and trillions of dollars in floating US currency! Because our economy is far too stable!
Although I did dig “massive wave of economic stability.”
I like ‘mite whales’. Sukmy Dick, the great mite whale, leader of MRAs (after NWO and Chucky, of course)
Call me IshMRAL ….
I love reading all these dimwits talking about buying up and hoarding gold. On the long list of things to have in the event of a total or near-total economic collapse, heavy and relatively useless gold is way down on the list below food, water and/or water purification equipment, medical supplies and medicine, weapons and ammo for self-defense and hunting and probably about two dozen other things I’m forgetting at the moment.
But it’ll be amusing to see these fools trying to trade useless hunks of metal for actual useful goods.
“http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3quEkimnPs/TdBkDSiujFI/AAAAAAAADR8/miD5yrNJkRY/s1600/Gold_1833_1999.gif”
Goldselling site; unsourced.
http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf || It references kitco you stupid tit.
As I said, you want inflation from gold? 1500s Europe, right off the top of my head.
lrn2google scholar, rather than rely on gold selling groups with a direct profit motive.
http://ehes2011.com/papers/monetary_policy_autonomy_under_the_gold_standard.pdf
One example of problems under a gold standard.
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/16/1/12.html || Adequate citations to a number of resources demonstrating inflation’s positive effects; As I said, the global economy is structured under infinite growth. To pretend that constant growth doesn’t require a constant increase to the money supply is dishonest in the extreme, and I don’t see you complaining about the idea of infinite growth (Which I do, when I feel a hankering)
“Globalization has just caused a larger demand for gold. More people + roughly the same amount of gold = higher gold prices. Let’s not forget China’s massive population. If the Chinese start buying gold…you will see that price skyrocket.”
Dude, it’s not globalization. It’s gold suddenly having a use besides idiots like you and the showing off of wealth. Also, gold increases in supply as well.
“In the end, time makes fools of us all. You can rail at me for being bullish on gold all you want. But time will tell. I could make money or lose it. Who truly knows?”
As an investment, gold might be good for you, and I really don’t give a shit about your investments. As a standard for currency, it’s shit.
“People buy gold when they lose faith in the paper currency. The only way for gold to go lower is for people to start believing the US dollar will retain its value. Frankly, I don’t see that happening in the short term and possibly the long term.”
The recession is already slowly ending, you dimwit.
Oh, and I see you’re not defending your claim that people live paycheck to paycheck as a deliberate strategy to manipulate finances, and not, you know, out of fucking need. That’s good, because what you don’t know about the poor could fill a warehouse.
Oh, I totally misread that ‘globalization has increased the demand for gold’ bullet point.
You mean that the demand for gold increased because more people have means, because globalization, right? I invite you to study about what globalization has done for central and south America, the Phillippines, or any agricultural nation, really. Protip: It’s not what you think it is.
And one last point against a commodity-based currency… what do you propose, exactly? Gold is a vital industrial component. Silver too. Platinum is far too scarce for a global economy, and still has important applications in actual use. Obviously Oil doesn’t work, since we need to make it stop being important to begin with, and even if we manage there’ll be too little left for a global economic standard.
I mean, that pretends a commodity-based currency is still a good idea, but what would you even suggest as a baseline? ’cause it can’t be the precious metals anymore, we actually need that shit.
Mertvaya Ruka: Re. what you said, I guess people like Brandon think “Midas” is the name of a chain of auto repair shops. Because reading fiction is for girls and sissies.
Brandon: You should study history a little more. Gold was not regarded as “the store of value” across all civilized cultures. In fact, if I were to name the three most valuable things that were historically most valued pretty much all over the globe, that would be salt, sugar and spices. These things may not be very expensive when you buy them in small quantities from a grocery store, but many more wars were fought and peoples wiped out, right into the present day, over those three than over gold.
As Rutee pointed out, gold is a vital industrial component — but if we see it as only an industrial component, it is not anywhere near scarce, and won’t be for thousands of years. Other significances of gold — namely, its use in fine jewelry and as a “store of value” — are purely cultural and completely arbitrary. The demand for gold jewelry in the past couple of decades has fallen dramatically, which indicates shifting cultural attitudes. And as for using gold as a symbol of value — that’s just as arbitrary as using sea shells, iron nails or, you know, paper currency. Historically, the value of gold has been just as volatile as that of paper money, and unless you can put those gold bars to actual productive use (which you can’t), in the long run is isn’t worth any more than “worthless” currency.
Brandon: If you have a relationship where one party leaves the workforce to support the other in the home/rearing the children you have a chance of paying support. Marriage isn’t required, that’s why I bolded the part about implied contract.
The country doesn’t have a debt problem. It has a political problem. More to the point the SSA isn’t actually in the same money pool. That it gets treated that way is part of why we think we have a debt problem. The SSA is completely funded from payroll taxes, and the way it’s built if it stops being able to fun full pay-out it gives partial. The present prediction (assuming no change in the income stream, which would require a completely stagnant economy, no changes to the system and no replacement of workers) is 2038. Increasing the present cutoff for SSA taxes from the $107,000 it presently is to $214,000 would move that date to the imperceivable future.
As to the debt problem… the debt is a bit more than 50 percent of GDP. That, to use the common analogy of the household budget is equivalent to someone with a $40,000 income buying a $20,000 car. It’s not that big a deal, all in all. No one thinks someone buying a house (which puts one’s personal debt load into the hundreds… someone with a $100,000 who buys a $500,000 house had a 500 percent debt load (more actually, but I’m leaving the interest on the mortgage out of the picture to make the numbers clean). If they use any other debt (a new car, home improvements, etc.) they have a higher debt load.
