I have a few friends who are already married. Some more had already enganged. Many are currently in a relationship, leaving a little group of 'I don't give a damn about relationship' kind of people. I was not thinking of classifying myself in any of those groups.
In The Logic of Life by Tim Hardford, I was attracted to this concept of Marriage Supermarket. Let's say there are 20 people in the Market. 10 male and 10 female. All of them are equal products, shopping in the market is easy because anyone can take home their spouse. And the value of a marriage is conceptually RM100. Combinations of 10 couples can be obtained, and each of the 10 can cash out RM 100. Possibly, the RM 100 will be shared in a fair amount between the husband and the wife. Each of the 20 people will then receive RM50. This is a regular scenario in the Marriage Supermarket.
Let's say, in another case, there are 19 people in the Market. Sadly, guys are numbered until 9 while their female potential partners are 10. All of the guys and girls will try their best to cash out something at the checkout counter. How does this look like in the marriage supermarket?
The force at work here will be among the women. All 9 of them will compete to get the values from their marriage. We have put the value of marriage at a conceptual RM 100. Therefore, the girls will try to bargain their share of the value by reducing the amount of their share. One of the women must have offered one of the guys to cut her share to RM49 to RM51 for the guy. But of course, the one girl who is risking not being picked will counter-bid to the price, cutting her share even lower.
Transactions in the Supermarket could not escape what economists agree as the law of one price which stated: "In an efficient market all identical goods must have only one price". Remember, the only girl left out will not be having a spouse and nothing to cashout at the checkout counter. Therefore, share price can go as low as 1 cents, for all the married women. All the guys will have RM 99.99 from the transactions they did in the Marriage Supermarket.
Guys in the story have the power of scarcity. The one guy that did not show up for the second scenario might be in jail, "pusat serenti" or 'rempit'ed his life to death - thus giving the other guys better deals from the market.
Girls who try to cut her share down in the Market is doing similar strategies inthe real world. To make themselves a better catch than the other girls, they will go to college, do a makeover, and many other things to make themselves mpore attractive to men. In the Logic of Life, this is how women responded rationally to the shortage of men as pointed out by Harford.
But, men in the real world may decide not to marry at all, even when they are the lesser amount of species. They will firstly rationally weigh the advantage and disadvantages of marriages. That will furher cut down the pool of marriageable men, apart from those in jails, and 'pusat serentis'.
Now the argument about marriage is then put to a bigger picture of reality. Objectives of marriages will be considered. Marriage is not a simple going to the Supermarket where you can choose anyone to live with. Both men and women will weigh in advantages and disadvantages. Rationally not getting married because sex is available with more women armed with contraceptives may be the path for men. Women who before carefully select guys who they sleep with will rationally available to any takers because of the reduced risk of getting pregnant.
In the book, Mr Harford was using the Supermarket analogy as above, applying the conceptual value of marriage in pounds. Society that embraces sex before marriage is available in the Western and Westernized countries. Other than rationally 'berzina' with someone, Mr Harford also put on arguments on rationally comitting crime and rationally get the addiction to drugs and smoke.
We might view the society differently. As a Muslim for example, the men are allowed to take more than one women as his wife. A different model of the Marriage Supermarket can be worked out from the Muslim view of marriage.
Secondly, human rationale have its limits. Therefore, rules and regulations are there to help us. But, of course, given human rationale, they can always change the rules according to their tastes - after laying out all the arguments needed, for example on adultery. If committing it before is very risky because of pregnancy, carefully rationalising the topic with the introduction of contraceptives might help legalising it.
As a Muslim, I believe that the rules and regulations must be referred to Al-Quran. Little that we know back then of the AIDS disease. Rationalising our decisions (per se) for many other things to come might be costly in the future. In this case, God knows best.
Thirdly, ask yourselves, is our country a Western or a Westernized country? If your answer is one of the two, then, expect the same trend to be available in the country, where there are a lot of people fighting behind the masks of 'Human Rights'. If you have a different answer from the two, I will say that, "You are optimistic. Let us pray to God to put our country out of harm's way".
5 comments:
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More entry on marriage?? XD
Your entry touches the IQ matters on marriage. Never thought of that. Maybe this is how the young thinks of marriage. Very calculative but I'm not saying it is wrong.
I belong to the old school. EQ matters takes 90 % of my decision to marry. My girlfriend (read: mum)thinks similarly. (Never ask her but I always knew since its something to do with the SQ between us) :)
find meaning in this. =)
bukan pasal kawen aje.
ok hilman. :) jangan gelabah k...
This country, that country. Borders divide us. Divided we fall.
There are Muslim movements all around the world whom are working hard to make sure all of Prophet Muhammad's (S.A.W.) ummah is safe from the hell fire.
I know one of them and I regret being no longer active. I shall support them with whatever I can.
This is just a part of my thoughts on the post. I think I had too much time thinking. All the best, Hilman.
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