Hacker News Reader

Comment by beerlord | Hacker News Reader

I think the title is misleading: its not really marriage costs, its a payment to the bride/parents to account for the gender disparity in China caused by sex-selective abortions.

These bride costs should be allowed to climb infinitely, because it will serve as an incentive for families to have girls - and actually sex-selectively abort boys.

Unfortunately we are seeing all this in the West, where Asian migrants to countries like Australia are still selectively aborting girls. The difference is that other ethnicities are not, so those Asian boys can then grow up to marry girls from other communities, and a female shortage is pushed onto the whole of society. Its basically a tragedy of the commons.

View on HN

> These bride costs should be allowed to climb infinitely, because it will serve as an incentive for families to have girls

Wow, a market correction to counteract societal undervaluation of females. If it could happen that would be profoundly constructive, but attitudes about gender are durable. It's not hard to imagine that instead of letting the price rise to incentivize an increase in supply, we could see see price fixing and rationing instead: the exertion of greater control over scarce resources and backwards progress in women's rights.

How would you have price fixing and rationing? At most you could have that on the legal market, but the black market would never tolerate that, and it would only drive the (unofficial) price for women even higher.

Besides a great deal of the reasons the girls were aborted or killed were because in China a parent can count only on the support of their sons, not because Chinese parents don't love their daughters.

> How would you have price fixing and rationing?

For example, by enacting laws which retard women's economic and geographic mobility, so that fewer are able to leave the local market.

> not because Chinese parents don't love their daughters.

Devaluation of women as a class is entirely compatible with love for individuals.

Not true. Inter-racial marriages are actually very rare in all western countries, just a drop in bucket (although they are more visible because of our tendency to remember surprises more often than norms). Usually Asian boys would travel back to their home country and marry someone from there based on their much better economic status.

Who cares what first generation immigrants do? Their children won’t do it and they’ll be a hell of a lot more acculturated than their parents ever will be. They won’t be doing sec selective abortion any more than those who are unhyphenated Australians.

Son-preference persists among second-generation migrants:

https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2018/06/19/jech-2018-2106...

And migration is ongoing - so the effects will continually be felt. Its not as if the intake is a once-off. I think its grounds enough to only allow female immigrants from these problem countries, in order to balance out the population.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com