Polyamory
Polyamory is one solution many propose in response to the dating market failures described above.
If it is true that most women only want to date the top 20% of men, then it may make sense to just allow it to happen and make it more culturally normative for multiple women to date just one man (and no, we are not stereotyping women as being choosy and prejudicial—it is seen over and over again in the data: Your average woman wants a guy who is out of her league far more than your average guy wants a woman who is out of his).[[82]](#_ftn82) [[83]](#_ftn83) [[84]](#_ftn84)
In the same breath, if most men are found to be beneath the average woman’s attention, is there not arbitrage to be obtained by the few women who are interested in that group and willing to maintain multiple partners? We have actually seen this iteration of polyamory pop up in a lot of tech or otherwise male-dominated subcultures. Within these communities, women who might be ignored in other circles enjoy vast advantages due to their rarity. The downside is that the women who exploit this dynamic create a stereotype that hurts women genuinely interested in the subculture (e.g., “You’re not here because you care about X, you’re here to exploit male attention!”).
You may expect us to condemn polyamory, but in truth it can be a perfectly practical solution. While polyamory may not function well at a societal level, polygynous forms of polyamory work great for an elite subculture operating within a larger society. The many-men-to-one-woman form, however, is kind of pointless in that it lowers birth rates—unless your goal is to sterilize unsuccessful men while tricking their biology into thinking they have a chance at reproduction to keep them from rebelling.[[85]](#_ftn85)
Also, note that human biology seems optimized for polygyny but not polyandry, with smarter men caring more about exclusive access to their partners than smarter women do (i.e., intelligence correlates with how much a man cares if one of his partners sleeps around but not with how much a woman cares if her partner sleeps around).[[86]](#_ftn86)
When we say polyamory does not work at the societal level, we mean that studies show multi-partner cultures have higher rates of rape, more murder, less honesty in business transactions, more terrorism, etc., when contrasted with otherwise similar monogamous cultures due to the high number of single and un-partnerable men left within them.[[87]](#_ftn87) When a population of polyamorous individuals becomes the dominant culture in a region, the state will therefore begin to collapse if you can’t figure out how to secure sex for the leftover poor, unattractive, and socially inept men. As mentioned, some cultures (unethically) deal with this by forced gender conversion. Believe it or not, a recent movement emerged on pol (4chan) to convert vast swaths of incels (men who have trouble finding a partner) to “femboys” so that they can partner with other men.[[88]](#_ftn88) That said, new technology like sex robots and AI might be able to romantically pacify this population—and again, just a subculture practicing polygyny works fine.
In addition to making more desirable men available (albeit non-exclusively) to the most competent women in society (who would otherwise be more likely to go un-partnered), polyamory dramatically reduces the cost of having a large number of kids and makes it much more economically and structurally realistic. Polyamory even helps with the cost of child rearing at a societal level. Consider how Elon Musk’s many children are going to have significantly more resources available to each than the single children of most even well-to-do parents (albeit at the expense of a highly engaged dad, but do remember that most people used to have seven to ten kids).[[89]](#_ftn89) The only mandate we would set for those within our personal culture who choose polyamory as a relationship format is that they still have a high birth rate per person (e.g., if a married couple in our House is expected to have five kids, a poly triad with two women is expected to have ten).
We won’t dwell much on polyamory, as functionally speaking it is rarely a solution that remains palatable throughout a person’s life. Once you find and build a strong relationship with someone you genuinely love and care about, you will be amazed by how unappealing the idea of additional partners can become. Why? For one thing, long-term, committed relationships lower testosterone in men while having kids lowers it still further. Lower testosterone means a lower interest in additional sexual partners.
It’s not that committed partners wouldn’t appreciate the potential an additional partner has to lighten their loads (perhaps by assisting with childcare, additional income, etc.); it’s just that every additional person requires a monumental amount of work and vetting to secure—not to mention significant additional mental and emotional attention once they’re part of the relationship. It can be hard to justify all that work and effort when instead your time and focus could be directed toward enriching your own family.
We have actually seen a number of women successfully establish what ultimately become mostly monogamous, long-term relationships with higher quality partners than they otherwise would have been able to secure by entering into relationships that were initially polyamorous. Essentially the strategy works like this: A woman uses the fact that she is open to a polygynous relationship in order to secure a male partner who might otherwise overlook her. Her presence as his primary partner lowers his desirability to other women. This lowers the quality of the market for him. At the same time, his testosterone and desire to sleep with other women declines due to his being in a committed relationship with someone he cares about (because the woman is putting in a lot of effort). Over time, what was supposed to be a poly relationship becomes functionally monogamous due to it not being worth the effort to source additional partners.
But of course elite women with high standards don’t need to enter polyamorous relationships—or frankly any romantic relationship—in order to have kids. Instead of raising kids with mediocre men or sharing a man, more women are choosing to raise children on their own or in groups. We even designed a planned community meant to facilitate this trend (https://Eureka.Town). Unfortunately, the trend almost never leads to an above-repopulation birth rate, with most of these women barely bringing up two kids. The truth is, it really, really helps to have at least two people working as a long-term committed team if you want to raise any reasonable number of kids.