Author: philg

A closer look at the DEI landing of a CRJ in Toronto

by philg

This is a follow-up to Landing a CRJ in Toronto. Much has been written about Endeavor’s passion for diversity, inclusion, and equity (consistent with parent company Delta’s passion for DEI) so it seems fair to say that any landing by Endeavor is a “DEI landing”.

Viewed in isolation, a video of the DEI CRJ-900 landing that resulted in a crash/fire/flip doesn’t look that bad.

The approach angle and descent rate doesn’t seem alarming, though maybe there is some vertical acceleration at the very end. If viewed next to a video of an ordinary nothing-bent CRJ-900 landing, though, the abnormality jumps out. A normal landing has a dramatically longer flare and float, with corresponding much lower vertical speed on touching the runway.

Pilots transitioning from little pistons to airliners are admonished to “fly it on” and not try to hold the plane off the runway for as long as they did in their Cessna/Piper/Cirrus days. The ground spoilers on a jet don’t pop up until “weight on wheels” sensors on both main legs are positive. Therefore, a long float and butter-smooth landing chews up a lot more runway than an, um, “positive” landing in which the ground spoilers pop up right at the 1000′ markers. The DEI-enriched Endeavor crew apparently took the “fly it on” mantra too literally.

One other aspect of landing a jet of this size that might not be familiar to pilots with piston experience: the always-present-in-a-piston option to go around by adding power and climbing out doesn’t exist below about 50′. Once the thrust levers are pulled back, there is no procedure for adding power back in and trying to take off again. It might be doable, despite the long spool-up time for the heavy engines, but there is no training in this method. Maybe an airline crew would try this if a fire truck or another aircraft suddenly began to block the runway. Other than that, thrust levers back means a commitment to the landing and it might not be obvious how to fix a co-pilot’s mistakes (though a failure to flare, on the other hand, could be obvious and could be fixed with aft pressure on the yoke while saying “I have the controls”).

Related:

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How’s the first month of Trump-Vance going? (and was every part of government devoted to 2SLGBTQQIA+ advocacy?)

by philg

Other than riling up Democrats into fits of hysteria, has the Trump-Vance administration accomplished anything so far? Or have all of their initiatives been thwarted by judges?

Here’s one where a judge forced the CDC to stick with its old web site (NYT):

A federal judge has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to temporarily restore the pages it has taken down from its website to comply with President Trump’s executive order barring any references to race, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Judge John D. Bates of the D.C. Federal District Court issued the temporary restraining order at the request of a left-leaning advocacy group, Doctors for America, saying the deletions put “everyday Americans and most acutely, underprivileged Americans” in jeopardy.

Let’s look at one that doesn’t seem to fall under the rubric of “race, gender identity, or sexual orientation” .. “Trump Is Starving the National Endowment for Democracy” (The Free Press, whose brand is skepticism):

what’s happening at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a very big deal, and has not been previously reported.

NED, a key U.S. instrument for supporting grassroots freedom movements around the world, is under siege from Elon Musk’s DOGE. An order from DOGE to the U.S. Treasury that blocked disbursement of NED funds has crippled the organization—which received $315 million for fiscal year 2025—and its affiliates, The Free Press has learned.

The third-of-a-$billion/year enterprise is all about “democracy”, right? What if we check its web site?

LGBTIQ+ communities in Africa are often on the frontlines of the struggle for human rights in the region,” says Dave Peterson, Senior Director of the Africa program at the National Endowment for Democracy(NED). “As one of the most marginalized groups in many countries, respect for the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons is a key indicator for the overall respect for human rights and democracy in a society. Attitudes towards the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons is gradually shifting throughout the continent, which bodes well for the prospects of greater tolerance and inclusion.

It actually is about gender identity and sexual orientation because there is no “democracy” unless Rainbow Flagism is the official state religion. Without this $315 million/year spend there will be no democracy in Africa.

