It’s better stated that women have costly opportunities but have little competition, and males have cheap opportunities and infinite competition; and that women are trying to capture better opportunities and men are simply trying to increase the number of opportunities. ( Ergo, larger testicals for polyamorous apes and smaller testicals for dominant apes. )
There is nothing natural about*lifetime* monogamy, and everything natural about serial pairing off. The reason being *classes*. Pairing off provides Nash Optimums, just as much as markets produce Pareto Distributions.
The problem with lifetime monogamy is that it evolved with and is dependent upon PROPERTY. For some people that property is part of the shared attraction (status). For others it is not so – they lack marginally sufficient productive ability to produce status signals, or to alter their sexual, social, economic, political, and military market values.
Ergo we should see Power Couples at the top with lifetime marriages, affairs in the mature middle class, but preservation of lifetime monogamy, serial relationships in the lower classes.
Which is what we see.
One of the consequences of post industrial wealth (caused by the capture of energy) is that we can afford to pursue our preferences rather than have those preferences constrained by the previous conditions.
This is what we see. We see vast exploration of preferences because we can afford to explore them (conduct research protgrams, and either succeed or fail) but at some point we have to measure the externalities produced, and that is what conservatives do…. we measure the intertemporal consequences. We are the long term ‘limiters’ that defend the gene pool – or fail to.
The economic consequences of pairing off are substantial. The economic consequences of lifetime monogamy are substantial. The economic consequences of homogeneity and eugenic reproduction are substantial. In fact, they might be the most substantial. The way we restore these very-high-returns is simply *to stop funding alternatives thru redistribution* and let meritocracy reign again.
That will produce families, and suppress underclass reproduction, and as a consequence produce greater wealth.