The problem isn’t the debt (Japan has a debt/GDP ratio of something like 225 percent, and has for some time… no one is saying they don’t have problems, but one doesn’t see any mass panic about the end of Japan either).
The problem is the deficit. That’s actually fixable. Reduce the spending (by say ending the wars) and allow taxes to go back to the level they were at before GWB’s, “temporary tax cuts” which were passed because we were running a surplus. That is 11 years ago we were possessed of a balanced budget and the debt was being paid down.
re 2 and 3: It’s not 10 contracts, it’s a couple of hundred. Most of which one doesn’t discover one needs until one can’t do what one wants. And, as I said, the issue of maintaining them is a problem too. The easiest way would be to have a lawyer on retainer, who is being paid to keep track of them as they sunset, and call you to renew/rework them. untangling such a relationship would probably be more work than a divorce. It will certainly cost more than divorce.
Why? Because if we assume that the relationship ends (elstwise none of this issue of separation matters) the work of dissolving those contracts will be greater than severing them with a divorce, and the work will be proportional to the work they would have been in a divorce. So a messy divorce (single contract) becomes a messy severance of tens/hundreds of contracts (some of which are not severable in the same way they would have been in a divorce. You may have inadvertently changed the nature of the property; relative to where you live [i.e. you may have created community property in a non-community property state, or prevented it in one which is community property).
Because I have a lot of friends who are poly, and who have had to deal with establishing equivalent legal relationships to marriage (and in some cases dissolving them), I can say, categorically (from, you know, actual experience) you are not really informed on the subject.
Again, I do not care if people get married, nor do I insult them for making that choice. I just think it is a bad one to make. Sometimes I talk about marriage and debate it with people, I tell them and they are free to take it or leave it. I am not going to lie to them and say “Marriage is great”.
Actually, though it’s not done in an aggressive way, you do insult people for getting married. You tell them it’s a bad thing to do, and then say a smart person can get all the benefits without any of the problems you think you see. Never mind that you lie to them when you say you are in a position to compare the state of non-married, with contracts, to married.
NWO: Normally when you get fired it’s because you fucked up and deserve to get fired. QFT. Usually when one party initiates a divorce, it’s because the other party fucked up in some way which made it intolerable for that party to continue.
Sometimes (about 15 percent of the time) the terms of the marriage were such that continued support (almost always with limits, in a previous age it was remarriage), is warranted. This is almost always contested but it’s not common and it’s gender neutral* I realised you’ve been brainwashed with old-fashioned mores, and don’t realise this. I recommend a class (you can do them on the internet, intended for people who want to be paralegals) in marital law, and divorce.
*I have a friend who is going through a divorce, her husband is asking for alimony. The odds of him getting it are dropping, because he is being stupid about how he handles his end of things. She wasn’t happy about the idea of paying alimony [she wasn't happy about the idea of divorcing him either, but that's another problem altogether], but since he’d been the one doing the renovations to the house, instead of working outside it, that was the right thing to do.
Brandon: Looking at your comments on money/healthcare I see you don’t understand the economics of either money valuation, or of shared risk. If we were still on a “pegged standard” we’d have a problem. Lets say the value of the dollar was still pegged at USD20 = 1 oz (troy).
How many ounces of gold are there in Ft. Knox? What do you do as the economy expands? You can’t put more money into circulation. You have limits on the economy. The other thing to do is to have a secondary metal… say silver, in circulation. That’s useful only so long as there is enough silver to keep up with expansion.
Your economy is also subject to the vagaries of the wider market. If a sudden influx of gold happens (say a huge strike, thousands of lbs, were to be found somewhere) then your currency is either devalued, or kept afloat by fiat/purchase. Only you have to use gold to buy gold, so that trick doesn’t work.
A big part of the progressive movement at the turn of the last century was because we had a gold standard, and the amount of money in circulation wasn’t enough to meet demands.
Want to know what a gold-backed economy looks like in the modern age? The Soviet Union. How did they manage it… well for one thing they had a much smaller economy. For another they did what we would have to be doing, reduced the amount of gold a single ruble was worth.
They are no longer on a Gold Standard, their economy (even with the kleptocratic issues, and the rampant mafia) is growing.
Switzerland is, but they don’t have the same sort of economy as either the US, or the former Soviet Union. They make a huge amount of their money by importing it.
BTW: If you want to invest in metal with really good returns (and based on actual market forces, not woo-woo about retained value…. lead
The more people in an insurance pool, the lower the rates. Yes, there is some affect of people who aren’t paying in; if they aren’t paying in, but that’s not the way it works. I’ve never (in a working life of 28 years), known a company that doesn’t make one pay a bit more to add someone to a policy. Even the DoD requires dependents to pay some of the costs. So more people = more money = less risk.
But the present system isn’t designed to provide care, it’s designed to reward shareholders, which means the incentives are perverted.
NWO: So very wrong, so many times:
The very system that has caused inflation and every economic collapse. Look it up genius.
The panic of 1873
Note the date. Note the similarities to the present.
The depression began with a building boom in Europe, with rapid building construction taking place in Vienna, Paris and Berlin.
Mortgages were easy to get and large British banks happily made loans to developers. Mortgages were also available from new savings banks designed for the middle-classes. Some of these may have been dodgy. People even used half-completed buildings as collateral because credit was so easy to obtain. This created a housing bubble.
The crisis hit when Russia and Central Europe couldn’t compete with American exports of wheat and other crops, including kerosene which undermined the use of rapeseed oil for cooking. Banks no longer wanted to lend so easily. Eventually the stock market in Vienna crashed and the crisis spread to Western Europe.
What about the Panics of 1785, and 1837 (also pre-fed)
Oddly enough, one of the things which caused people to say, we could reduce regulation on bank/investment houses was the dearth of market crashes from the inception of the fed to the present (even the S&L disaster was small, as was, “Black Monday” in 1989).
