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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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You paint a picture of my coworker in your head based on two lines of text. It holds no value to reality beyond whatever delusions you need it to hold in your own mind so that you can express yourself.

To make a long story short: you don't need a marriage to find genuine love and affection. To insinuate the alternative to marriage is prostitutes is inane at best. And if someone has had more than 6 marriages then I'm not sure what the institution of marriage even means in relation to this argument, beyond being some hold over that men gravitate to because they tend to feel affection for inanimate objects and ideas.

On the flipside, there are a lot of losers getting married every day. And they outnumber the winners. Not that this is a terribly relevant thing, as I don't see the relevance in your argument towards anything I've said.

Beyond that, people having issues with marriages is not a thing that exists within the confines of my workplace. There are examples of this all around us. If you want to ignore that fact and pretend my workplace experience is unique or unrepresentative go ahead. But I think most people can understand the utility of having billions of dollars to employ people who can solve most of the problems in your personal life so that you can spend your free time doing something with your loved one that you both like doing, rather than saddling them with household chores or whatever.

You paint a picture of my coworker in your head based on two lines of text. It holds no value to reality beyond whatever delusions you need it to hold in your own mind so that you can express yourself.

I would quibble with this. The picture in my head is the picture you have painted! You are using him as a witness to bolster your argument, but you still haven’t given me any other description of him to change my impression that your witness is weak and unreliable. If he has other laudable qualities that might change that opinion, what are they? Because you make him sound like a loser, and based on that picture you are painting, I am suggesting to you that you shouldn’t listen to losers.

Beyond that, people having issues with marriages is not a thing that exists within the confines of my workplace. There are examples of this all around us. If you want to ignore that fact and pretend my workplace experience is unique or unrepresentative go ahead.

I don’t think I’ve said anything to imply that your coworker or your workplace experience of men griping about their wives is unique or unrepresentative? I have heard plenty of guys who constantly gripe about their wives. These guys are just always very unimpressive.

Look, if you’re going to bring your coworker in as evidence for your case, don’t be mad when a competing lawyer looks to dismantle your witness. That’s the whole point of Internet autistic debate club.

Which brings me to me final point.

I would however argue that you need marriage as proof of commitment for some long term goal, like children. Marriage, I'd argue, is a 'utilitarian' or 'materialist' contract.

To that end, marriage is not of any utility for a billionaire. Bezos doesn't need the utility of marriage to experience any of the love a woman could give him. And I'm not saying that in some 'penis into hole' utilitarian sexual gratification kind of way. Bezos can get the purest love of any man and would never need marriage to deal with any of life's problems because the material problems marriage can help ameliorate will never exist for a billionaire to begin with.

You have an axiom, expressed above and you are arguing in favor of your axiom. So far, so good, that’s what we’re here for.

A useful analogy here is that we are discussing a box. Your priors, your axiom say that the box must logically be black. But the evidence of your own eyes indicates that the box is white. Rather than reassess your axiom, you insist that something is wrong with the box.

We are discussing marriage. Your axiom says that marriage is a materialist, utilitarian contract that is not of any utility for a billionaire. But the evidence of your own eyes is that very nearly every billionaire on Earth appears to find some kind of utility in it. These are, rationally, men who are smarter, more ruthless, and more charismatic than probably any “wife guy” you’ve ever met. They’ve very likely had any number of utility function thoughts regarding marriage run through their heads, and their revealed preference continues to be for marriage.

I am saying that the box isn’t wrong, your axiom is. There is something more than material utility that billionaires are finding in marriage, because marriage is about more than ameliorating material problems.

P.S. I went back through your older posts to get a sense of your philosophical foundations.

Now, women have already made their choice. And I think their choice was made before you saw any widescale acceptance of black pilled nihilism about life and the lack of value placed on work and pushing yourself. Exhibited by many men in the thread you linked. To that end I think the chain of causality that leads to many of our issues, though certainly not all, lies at the feet of women having the power to make that poor choice.

The last part of that last sentence is (paraphrasing), something that I have said to my wife and we are still married. Men have been getting suckered by women and letting them out of the circle of protection (or abuse) to make poor choices ever since Adam. I (strategically) proselytize this message in real life as much as I can.

I just take a similar or related stance to you from a starting point of non-material axioms. Marriage is a gift from God that reduces the unpleasantness of this world, and in a way above materialism, makes two into one. So when the box is white, I’m not surprised. The evidence fits the axiom! Billionaires are finding something materially inexplicable in marriage. The evidence fits the axiom!

I mentioned my coworker as a shorthand for the pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about their marriages in relation to a pontification that marriage was easier than having an employee as a billionaire. To that extent you're not even elevating a point by imagining things about my coworker, just bloviating a cope.

Your axiom says that marriage is a materialist, utilitarian contract that is not of any utility for a billionaire. But the evidence of your own eyes is that very nearly every billionaire on Earth appears to find some kind of utility in it.

'Some kind of utility' is not relevant as a point of comparison between whether or not delegating a duty to your wife or an employee is an easier way to go about organizing your lives together. The post I replied to gave examples of the utility of having a marriage. I asserted that these examples and others categorically like them are not relevant for a billionaire and are therefor not arguments in favor of marriage for a billionaire.

I mentioned my coworker as a shorthand for the pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about their marriages in relation to a pontification that marriage was easier than having an employee as a billionaire. To that extent you're not even elevating a point by imagining things about my coworker, just bloviating a cope.

Call me Copius Maximus! Call me Blovius Rex! Call me a delusional faggot wife guy, let it all out. Get it all out of your system, it’s good for you. But you’re finally admitting that approach was a weak support for your argument, so we’re making progress.

Now we’re talking about what you consider to be a pervasive phenomenon. But there is also a pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about everything. People like to complain. People also like to say positive things, often about the same things they complain about.

If you are only hearing complaints, and only listen to the complaints while ignoring countervailing feedback, you’re closing off your intellectual space. There is no difference, besides the perceived rudeness of the language, between you dismissing all the “wife guys,” and me dismissing your loser coworker.

'Some kind of utility' is not relevant as a point of comparison between whether or not delegating a duty to your wife or an employee is an easier way to go about organizing your lives together. The post I replied to gave examples of the utility of having a marriage. I asserted that these examples and others categorically like them are not relevant for a billionaire and are therefor not arguments in favor of marriage for a billionaire.

Do you think there is any utility at all to marriage, for a billionaire?

I made a very simple argument relating to a very simple thing and you've been spilling verbiage to get at something that's not that. The rudeness of my language only exists in relation to your condescending tone and asinine word games.

It's not courteous to twist words, walk past context and argue for the sake of arguing. I've explicitly stated what I was saying and why. If you want to argue for whatever it is your view on marriage is, go ahead. But, like I said in a previous comment, I don't know why you are arguing about it with me and would prefer if you just spoke directly.

would prefer if you just spoke directly.

Do you think there is any utility at all to marriage, for a billionaire?

Using the wide definition you gave, where 'utility' can be pretty much anything, sure.