How much is $315 million/year? Compared to the wired-in federal deficit, almost nothing. Compared to what is needed to start a Silicon Valley company, enormous. Let’s look instead, though, at what kind of work by private sector Americans is required to keep the NED desk workers and their NGO pals comfy. We start by assuming a male working class peasant earning $50,000/year. No female is going to want to marry him due to his low wages (she can gain more spending power by having sex with an already-married higher-income guy in Massachusetts or California) and, therefore, he is going to be a single filer. He’ll pay about $6,000/year in federal income tax (nerdwallet). More than 52,000 peasants, then, have 100 percent of their federal income tax spirited away by NED to proselytize for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle. For those 52,000 peasants, not a penny of their tax money will be available to spend on roads, airports, border patrol, scientific research, etc.

How about the only American enterprises that make our government look efficient? The gravy train for university administrators cannot legally be slowed down (NYT):

(The NYT article headline says there are “Cuts to Medical Research” and only readers who dig into the article learn that “research” itself is not being cut, but only fees that universities tack on to keep a full slate of deans in central administration. As much of what universities do is promote DEI and 2SLGBTQQIA+, it seems fair to say that government paying overhead fees on research contract is another way that the government promotes Rainbow Flagism. See, for example, University of Michigan’s $250 million in spending on DEI (NYT) or MIT’s “Assistant Dean of LBGTQ+, Women and Gender Services”.)

Fair to say that those with entrenched interests in getting money from federal taxpayers are winning so far?

Loosely related… one area of success seems to be in changing minds at the New York Times. “Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship” (Feb 15, 2025) is unthinkable heresy. Two constitutional law professors:

In Wong Kim Ark, the leading case on birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court explained that “jurisdiction” referred to being born “within the allegiance” of the sovereign. The court held that a child born of parents with a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States” was a birthright citizen. Wong Kim Ark’s parents, as persons who came in amity, had entered into the social compact and were entitled to all the benefits of that compact, including not only the protection of the laws but also the benefits of citizenship for their children. Under the common law, the court observed, “such allegiance and protection were mutual.”

This is also why, as prominent editions of Blackstone’s commentaries explained, invading armies were excluded. “It is not cœlum nec solum” — it is neither the climate nor the soil — that makes a natural-born subject, “but their being born within the allegiance and under the protection of the king.”

For Trump to prevail, all that a modern court needs to do, in other words, is find that undocumented migrants are “an invading army.”

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Favorite Kanye West tweets?

by philg

Kanye West was dumped into a memory hole due to his unwise exercise of First Amendment rights. Before he was purged I saved some favorites from Ye’s X account? (Below are screen shots for preservation.)

For our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Palm Beach County with Maybach labels on their Mercedes cars:

I would love to get a Maybach badge for our four-year-old Honda Odyssey!

On understanding white males who don’t have the honor of being members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

Ye agrees with Cicero (“The cash that comes from selling your labour is vulgar and unacceptable for a gentleman … for wages are effectively the bonds of slavery.”):

Ye on Jewish marriage:

(Young Marty Mendel tells his mother Miriam he’s been given a part in the school play. She asks which part. Marty’s chest swells with pride as he says, “I play the Jewish husband.” Miriam responds, “You go back to school tomorrow and tell the teacher that you want a speaking role!”)

On pragmatics and sociolinguistics:

On politics:

Also this one:

(If Ye broadened his search a bit he could find “The Jewish Vote in 2024” (Commentary, January 2025): “This past year, in a truly astounding statistic, Forbes revealed that the top 15 donors to the Kamala Harris campaign were all people who identified as Jewish. … Fox News and the Associated Press … found that 66 percent of Jews voted for Harris and 32 percent voted for Trump. … While the recent election showed an improvement in the Jewish vote for Trump, it was not a dramatic move.”)

Ye agrees with me regarding crypto:

Ye is under attack for some late-night all-uppercase opinions regarding Jews. I don’t support excluding him from X on that basis. Progressives in the Ivy League and in European politics who say “I’m not anti-Jewish, but only anti-Zionist” are far more dangerous to Jewish and Israeli interests. Ye will never do as much harm to Jews as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did, for example, with their financial support (via UNRWA) for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their interference with Israel’s counterattack after the October 7, 2023 invasion by Palestinians.