But I’d had to trouble your pretty little head with all those pesky little facts. They do get in the way of all the charming theories which explain why the world doesn’t revolve around you the way it should.
KathleenB: I have to say that the upper class women were educated. They may not have attended university, but they had tutors. As a single example, Mary Sidney (sister of Sir Philip Sidney). Spoke latin and greek, talented poet. Look at the Paston Letters (written during the English Civil Wars). Upper middle class women engaging in Business.
The Lisle Letters detail the correspondence of a family of minor (if notable, and long-standing) nobility in the reign of Henry VIII, not only is his wife an active correspondent, but the tutoring of the daughters (and their letters) are detailed, as well as the wife’s managing the family business in England while he was governor of Calais.
I have a copy of Magalena and Balthsar which is a 16th century collection of letters between two partner in Germany, as he travelled on business and the managed their lives (and it might do both Brandon and NWO good to read it).
It’s not that they weren’t educated, it’s that the ability to use it was severely limited.
And I see you amended that. I’ll leave this up because those are really interesting people/reads.
@Rutee: If you are going to continue to be insulting…I won’t bother.
1) So what if it is from Kitco? Are you claiming that all the data at a investment website like Yahoo Finance is fraudulent because they earn a profit? Profit doesn’t automatically mean they are lying or committing fraud.
2) Gold just like everything else works on supply and demand. If people want it, the price goes up. If more people want it then the mines can produce…then it goes up more.
3) Gold does have other uses but they are very specialized (e.g CPU pins and gold plated A/V cables, etc…) The only industry that really uses most of the gold are jewelers.
4) ANYTHING can be used as a currency. As long as people perceive it to have value. The paper that the dollar is printed on isn’t even worth a dime…yet I can still go into a 7-11 and get a candy bar for a buck…Why? Because everyone (Americans and non-Americans) perceive that little piece of paper as worth $1 and not the .05 cents the paper actually costs.
The US dollar just makes bartering and trade more portable since people don’t have to lug around heavy bars of gold and silver or even farm livestock to trade with people.
The idea of “store of value” and “currency” are nothing more than abstract ideas…paper money and gold are the practical implementations of that abstraction.
4) When I start seeing jobs getting created consistently month after month and wages increased…then I will put more faith in the US government. Otherwise, I will still remain skeptical.
5) What does corrupt and oppressive central and south american societies have to do with gold prices?
Rutee…have you ever been homeless sleeping in shelters with drug addicts and alcoholics? Not having enough money to eat and going a week without something in your stomach? Well, I have…so please don’t lecture me about the poor, because I was poor for most of my twenties.
@Pecunium: Debt is very much a problem. Mainly because most of our debt is being held by foreign governments. This gives foreigners and not Americans leverage over what the US government can do. If we do something that China doesn’t like…they can start unloading their debt and we are fucked. It’s called financial warfare. See the British fighting over the Sinai Peninsula back in the 50’s for an example.
You know what works as a contract. “I hereby give my father all say in the matters of my medical and financial needs if I become legally unable to make those decisions for myself” (you + witness signatures + date) (notarized). While not standard, it is official and thus a legal contract.
Contracts are not these complicated things that only a lawyer can fill out. I signed a contract when I got my cell phone and cable service. No lawyer needed. You are purposely trying to make it more convoluted then necessary because you feel the need to defend marriage…and all these contracts are a way for you to justify that belief. You are trying to make the point that marriage has “less hoops jump through”. I don’t see it. Plus in my state you need to fulfill other things before you get your marriage license, like getting a blood test and a few other health related issues.
So not only is getting married just walking into town hall and seeing the clerk, neither is it filling out all these cumbersome contracts and paying high lawyer fees.
Again, as I have said before. Marriage is nothing more than weighing the pro’s and con’s. I see far more con’s than pro’s while others might see the opposite. I think we should work on making those benefits that marriage gives out (to those that see them as benefits) available to non-married couples. This way marriage really is nothing more than an arbitrary piece of paper to everyone…not just me.
Oh, and the wedding costs could be put to better use…like a down payment on a house.
Needless to say, you are not really giving up much my not marrying. Immigration issues seems to be the only real thing that has no counterpart for the non-married.
Now on to gold. There are both pro’s and con’s to the gold standard. And I am not even sure I want to go back to pre-nixon monetary policy. But I would like to see the dollar get pegged to something than just “societies faith” in the dollar.
You are advocating lead? Are you serious? The crap we are trying to remove from houses and every other product in existence and people are scared shitless of lead poisoning. Lead has been trading sideways for years. Lead is the worst possible investment idea. Hell, even copper and aluminum are better suggestions since copper is used in wiring and aluminum for house siding. And people aren’t terrified of copper or aluminum.
The fall of the Soviet Union was mainly due to Glasnost. It opened up the media which then shed light on food shortages, pollution, bad housing and widespread drug and alcohol addictions.
‘Not having enough money to eat and going a week without something in your stomach? Well, I have…so please don’t lecture me about the poor, because I was poor for most of my twenties.”
Next you’re going to tell us you’ve gone 200 days without food and routinely work 28 hour days.
Brandon: @Pecunium: Debt is very much a problem. Mainly because most of our debt is being held by foreign governments.
Bzzzt. Wrong answer.
China owns… 7.5 percent of US Debt.
Here’s the breakdown, according to Business Insider
* Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
* Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
* Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
* Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
* Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
* Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
* Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
* State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
* Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
* United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
* Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
* State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
* Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
* U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
* China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
* The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
* Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)
So the US owes itself, directly, 30.3 percent of the debt. It owes itself, indirectly, another 7 percent (the state/local gov’ts and pension funds, that brings us to 37.3 percent. Add in mutual funds, and banks, and money market funds and the percentage of debt contained in the US rises to 43.8.
