Production or Consumption?

by Ely Harman

Women participating in economic production, (beyond a very low level where their specializations are most helpful, or until marriage) are not participating in production but participating in consumption – especially the consumption of their genetic inheritance, in exchange for a single lifetime of careerism and sensation seeking. But all the status and memories they accumulate that way will die with them.

I don’t see what was wrong with the post agrarian norms, where men were responsible for all of the war and politics and most of the economic production, while women were responsible for most of the reproduction and caretaking. That worked well enough for thousands of years.

I think the main reason it’s been abandoned is that defection is individually rational, but collectively irrational.

Nearly everyone would be better off, in their own estimation, if defection were effectively barred, though they may be better off still if they were able to defect while no one else could (fails existential possibility and reciprocity.