Readers: What are your favorite recent Ye tweets? Did you save any?

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Valentine’s Day Post #3

by philg

From the front page of the New York Times, February 5, 2025:

The path to “the best sex” starts at the local family court, promises the front page. Does the article deliver?

In 2019, I divorced, at age 46, and went on to have more and better sex than I ever would have thought possible.

I had not imagined that the end of a 20-year relationship would mean a new era of high eroticism; I’d have needed to be delusional to think that. I was middle-aged, with two young children, a bunch of chronic illness and a bank account that was essentially handed over to divorce lawyers. My career was on life support, and after years away in bigger cities, I was back in my hometown, Montreal, enduring the kind of isolation that comes from exiting a relationship that has defined nearly half your life. Then the pandemic hit.

And yet.

…

Two of my friends ended marriages because of their own sexual dissatisfaction. Another divorced and became a card-carrying polyamorist. Two of my friends in their 50s are seriously dating people in their 30s, and a few others are, like me, divorced and engaging in sex practices they’d never tried before.

(Maybe the NYT story is based on some unpublished material from Bob Guccione‘s (RIP) Penthouse?)

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Landing a CRJ in Toronto

by philg

I wrote about my experience landing a Canadair Regional Jet in Toronto (July 2013):

On week after I completed IOE I was assigned to fly with a young recently upgraded captain to Toronto. I had about 75 hours of experience at this point during one month of flying the CRJ. The Tower cleared us to land on runway 33R. I had the plane set up perfectly. We were 3-4 miles from the runway and descending in a stable configuration. Then the Tower controller changed his mind: “Cancel landing clearance. You’re now cleared to land Runway 33L.” This is a shorter runway that starts about 2000′ farther away than 33R and also requires a horizontal sidestep of about 3500′. I would have to add some power and maneuver the airplane to line up with the other runway.

A good CRJ pilot would have added exactly the right amount of thrust so that it wouldn’t be necessary to touch the levers again until 50′ above the ground when it was time to pull them back to idle. How did I handle the situation? I added too much power. Then I took some back out. Then I had to add some back in. Then I finally got us stabilized close to the 500′ above-the-ground minimum altitude that our company rules called for (if not stable at 500′ in visual conditions, go around; if not stable at 1000′ in instrument conditions, go around). After we’d pulled off the runway and cleaned up the plane I said “That was so embarrassing. I feel like I should mail my ATP certificate back to the FAA.” The captain replied with one of the wisest and kindest things that anyone has ever said to me: “Nobody was born knowing how to fly a 53,000 lb. jet.”

Conditions were more challenging today, I’m sure, and the results were worse than even my weak effort (ABC):

Friends have been asking me how this could have happened. flightradar24 has some good info, especially the weather report (METAR):

CYYZ 171900Z 27028G35KT 6SM R24L/3000VP6000FT/U BLSN BKN034 M09/M14 A2993 RMK CU6 SLP149

The same article says that the plane was landing on runway 23 (magnetic heading 237, which is about 227 degrees true heading in that part of the world). The METAR says that the wind was from 270 (true), a 40-degree cross-wind (works out to nearly 20 knots of crosswind). The wind was blowing at 28 knots gusting 35 knots, which is a recipe for bumps. The visibility is said to be 6 statute miles, which is inconsistent with the “runway visual range” (RVR) of only 3000-6000 ft (1/2-1 mile) in blowing snow (BLSN). Maybe the explanation is that the visibility was quite good except near the surface where the strong wind was blowing accumulated snow around. Temperature was -9C. The clouds didn’t begin until 3400′ above the runway and, therefore, instrument flying didn’t play a role in this unfortunate event.

Various American media outlets have been highlighted on X for blaming Donald Trump, which seems far-fetched given that it was a Canadian-built airplane landing at a Canadian airport.

How could the plane flip over? It can’t be wake turbulence from another aircraft because a strong wind will blow the wake turbulence clear of the final approach course and runways.

