The Marriage Market

daviddfriedman.substack.com

1 pointpaulpauper2 comments

David Friedman is an anarcho-capitalist, so of course markets are the solution. For marriage, fire brigades, national defence, everything.

But don‘t write him off so hastily. He has genuinely interesting articles [1], and his text book „Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life“ is a more rigourous version of Freakonomics, the Landsburg books etc. This book explained to me the little economic theory I know.

[1] http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_sy...

Well he's not really offering solutions in his article here. He describes seeking a marriage as a barter market, which is a statement of fact. To find a spouse you need a coincidence of wants (i.e. you're both looking for the same thing, you both have it offer each other).

Even in other systems like arranged marriages, it's still a market. Except rather than the prospective spouses making the decisions, it's someone else.

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