Advice That Sounds Like "Always Cooperate"

David Henderson wrote this post about how to get rich in America, taking a list from Dwight Lee and Richard McKenzie's book Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life. I read the list and agreed with it. But later I had doubts about number 5, "Get married and stay married." I'm sure that people who do get married and stay married tend to be richer and save more wealth. Getting married tends to make you follow the other seven rules. (I had read these posts years ago when Henderson first published them, and I thought about it again recently when I read his book The Joy of Freedom. Highly recommended, by the way.)

But this advice is a bit like saying, "In a prisoner's dilemma, you should always cooperate." "Get married and stay married" is great advice if both spouses are doing their part. But what if one isn't contributing? What if a spouse is abusive? Unfaithful? Alcoholic? Fails to do any of the house work? Fails to find adequate employment (without any offsetting home-making effort)? Mistreats the children?

It reminds me of a passage in Steven Pinker's book Better Angels of Our Nature. There is a long exposition about how wonderful it would be if humanity did away with war. We would no longer have populations ravaged by warfare (the violence itself and also the resulting disease and starvation). We'd also enjoy tremendous cost-savings as we'd no longer need to sacrifice a large portion of economic output to maintaining a standing army and producing war machines. Our standing armies could go home and man the factories. If only we'd beat our swords into plowshares, humanity would prosper! And at the end of this Pinker says: One reason this doesn't work is the 'other guy' problem.

If a nation decides not to learn war anymore, but its neighbor continues to do so, its pruning hooks will be no match for the neighbor’s spears, and it may find itself at the wrong end of an invading army.

 "Peace with disarmament" is a great option if everyone else is cooperating. Just like "get married and stay married" is great advice if both spouses are contributing. But dammit, there's that "other guy problem" to contend with! Proselytizing individuals (who can benefit from unilateral action) can be productive, but proselytizing groups (even groups of twos) to act collectively is sometimes like preaching to the dead.

I'm  happily married, and I feel like we both share equitably in the bread-winning, child rearing, and the home work. I've seen marriages of my friends fail, and initially I'm always sad to see it. Ending a marriage is never a nice thing. But I assume that for most of those divorces, continuing the marriage would have been sadder than ending it. Perhaps one spouse was unfaithful or emotionally abusive. If there was no sign those problems would get better any time soon, why continue such an unpleasant partnership?

I don't know if there's a solution to this problem. Usually when two parties want to constrain each other's behavior for some kind of joint venture, the solution is some kind of contract. Marriages do involve a a contract, albeit a standardized, boilerplate kind of contract. Suppose a marriage contract specified doing equal shares of work in the home, or acquiring adequate employment outside the home. Who adjudicates disputes? How do you gently broach the topic of a spouse failing to meet their contractual obligations (without it sounding like a hostile ultimatum)? Supposing you get a magistrate to rule that, "The husband will do a greater share of the house work!" How do you enforce this ruling? What kind of penalty can you impose on the husband that doesn't also harm the wife and the children? This is a very small-scale collective action problem with the minimum number of people required for it to be "collective," and yet it seems like one of the most intractable social problems.

Maybe "better matching" is part of the solution. But here's a cynical thought: some people are just damaged goods. Lazy. Emotionally immature. Manipulative. Unpleasant. Good partners will tend to get matched up with similarly good partners. Mediocre partners will likewise be able to "purchase" a mate of similar quality in the marketplace of couple-hood. We can try to encourage match-ups of people who share bad combinations of emotional immaturity, unpleasant personality, low earning-potential, and other traits. Surely some of these marriages will be happy and full of mutual heart-felt love. But many will be doomed to fail, condemned by inherent character flaws that no amount of love will fix.

Don't get me wrong here. Maybe some couples (more to the point, some individuals) really should try harder to fix their marriages. Maybe some of the divorces I've seen wouldn't have happened if one or both partners were able to "stay the course" through a rough patch. Not to second-guess any couple's decision to separate, but I suspect some of them could have worked it out if they'd wanted to. Splitting a family has obvious financial consequences. Suddenly the family needs two separate households instead of just the one. Also there are wasted resources and wasted time carting the kids around from one spouses house to the other. There can be destructive competition for the children's attention, including legal battles over custody and visitation rights. There can even be mean-spirited wealth-destruction or hedonistic consumption of savings, because "If I don't spend it the other spouse will." (I know, it makes little sense, but I once heard a divorced mother explained this dynamic playing out after her marriage ended.) It's better to avoid these costs, if practical. My point in this post is that avoiding those costs requires a joint effort, and sometimes one partner to that effort is unwilling.

"Get married and stay married." Great advice if you can take it. Just like "Always cooperate" is a great equilibrium in a prisoner's dilemma. I still think it's good enough advice that it's worth sharing. It belongs on the list of 8 from Henderson's post. Maybe the person who hears it is the problem spouse in a marriage, and hearing this advice s/he is finally motivated to clean up his/her act and fix their marriage! Unfortunately, there really are some problems that you can't unilaterally fix, and some advice you can't unilaterally decide to take. (Cue hit 90s pop song misusing the word "ironic." Gah! Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

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I wrote this entire post on the "stay married" part of the advice. Then it occurred to me that many people have enough trouble with the "get married" part. This is also good advice that plenty of people would love to take, if only they could. Alas, the "get married" part also requires some degree of cooperation from a willing participant. Maybe the book Getting Rich in America gives all the appropriate hedges, but I have a feeling that a lot of burned ex-spouses or unrequited lovers read "get married and stay married" and think, "Yeah, tell me something I don't know."