So China isn’t really in the position everyone likes to claim it is in terms of debt-based control. When the games Beijing is playing with the yuan, and the intimate linkage between the US ability to pay for Chinese goods driving the economic growth which is keeping the lid on social pressures for a wider change in the way things are run… I’m not worried about China.
It is true, barely, that the majority of our debt isn’t held inside the US, but there is no single debtor with the ability to try to cash in it’s bonds (or refuse to buy new issues of debt) and so change our policy.
For a list of countries with more debt load than the US, we can see:
1. Portugal (Debt %83.2)
2. France (Debt %83.5)
3. Sri Lanka (Debt %86.7)
4. Sudan (Debt %94.2)
5. Ireland (Debt %94.2)
6. Belgium (Debt %98.6)
7. Singapore (Debt %102.4)
8. Italy (Debt %118.4)
9. Jamaica (Debt %123.2)
10. Iceland (Debt %123.8)
11. Greece (Debt %144)
12. Zimbabwe (Debt %149)
13. Lebanon (Debt %150.7)
14. Saint Kitts and Nevis (Debt %196)
15. Japan (Debt %225.6)
Re contracts: Contracts are not these complicated things that only a lawyer can fill out. I signed a contract when I got my cell phone and cable service. No lawyer needed.
Um… who wrote that contract? A lawyer. That you are willing to trust that lawyer is your business (and that such mono-directional, non-negotiable contracts have become a norm is large problem).
You mistake me when you say I feel the need to defend marriage. I happen to think marriage is something people can enter, or not. What I am defending is the facts. You are asserting that marriage is something anyone can replicate; without the risk of punitive repercussions at dissolution (i.e. divorce). I am showing that the legal interweaving required to get those benefits is much more complex than you allege.
My comment on lead that, as a basis for investment it’s trendline is outperforming gold, not that I think it ought to be used as a peg to the value of the dollar*
You say gold is great because of how much money you are likely to make because of the “intrinsic” value it has. I am offering you a way to make more from your investment; in particular because lead is increasing in value as a result of rational market forces and real world demand, instead of the warm-fuzzies people get at the idea of having something shiny they can fondle.
Glasnost what not the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union. If you’d like we can talk about the effects of the war in Afghanistan, the strains that put on the budget, the outside forces from the US led coalition of Wester Powers attempting to keep the Soviet Economy isolated and secondary problems of competing ideologies and lack of access to markets for the goods the Soviet Union was in a better place to provide, as well as the problems of maintaining both an empire, and a hegemony; the border conflicts with China, the strains of both competing for access to client states (and the difficulties of supporting them, in the face of active US attempts to undermine open markets, e.g. Cuba), the costs of lifting a third world nation (tsarist Russia) to a 1st/2nd world nation, while simultaneously trying to help other nations move from colonial status to independent nations at 2nd world levels.
All of that on that selfsame constricted economy being caused by people who didn’t like the Russians way of gov’t (see the US Army being sent to interfere in the Russian Civil War, which meant that Lenin, after it was over, was even more hostile to the West than he might have been had the West not attempted to maintain the status quo ante, and then overthrow the gov’t which was established.
Nope… you think it was just that the press was a bit more open under Gorbachev, and people suddenly found out things were bad.
No thoughts to the samizdat circulation of Sakharov, Yevtushenko, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn; no internal struggles between the Krushchevs, Shevardnadzes, and Gorbachevs, against recationaries like Brezhnev, Adropov, Chernenko, et alia.
Nope, nothing so complex as all that.
Sort of like your views on marriage and money.
*your gut reaction that lead is, “bad” and so isn’t a good commodity to attach value to is a sign of the “warm fuzzy” as motivation for the gold standard which I am talking about.
To clarify on Lead:
In 2010 Gold had an increase of 40 percent.
Lead had one of 155 percent.
Depends on the state you are in on the marriage license-in my county, Maricopa, you only need an ID, $72 and to sign something saying you are single after swearing to tell the truth. If you have a pal who is an internet preacher you can get the actual ceremony for free. Here, having a judge do the wedding at the court during the week costs $60-80, possibly comped if the judge either knows you, you are active military, or you show you are too poor to pay. A certified copy costs $26.25. And yes that can be waived.
So to get all of the legalbenefits of marriage and health benefits, you merely have to sign two pieces of paper (the affidavit saying you are single and the marriage license itself) and depending on the circumstances, you can do so for less then $100.
Or you could waste your time figuring out how to write up contracts that cover every situation and that will hold up in court. You blithely assume that any contract will past muster-not so, a judge can find that the contract had illegal provisions. Or that the terms were so unconscionable that the entire thing needs to be scrapped. Then you are going to have to go with what the judge thinks is equitable and fair.
Marriages already have the provisions worked out so life’s issues are already worked out. Add to it the health benefits, it seems kind of dumb to me for you to be so smug and self righteous about how you can handle any curveball life throws at you during your relationship. Also, since your wages will go up as a male, I find it even weirder that you hate it so much.
Beth…. it’s obvious.
Not Married = Freedom.
Freedom without Alimony = Bliss.
Marriage = Divorce.
Divorce = Freedom + Alimony.
Freedom + Alimony = Hell
It is worth any amount of work (and money) to avoid Hell.
Just for the record …
Not really, though. No consideration; it’s unenforceable.
*smacks forehead* Ooooh I forgot!
Well, at least he is not like me who half the time only wants to get married because it is the easiest way to change my last name.
Wanna bet he would show up in court with a witness statement that is notarized and claim it passes the hearsay exceptions?