Based on the detachment of both wings, my guess at this point is that the plane began to slide sideways on the runway, caught on a pavement imperfection, and flipped over as a car might. Maintaining directional control on the runway at higher speeds is done primarily with the rudder (operated by the same pedals that operate the nosewheel steering). In other words, steering is accomplished via an aerodynamic mechanism even if the wheels are rolling on the runway. Beginner pilots are prone to forgot to keep steering with rudder after the wheels touch. They think that the flight is over and now it is time to relax, even though their Cessna or Cirrus is still going more than 60 knots, possibly with a strong tendency to head for a side edge of the runway. Airline crews, of course, will be much less prone to this human frailty, but the CRJ900 lands at around 130 knots and that makes directional control more challenging. Poor visibility from blowing snow certainly wouldn’t help. The only thing that the CRJ has going for it compared to the trainer aircraft in this situation is that a 20-knot crosswind (see above) is a smaller percentage of a 130-knot forward speed than it is of a 60-knot forward speed.

[Update: video has emerged of a hard landing, maybe hard enough to snap off one of the main (under-wing) landing gears, which would certainly start the plane in a sideways direction. Why would the plane come down rapidly? Gusty winds could be a factor. If a strong headwind suddenly shifts to a tailwind, for example, the plane loses a lot of airspeed instantly and, below a certain speed, the aircraft becomes less efficient as it gets slower. (Below the stall speed, the aircraft mostly stops flying and, therefore, will sink like a rock.) Given a long runway, pilots can usually deal with this possibility by choosing to fly at a higher-than-standard approach speed (add half the gust factor is the conventional formula) and, also, the standard approach speed provides a significant margin over stall.]

The flight attendants are today’s heroes, certainly, for getting everyone out!

Our wind limitations from a smaller earlier version of the CRJ:

(It would have been a 27-knot crosswind limitation, I think, given the runway conditions being reported by the control tower. Below the chart there is a note saying that reported gusts are to be ignored in determining whether a limitation will be exceeded.)

Here are some flashcards for the CRJ900 from Endeavor:

Technically, this may have been a “dry” runway and, therefore, the reported crosswind was less than the 32-knot limit. On the other hand, reports might not have matched the reality for directional control.

(One confusing element of our life with the CRJ was that wet runways were actually considered “dry” so long as the runway was grooved.)

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ChatGPT renews its Flight Instructor certificate

by philg

I recently took a refresher class that is required to maintain my privileges as an FAA-certificated flight instructor. I filled out the multiple-guess quiz and then fed the questions to ChatGPT, which was in 100 percent agreement with me and both of us were in 100 percent agreement with the flight school that offers the online program.

ChatGPT was able to figure out what “TAA” stood for:

ChatGPT gave an erudite explanation of the rules and regulations put in place to protect America’s most valuable humans:

(Why not similar measures to protect San Francisco and Palo Alto? If someone were to attack OpenAI with a Cessna 172 that could have a devastating effect on the U.S.)

ChatGPT figured out from context what “PD” stood for, despite this not being a common term in conversations among pilots:

(We’ll eventually find out if an altitude deviation by the Black Hawk pilots contributed to the Reagan National Airport Black Hawk-CRJ crash.)

Based on the above, I wonder if it is time to eliminate ground instruction by humans. ChatGPT knows the regulations better than any human. There is so much good open-access tutorial content out there on aviation that ChatGPT has effortlessly become as good as the very best human CFI at explaining aviation.

ChatGPT even did a good job explaining P-Factor:

my follow-up…

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Valentine’s Day Follow-Up

by philg

For those who didn’t feel sufficient love from the first Valentine’s Day post, let’s look at what it takes to be a successful husband in progressive urban America. “How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” (New York Times, February 4, 2025, by Daniel Oppenheimer).

Marxist-Leninism has been replaced in the U.S. by Transferism, but the Marxist-Leninist emphasis on self-criticism remains:

“I tell myself: ‘I try really hard. I try to be a good person. I try to be thoughtful about Jess and what she needs. Maybe I don’t get to everything, but it’s not because I’m not a good person.’”

