A while back I explained how child support would work in a free society. Today I will explain exactly how marriage would work in a free, small government, libertarian society where government stayed the hell out of your personal life and where you would be allowed to conduct your love life as you see fit.

-By Caleb Jones

People don’t realize that today, marriage is a three-way contract between you, your spouse, and the state. If/when you get divorced, the state will put a gun to your head and force you behave the way it wants, even if what it wants doesn’t make any sense or is completely unfair. If you fail to comply with the government’s power over your personal life like this, you will go to jail, and many men have. Even women suffer under this system.

This is why when you get married you actually have to sign a marriage license. You are then logged into a government registry where you are now subject to a myriad of new laws you weren’t before, many of which don’t make any sense and are often completely nonsensical and ridiculous.

Sadly, both right-wingers and left-wingers like it this way. Right-wingers like it because it allows them to force religious and/or quasi-religious bullshit down your throat, using government force to ensure you behave “morally,” as defined by whichever bureaucrats, billionaires, and lobbyists happen to have the most political power at the time. Left-wingers like it because they can use it as yet another mechanism of the welfare state and the income redistribution they crave so much, and they incorrectly believe that without it, women would be exploited or taken advantage of.

Everyone seems to forget that this is your personal life. Emphasis on the word personal. The bureaucrats and moneyed interests that run the government should have no say whatsoever in your personal love life. As long as you’re a legal adult, you should be allowed to marry whomever you want (as long as they’re a legal adult too), behave any way you want during your marriage (as long as you don’t commit violence or theft against your partner or children) and get divorced in any way you and your spouse choose.

Marriage and divorce are deeply private and personal matters. Since the government should have no business whatsoever in your personal love life, it should have nothing whatsoever to do with the practice of marriage.

Often it’s very difficult for both right-wingers and left-wingers to understand or acknowledge this. I will address the concerns of both political leanings in this article. Hopefully by the end of this article you will better understand how marriage would work in a truly free society (which we currently do not have), and how this system satisfies much of your political concerns.

Between You and Your Spouse – That’s It

The first difference in marriage under a free society would be that marriage would be between you and that special woman. That’s it. Absolutely no other entities would be involved…unless you wanted them to be.
For example, if you were religious, you’d probably want your faith or church involved in your marriage. Perfectly fine. That’s up to you and your lady. Involve your religion, or not. Your choice.

If you had finances you wanted to protect, you may also want to involve an attorney. I’ll discuss this more in a minute, but the point is you could involve an attorney or legal contracts in your marriage if you wanted. If you didn’t want to, fine, don’t. If you do, you can. Then the government can perform one if its valid functions: the enforcement of contracts. The government is not involved at all unless one of you violates the contract down the road.

Therefore, marriage would be between you and your spouse, and perhaps your church if you wanted and/or your attorney if you wanted. No government involvement at all.
Marriage Can Be Whatever You Want –

Under this system, a “marriage” can be whatever you want it to be. The only requirement is that the participating parties are of legal age of consent, which is between 16 and 18 in most of the Western world. Other than that, you can structure whatever you like.

Want a monogamous marriage? Fine.
An open marriage? Fine.
A swinger marriage? Fine.
Polygamous marriage where one Alpha Male marries three women? Fine.
The reverse, where one Dominant woman marries three pussy beta males? Fine.
Gay marriage? Fine.
Polyamorous marriage where four women and two men all marry each other? Fine.
A temporary marriage that expires in three years, forcing both of you to go down and “renew” it if you want to keep going, otherwise it just “ends?” Fine.

As long as everyone is a consenting adult, do whatever you want. It’s called freedom.

Now if you’re a right-winger, your head probably just exploded. You’re probably screaming something like:

WTF Blackdragon?!? You can’t have a society where a bunch of gay or polyamorous are fucking each other in some insane marriage arrangements! How the hell would you raise kids? History has shown that most stable society is built upon the traditional family unit with two parents! You’re insane!!!

Guess what? You don’t have to worry about that.

Why? Because as I’ve said many, many times, human beings are pair-bonding creatures. It’s true were not long-term sexually monogamous, but we are also not naturally polyamorous, polygamous, or gay. A few people are like that, but they’re in a small minority and always will be. The vast majority of human beings, even horny dumb ones, eventually like to pick just ONE person of the opposite sex and be with that ONE person, at least for a while. (Statistically they’ll eventually break up of course, or will eventually get some on the side by secretly cheating, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Therefore, under a system where people could marry any way they wanted, guess what? The vast, vast majority would voluntarily choose a one-man-one-woman marriage that conservatives scream so loudly about. True, some gay people would get married, but again, as I’ve shown before on this blog, it would be a very tiny percentage of the population since it’s been repeatedly proven that the vast majority of gay people don’t bother to get married in countries where gay marriage has been legal for a long time.

Also, yes, there would be some people who would do polygamy or polygamous marriages or whatever. But again, those would be a minority, even if they were poly in their personal lives. Take me for example: I hate monogamy and even I wouldn’t do a marriage like that. (Have three wives? Dude. Kill me.)