Yeah, I married my sister…and her husband, after I got ordained on-line by the Universal Life Church. :) It was fun!
My issue with marriage being a contract was that NWO was saying that filing for a divorce would constitute breach of that contract, which would result in SEVERE PENALTIES under any other circumstance–which is pure bullshit, and once again reveals that NWO doesn’t know his ass from a proverbial hole in the ground. Color my unsurprised.
I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that contracts are superseded by law. In other words, a contract which requires one party to act in a manner that is illegal is not a valid contract. For instance, I know that in CA non-compete contracts are unenforceable. You can sign an agreement with your employer to not steal his/her clients after you leave, but there’s no way that agreement can be enforced.
So, I guess my point is that it seems to me that the marriage “contract,” as currently understood in most states, does not constitute and agreement never to terminate the marriage. It seems more akin to a business partnership–a relationship that can be entered into legally and that also can be dissolved legally, but which also carries certain rights and responsibilities while in effect, and these rights and responsibilities are governed by applicable law.
“You know what works as a contract. “I hereby give my father all say in the matters of my medical and financial needs if I become legally unable to make those decisions for myself” (you + witness signatures + date) (notarized). While not standard, it is official and thus a legal contract.”
Uhm, Brandon? I do know what works as a contract. You, on the other hand, clearly don’t. The most fundamental requirement of any contract is consideration, and it’s completely absent in the example you gave. Rather, the example you gave is a proxy, revocable at any time. You are not bound by it; and actually, neither is your father.
… and it’s not an exchange of any kind; just one person willingly giving up something, and no one agreeing to take it. In short, no. Not a contract.
It’s weird, because generally I kind of want Brandon to get this one right. I don’t want to get married, and I have no interest in whether other people get married either. But where he falls down is (1) dismissing the difficulty (and even impossibility) of recreating all the effects of marriage through individual contracts, and (2) apparently basing his lack of interest in marriage in a lack of empathy, warmth, and love for those he enters into relationships with. It’s a little frustrating.
Bee: I think the most important thing to understand about marriage — and what MRA’s consistently fail to understand — is that marriage ISN’T, in fact, a business relationship, and therefore, not a contract. Actually, it’s not just MRA’s who do this, it’s generally quite fashionable nowadays to tout how marriage is just this terse exchange of money and goods. In reality, it never is. Most people marry for love, or at least a close, long-term companionship. And that’s emotional and sexual companionship I’m talking about. That companionship isn’t just an add-on to an otherwise standard commercial contract; it is the very backbone of the relationship. People who ignore that are just idiots trying to appear tough.
So, what are the legal obligations of marriage, if any?
Yeah … I was actually going to touch on that in my comment, but, well, didn’t. One can certainly think of marriage as a contract. It’s like a contract in some respects. But it does differ from a contract in others. It has to.
“People who ignore that are just idiots trying to appear tough.”
Or … idiots who are difficult to love, and are sadly clinging to the hope that bragging about their (un-noteworthy) salary and possessions will win them some kind of interest from women? Eh, same same, I guess.
“1) So what if it is from Kitco? Are you claiming that all the data at a investment website like Yahoo Finance is fraudulent because they earn a profit? Profit doesn’t automatically mean they are lying or committing fraud.”
It’s unsourced, you ignoramus. I have less than zero reason to believe their portrayals of past data are accurate if they can’t produce an actual source for it. They are not historians. That’s a problem. Profit doesn’t necessarily mean someone is lying, that’s true, but if they’re not actually forthcoming about their data (Which I *KNOW* they didn’t collect for themselves, and is clearly not proprietary if they are willing to advertise with it at any rate), there’s even less reason to trust them than normal, because in particular, they want *your* money.
“2) Gold just like everything else works on supply and demand. If people want it, the price goes up. If more people want it then the mines can produce…then it goes up more.”
Do you not understand how much society needs computers now? We don’t get a choice on going back anymore. It would increase the value of currency at the cost of making basics of life (and competitive economies) prohibitively expensive.
Further, because market forces control the price of your currency, you’re not actually working with something that has an actually fixed value. An increase in the supply can destroy your currency; again, THIS HAS HAPPENED IN HISTORY. More than once. It destroyed more than one empire, and if it happened in a modern economy, would ruin people even further than it did then. In fact, in a market as large as the US, it would do more than just ruin that one country; it could even more drastically destroy the world. You’d see the US exert even more military power to push around gold producing countries too, I suspect.
“3) Gold does have other uses but they are very specialized (e.g CPU pins and gold plated A/V cables, etc…) The only industry that really uses most of the gold are jewelers. ”
Specialized and damn near necessary. And in global demand. I’m not concerned about jewelers, because they don’t use that much. Enormous bars backing up all currency however, tends to use up quite a bit of the gold supply.
“4) ANYTHING can be used as a currency. As long as people perceive it to have value. The paper that the dollar is printed on isn’t even worth a dime…yet I can still go into a 7-11 and get a candy bar for a buck…Why? Because everyone (Americans and non-Americans) perceive that little piece of paper as worth $1 and not the .05 cents the paper actually costs.”
Yeah, I’m aware of how currency works. You’re insisting that gold is ‘special’ in having a fixed value, which is bullshit anyway, but what would you actually suggest as a commodity that isn’t important, exists in sufficient supply to actually support a global economy, is extremely difficult to reproduce in bulk, but can grow in supply with the population, exactly?
“The US dollar just makes bartering and trade more portable since people don’t have to lug around heavy bars of gold and silver or even farm livestock to trade with people.”