So if you’re a right-winger or strong Marriage 1.0 supporter, just relax. While there would be a small percent of people who would be doing it “wrong” (in your eyes) and annoy you, the vast majority will go along with your traditional model. It’s how human beings are designed. You don’t need government pointing guns at everyone to make sure they behave in ways human beings are already designed. They’ll do it on their own. In the end, they always do.

Divorce –

How would divorce be handled if government was not involved in your marriage at all? In a divorce, the man and woman would simply part company. If they had kids, child support would be paid under the system I outlined before. That’s it. If there are no kids, nothing would happen. Nobody pays anybody, and they would just break up and continue on with their lives.

If you’re a left-winger, your head probably just exploded. You’re probably screaming something like:

Are you crazy? Men would constantly be kicking their wives out on the street and these poor women would be penniless and starve to death! Men would just go on their merry way and women would get screwed! That would be a horrible system! I can’t believe you would want a system like that! Why do you hate women so much?!?!

Guess what? You don’t need to worry about that.

Why? Because you’re forgetting about that contract I mentioned above. Under a free system, a man and woman about to get married can write up any contract they want, that says anything they want, that can apply to the marriage or possible future divorce any way they like. Then the government will enforce that contract, just like it should, if either party doesn’t live up to what he or she promised.

For example, let’s say that under a free society, a man and woman become engaged. The man makes $120,000 a year and the woman makes $30,000. Since it’s a truly free country, there are no marriage laws, no divorce laws, and no co-habitation laws. Because of this, the woman is concerned that if she’s married for ten years and then gets divorced and gets nothing, she’ll be in big financial trouble. This is a perfectly normal and natural concern.
She goes to her fiancé and expresses these concerns. They discuss it, and both decide that if they get divorced, he will pay her a set monthly amount for a few years after the divorce. They put it into the marriage contract, sign it, notarize it, and get married. Now it’s a legally enforceable contract. Boom, done, problem solved. She’s now covered.

What if they get divorced, the guy goes back on his word, violates the contract he purposely signed, and doesn’t pay her anything? NOW the government gets involved. Just like under the free system child support scenario, the woman takes her legally enforceable contract into some kind of very inexpensive small claims family court, presents it, and now that guy is in very big trouble. He’d better pay her like he legally promised, or he gets his wages garnished or goes to jail. Of course he could present the court with mitigating circumstances, like if the economy crashed and/or he went out of business and has no money, and the court can make a decision at that point.

Let’s take different example. Like before, prior to the marriage the women goes to the man and expresses concerns that she’ll be destitute if they get a divorce. She asks for them to place some kind of amount of money she gets if there’s divorce down the road. The man replies, “Hell no. I’m not paying you anything if we get divorced. If you don’t want to lose access to my money, you’d just better not divorce me.”

He has every right to say that. It’s his money. At the same time, she has every right to say, “Well then fuck you, I’m not marrying you then.” Then guess what? They don’t get married. They both move on and find spouses more compatible to who they are. Which is the way marriage is supposed to work.

A Free Market For Marriage –

Either way, the problem is solved. Women would be protected to their satisfaction, or they wouldn’t marry that guy and go find someone else. In a free society, women would be well aware there is no government safety net in cases of divorce (child support yes, divorce no) so many hypergamous types would pick and choose their husbands based (in part) on what he’s willing to sign in their enforceable marriage contract.

There would be some truly independent women who wouldn’t want to sign a contract at all, knowing they can take care of themselves and don’t want or need a man’s money. On the other extreme, there would be extreme gold diggers who would demand thousands or even millions of dollars in any future divorce from a potential husband. The majority of women would fall in-between those two extremes.

On the flip side, men could decide who they would marry or not marry based (in part) on how demanding the potential wife is during the marriage contract discussion. There would plenty of needy or ugly beta males who would agree to damn near anything a woman demanded. On the other hand, there would also be some good-looking, wealthy Alpha Males who would be inflexible and very picky. And again, most men would fall somewhere in the middle.

By the way, the marriage contract doesn’t need to simply lay out about what happens in a divorce. Remember, it’s a free society, so the contract can say literally anything the two people want, so it could (and probably should) discuss what happens during the marriage too.

Issues like money, health, sex, children, living conditions, and all those other things could be described in the marriage contract if the spouses wanted. I don’t know if it’s legally enforceable where he lives, but I once met a guy who had a prenuptial agreement that stated both he and his wife were required to stay below a certain weight as long as they were married. And before you start screaming about misogyny, it was the woman’s idea to put it in there. And if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t have signed it. That’s how this works.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could sit down and design a completely custom-made marriage with your future wife? Very cool. It’s called freedom.

At no point is government involved in any of this stuff, unless someone gets divorced and fails to live up to the contract he or she signed when they first got married, assuming they signed anything at all. The only parties involved are those consensual adults engaging in a private, personal activity. Which is the way it should be.

Is it a perfect system? Nope. Does it have flaws? Yep. What I’m describing is an improvement, not perfection. If you’re looking for a 100% perfect system, I can’t help you (and no one else can either). But I can offer you something better, which this is.

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