No, the US Dollar is also something that is, within our society, also guaranteed to have worth. That’s important. Barter economies work with supply and demand on a localized scale. Sure, that guy might have a pig to trade you so you can fix their roof… but when you’ve got enough food and meat in particular, that’s a terrible trade. IF he doesn’t have, let’s say, iron or shingling material or whatnot…
It’s not just a matter of portability; it’s substantially easier to use than actual barter, because actual barter isn’t conducted in animal-currency. It’s conducted by trading services and goods, and everyone would need to be part economist and part soothsayer to really replicate the most basic functions of our current economy.
“4) When I start seeing jobs getting created consistently month after month and wages increased…then I will put more faith in the US government. Otherwise, I will still remain skeptical.”
Feel free.
“5) What does corrupt and oppressive central and south american societies have to do with gold prices?”
Translation: The only thing you know about central and south america is that it’s the origin of ‘banana republic’ and that Hugo Chavez is vaguely important and powerful.
You said globalization lead to an increase in the demand for gold. You didn’t actually offer a mechanism and evidentiary to explain this, so I had to assume you meant globalization = more money = more luxuries = GOLD!!!$$$$$. Globalization hasn’t, by a long shot, lead to more money for the developing world in a meaningful sense. There’s been what, one or two winners, like maybe, MAYBE Brazil? But then, you didn’t offer an explanatory mechanism or evidentiary support for this assertion, so hey.
“Rutee…have you ever been homeless sleeping in shelters with drug addicts and alcoholics? Not having enough money to eat and going a week without something in your stomach? Well, I have…so please don’t lecture me about the poor, because I was poor for most of my twenties.”
Yet you rant on about how people live paycheck to paycheck because it’s more economical and cheaper for them because of their debts? You claimed that this form of poverty was a matter of deliberate choice for economic gain; that is so stupid that you are either a complete idiot, or you are dishonest. I don’t care which it is.
CB, one of my links has a break down of the legal obligations.
“@Rutee: If you are going to continue to be insulting…I won’t bother. ”
Riiiiight, that’s such a huge problem to you, what with the insulting rather large swaths of people for getting married at all.
CB: The only legal obligation I can think of is one of mutual financial support. Moral obligations are a different matter. Marriage also entails a bundle of legal rights, but those are generally in the nature of legal presumptions and automatic operation of laws, rather than the kind of legal rights that are the flip-side of obligations.
Thanks, Beth and Amused. I’ll look at them when I’m not at work. :)
“Oh, and the wedding costs could be put to better use…like a down payment on a house.”
I feel like what Brandon is protesting is an *ideal* of marriage: the idea that a marriage is a ginormous, white-icing-covered production that only tangentally involves the husband, is wildly expensive, and once over no one ever has any fun again. Instead, they sit in front of the TV every night, get fat, and maybe have a screaming baby.
Brandon, this is a powerful cultural stereotype, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You might want to look at Offbeat Bride, read about Holly’s super-sexy Vegas wedding fetish, or just, ya know, Google for what lots of gays have said about the reasons they want to be married. Some people get married in a court house in a thrift store dress, with no guests in attendance–some people just can’t *afford* to have a ceremony that equals a down payment on a house.
You’ve said that my defense of marriage makes me a bad feminist. I, personally, can’t imagine myself getting married: I’m bisexual and poly, so unless the laws change soon, I probably wouldn’t be able to. (I too support the idea of making it so that marriage rights can be applied to anyone more easily, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon either.) Second, I’m still working my way through how LTRs actually work, so I don’t yet see myself as “ready” for that kind of commitment. But I do think that, legally, marriage is a good choice for a lot of people, and that people can live out their lives in all kinds of non-traditional ways once they’ve tied the knot.
The idea of “store of value” and “currency” are nothing more than abstract ideas…paper money and gold are the practical implementations of that abstraction.
If you are aware that both of these systems are arbitrarily-defined social conventions, why pick the one that would give the Democratic Republic of the Congo more control over our monetary policy than our own government? Why gold? Why not a tungsten-standard or a cattle-standard or a giant stone disc standard?
Riiiiight, that’s such a huge problem to you, what with the insulting rather large swaths of people for getting married at all.
Not all people, just women! Who are apparently motivated by fluffy bunnies and clouds inside their pretty heads, while cold, rational men have the existential courage necessary to stare down the void of Being by going out on the weekends and, should their partner incur medical expenses, leaving them holding the bag..
Goddamn it, the two-dot ellipses again.
I suppose we could always go the Anhk-Morpork route.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golems_%28Discworld%29#The_Golem_standard
The tricky part is finding the golems.
Everyone has already pointed out most of whats wrongs with brandons idea of contracts but i think its also worth pointing out that contracts arent magic. they exist because theres a legal framework to make them exist, without which a contract would just be two people agreeing to do something for each other without any way of making sure the other party upholds his end of bargain
@Captain Bathrobe
“My issue with marriage being a contract was that NWO was saying that filing for a divorce would constitute breach of that contract, which would result in SEVERE PENALTIES under any other circumstance–which is pure bullshit, and once again reveals that NWO doesn’t know his ass from a proverbial hole in the ground. Color my unsurprised.”
It seems your grasp of a binding legal contract is very limited. Look at a marriage license, at the top is the corporate name of the owner, ( The State of …). Under that is the corporate name(s) of the indentured party(s). The way you know if it is a legal contract is if your name is in all capital letters. Look at any State document, credit card you own. Your name will always be in capital letters. Any letters you recieve in the mail which aren’t a legal contract, only the first letter of your name will be capitalized. The State holds the title to your marriage that is why the State decides who gets what, which is of course is why the State is able to transfer wealth and children, (rights) from men to women. That’d be the violence of the State women are able to wield.
———————————————
@Rutee Katreya
“Further, because market forces control the price of your currency, you’re not actually working with something that has an actually fixed value. An increase in the supply can destroy your currency”
Your knowlege of finances and market forces are infantile at best. First off you need to dispel any notion you live in a capitalist society. Take the price of gas for instance, how can it fluctuate so radically? Has supply dropped and grown so radically? Of course not the price is “set” and has nothing to do with supply or demand. There is no competition, therefore there is no capitalism. The same is for virtually all minerals, foods, etc. When lumber or pork bellies or oil goes up. Did the trees grow poorly? Did the pigs go on strike? Have the oil wells run dry? You live in a communist society.
Your knowlege of currency is equally lacking. Your money is a note, not a bond. This ain’t the good old days. Heres the way the system works. For every “bond” the Federal Reserve lends to the State a “note,” (a debt) is passed onto the general population. For every “bond” the Federal Reserve lends to the State the Federal Reserve is able to “lend” (flood the market) with nine “notes” to the private banks, who in turn lend 9 “notes” for every “note the Federal Reserve lends them. The Federal Reserve and private banks are supposed to have a 10% reserve of wealth, which they don’t.
So when all you lefties “hailed” Obama for keeping our communist government afloat by borrowing 2 trillion dollars, heres what you’ve done. That 2 trillion was passed onto every person as a debt to the Federal Reserve, who in turn will lend 18 trillion dollars to other bankers. and they in turn will do the same and lend it to you as bank and credit card debt. The will keep the interest rate very low in order to flood the market with cheap currency. Eventually, as they’ve done time and time again they will raise the interest rates, stop the flow of money, call in their markers and buy everything back for pennies on the dollar. Which is exactly what happened on 2008. Guess who owns it all now, the bankers, the same people that lent the money, caused inflation and then caused the, haha, recession.
Right now, under the present system, all money is debt. If every person/business paid off their debt and borrowed nothing there would be no money left. Not one red cent since all money is borrowed by the State there is only debt. Until the Federal Reserve is once again destroyed in this country we will always be indebted to the bankers. And yes, I said once again because it’s happened before in this country. Think bank of Philidelphia.
NWO, are you one of those people who doesn’t pay taxes because “this tax bill is addressed to NWOSLAVE, who is a fictional person as my name is clearly NWOslave?”
The State holds the title to your marriage that is why the State decides who gets what, which is of course is why the State is able to transfer wealth and children, (rights) from men to women.
This is so far from true, or even meaningful (“owning” a marriage???) that I’d like to hear your views on Reptilian Aliens next.
owlslave ‘capitalism is incompatible with price fluctuation’ is probably the funniest thing youve said since superdogs
…also, as the State (well, elected officials and bureaucrats, anyway) has a significant majority of men in the upper levels, what exactly do they have to gain by giving women all the money?
@Holly Pervocracy
If the State isn’t the owner of the contract how can they decide any course of action ot “grant” a divorce? How can the State decide any course of action about children or property? The only way they could do this was if they were the owners of that contract.
NWO – No one owns a contract, ever, even a business contract. You can only be a party to a contract.
The state enforces contracts.
In the case of marriage and divorce, the state’s role is often more “mediation” than even enforcement, because there’s usually a lot of negotiation about money and children, not just an edict handed down by the judge. (Although of course it will come to that if there’s an issue neither party will budge on. But the judge would prefer not to make a unilateral ruling if the parties are able to come to an agreement.)
Look at any State document, credit card you own. Your name will always be in capital letters. Any letters you recieve in the mail which aren’t a legal contract, only the first letter of your name will be capitalized.
no i take it back its this
nobody ‘owns’ a contract you goonybird, certainly not a third party. its a set of obligations between two people.
The fail is so strong it hurts. On legally binding contracts the names are always capitalized? That is how you figure out if a contract is binding? Are you serious? So…I take it you have never heard of oral contracts…right?
@Holly Pervocracy
“also, as the State (well, elected officials and bureaucrats, anyway) has a significant majority of men in the upper levels, what exactly do they have to gain by giving women all the money?”
They gain power of course. Do you really believe any elected official cares about you? Theres 435 men and women ad the top, they don’t care.
If they say, “we need more hospitals for women and children.” Everyone says, “hey that sounds pretty nifty, lets help women and children!”
If they say, (think Biden) “violence against women is the worst crime in the world.” He said something along those lines. He just tagged a couple hundred billion more in taxes. Police forces will get some. More agencies will be formed. The money will flow and the Government will grow. Feminism is a cash cow.
Theres a gap in CEOs, oh hell lets have an agency, make a law, enforce those laws, lets have overseers, over seeing the overseers. Shit, theres apparently even a happiness gap. Lets set up an agency, raise them taxes. feminists are stooges to bring about total State control. Why do you think so many feminists are proud communists? Cause thats all feminism every was. Now go run to the State and beg for more laws.
@Holly Pervocracy
Again I ask you Holly. If the State isn’t the owner of the marriage contract how can the grant any action at all?
Is your name in all capital letters on your credit card? Your drivers license? You checking account? All capitals means corporate.
Doesn’t the credit card you have, have your name in capital letters? That’s corporate. Anytime your name appears in all capitals that is corporate.
@Holly Pervocracy
“NWO – No one owns a contract, ever, even a business contract. You can only be a party to a contract.”
Well if thats the case, go sign a contract to borrow money and buy a house. But don’t pay the bill ever. I’ll bet the “owner” of the contract quickly becomes the “owner” of your house.
Fucking awesome!
Good thing I learned this before my advanced contracts class starts. Now I’m ahead of the game!
(I can only imagine what my professor would say if even a 1L came to class spouting this nonsense. She’s a very nice woman. I imagine it would be a long talk about how the law is maybe not for you, and a referral to a therapist.)
Everybody must be looking on wikipedia to see if capital letters mean corporate, since the replys have stopped. I mean everyone here is a wikipedia genius. Just so ya know, wikipedia is really just peoples opinions. If we got a coupls million people to write in and say the moon was made of blue cheese, (mildly sharp), that’s exactly what it would say.
Out of the many, many, many wrong things the slaveman has commented on this blog, none has ever amused me more than this line of inquiry. Doesn’t the contract need to be signed in blood, too? Tell us more, the slaveman! Fucking contracts. How do they work?
*pops popcorn*
The state awards child support based on parentage, with or without a marriage license.
Also, names in all capitals? Really? You actually think that means anything?
NWOslave – the replies have stopped because you have succeeded in proving that you know nothing about contracts or their formation (or enforceability). You look at your junk mail and that is how you have determined what is or is not a contract. Your complete lack of understanding of the very basics of the law is astounding.
I guess the point is, you can’t argue with stupid. I could sit here and type up all of the legal requirements of a contract (none of which are “must contain the names of the parties in all capital letters) until my fingers fall off, and you would still be as deliberately ignorant as you are right now.
I do have to thank you though. You definitely gave me a good laugh. As I sit here, at my desk, ironically reviewing contracts, your interpretation of what a contract is and how you know it is binding was a great break! I actually sent off your description to a couple of law school friends of mine, who also got a good chuckle. So, thanks for that!
@Bee
Really? Advanced contracts? You’ll be hittin caps lock a whole lot for any legal contract.
Credit card addressed to you that you own, JOHN DOE.
Credit card adressed to you that wants your business, John Doe.
Corporate is capital, Non-corporate isn’t.
I thought all capitals was, you know, more legible.
@Rachel
Really Rachel, find me a corporate contract that doesn’t use capital letters for your entire name. Then get back to me.
@captainbathrobe
“The state awards child support based on parentage, with or without a marriage license.
Also, names in all capitals? Really? You actually think that means anything?”
The only reason the State can do anything is because of the contract they own. I’ll ask you, how else could the State grant anything, backed by force unless they held the contract enabling them to do so.
Capitals is corporate.
Yikes, I used to give you people the slightest chance of having a small measure of working knowlege of State, finances, markets and such, but certainly not now.
I stopped replying because I went off to spend time with people.
But here I am on my phone and laughing.
NWO, where exactly did you learn these fascinating things about contracts? Is there a specific book (or caps-heavy, gif-spattered website), or is it just your accumulated worldly knowledge?
NOWslave – most, not all, contracts do use capital letters for the parties names (as do case captions in court documents and various other legal documents). However, the fact that something is or is not written in capital letters has no bearing on the enforceability of the contract.
Contract, defined – “A contract is an agreement between two or more persons consisting of a (promise that is) (set of promises that are) legally enforceable.” Kansas Pattern Jury Instructions, 4th, 124.01.
Formation of a contract – “A contract may be made in any manner sufficient to show agreement. It may be oral or written, or implied from the conduct of the parties.” Kansas Pattern Jury Instructions, 4th, 124.03.
Consideration – “For a promise to be legally enforceable, something of value must be bargained for and given in exchange for the promise. This is called consideration. ‘Something of value’ may consist of promises (such as a promise to pay money or to perform services or to deliver goods), an act (such as the payment of money, the delivery of goods, or the performance of services), or a forbearance (such as forbearance to sue, to compete, to promise, or to act).” Kansas Pattern Jury Instructions, 4th, 124.12
Please note – these are the very basics of contract law and these instructions are meant to help juries decide cases dealing with a contract dispute. There are no special standards for corporate contracts versus personal contracts. The same elements are necessary for all…and still, no requirement that names be in capital letters.
I think NWO has finally broken my brain…
Capital letters? CAPITAL LETTERS?!
Contracts are not owned by the state. They can be enforced by the state, mediated by the state, and in some cases dissolved by the state. But not owned. That’s. Not. The. Way. A. Contract. Works.
For example, in the hypothetical presented by Captain Bathrobe (way to be patient, Captain) the “State” may make a child custody ruling for case in which the parents were never married. No contract. The “State” will still make a ruling and have the power to enforce it.
As for the rest of it, the very idea that you think you have some sort of superior knowledge of finance and markets “and such” while you constantly gripe about your poverty, your “miserable wage” etc., is just…
Well, it’s just you. Your claim to be an expert in these fields is, on its face, as absurd as your claim to be inventor.
Pervocracy – its his worldly knowledge…it has to be.
Hmmmmmmmm.
I drew up lots of contracts, back in my old job. Some between two individuals, some between two businesses, some between an individual and a business. Sometimes certain words in the contract would be in all caps, including the names of the parties. You know what the difference was, the slaveman?
You’ll never guess. It’s really devious. Shh … don’t tell.
It depended on who did the data entry when the information came in. INSIDIOUS, isn’t it?
But that was our office. I imagine in other offices it depends on the word processing software, or the style that someone’s chosen for training data processors.
I don’t really know why I’m arguing against someone who thinks that the number on his birth certificate is bought and sold on NASDAQ, but oh, what the hell. Do you want some popcorn, the slaveman? Or are you too busy fixing milk machines?
re NWO: the dumbfuckery is strong with this one…
I wonder if there’s a half-baked conspiracy theory that NWO doesn’t swallow whole.
You know the real truth, Slavey! Why oh why won’t these sheeple wake up?
@Rachel
Call up your credit card company and demand them to not use capital letters. I’ll betcha can’t. Seriously, it’s so easy to prove I’m wrong, one little phone call.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
NWOslave – why would I do that? Who the f cares if my name is in capital letters? The debts I owe, I owe regardless of whether my name is in capital letters.
Seriously, you can’t argue with stupid, and I don’t know why I am trying. You obviously have only a tenuous grasp on reality…and no grasp of the law.