“Instead of looking to Jess to top me off with love, I need to take on that responsibility myself.”

Jess was so much more capable — and demanding — of love and intimacy than I was. This was part of the attraction but also the problem. I was an ambivalent fortress, always defending against her siege while secretly hoping she would breach the walls.

Assuming that “Daniel” identifies as a “man”, masculinity today seems to have drifted quite far from what the Stoics had in mind:

The diagnosis comes after I relate the story of a tantrum I threw at my 48th birthday dinner. It involved me storming out of a restaurant, in front of our kids and friends, and coming back only after a solid 15-minute sulk. It’s not a flattering story, and I don’t try to render it so. Jess and I argued beforehand about what restaurant to pick, which left us tense for days. One of the kids was being difficult. Jess wasn’t as affectionate as I wanted her to be. I wasn’t getting the birthday I felt I was owed. I blew my stack.

We’re informed that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness requiring therapy (only surgery), but going through what used to be considered normal day-to-day life does require therapy:

We’ve both been to a lot of therapy before. As a couples therapist, Jess has been guiding people in this kind of work for years.

Therapy is not for those whose attention spans are short:

[The therapist] Real keeps me in that space, eyes closed, talking to my inner child, for about 30 minutes. … At the end, I put my inner child back inside myself and open my eyes. Real tells me I did a good job.

“No pain, no gain” is not just for the gym:

The box of tissues next to me, which Real asked Jess to get before we started the exercise, remains unused. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.

A reader comments that women will like men better when the men become women:

@Tim Thank you for sharing. I also think you have illustrated the widening gap between Millennial women and men, at least in my own social circle. My female friends and I read self-help books, go to therapy and even talk about how we can break the patterns of our parents through personal enlightenment and self-improvement…whereas the men in our lives are staunchly against the idea, at most willing to placate us women by providing lip service in a passive, surface-y couples therapy session or two.

It’s creating a widening gap between the genders and, in my view, resulting in ever increasing misunderstandings and resentment. I’m hoping that articles like this (thank you Oppenheimer!) and guys like Real can de-stigmatize this emotional work for the men that we love and desire a healthy connection with.

(Is the above comment tainted with hateful gender binarism? If we accept the Science of 74 gender IDs, the correct phrase would be “gap among the genders” not “gap between the genders” (implying just 2).)

Here’s the author of this NYT confession (eating a child’s meal of bread with artisanal jam?):

Very loosely related…

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Melrose High School Class of 1951

by philg

I found my mom’s Melrose High School Class of 1951 25th reunion newsletter and scanned it. The high school today is ranked #1,568 in the nation (among public high schools) and #60 in Maskachusetts.

My favorite excerpt from what is presumably a 1976 document is “then I became a baby factory putting out a new model almost every year”:

It looks like nearly everyone who wanted to go to what are today considered elite colleges managed to get in. The former high schoolers talk about graduating from University of California, Cornell, Colby, Bates, Boston University, Tufts, University of Michigan, Harvard, Caltech, MIT, Dartmouth, Amherst, etc.

Here’s something interesting… the document is so old that a white male could be hired as head of what we now call “HR”:

(Boston University today rejects 9 out of 10 applicants.)

Here’s a guy who went from Colgate University (rejects 7 out of 8 applicants today; cost to attend approximately $360,000) to selling fish. The daughter went to Bates, which is today similarly selective to Colgate.

Dartmouth today rejects 15 out of 16 applicants, but plenty of Melrose High ’51 grads got in:

Here’s a guy who seems to have gotten married just as he was graduating from Tufts (rejects 9 out of 10 applicants) and the wife of 20 years had to follow him first to Michigan and then to North Dakota:

The graduates who were most passionate about dogs had the fewest children:

Here’s a guy who achieved what today would be a moonshot:

My mother’s first cousin Ruben Gittes, another moonshot achiever by today’s standards:

She moved to Orlando and loved it:

My take-aways… people were generally married within 4 years of finishing high school. The divorce rate among this high school class was about 10 percent. These folks were born in the 1930s so they didn’t quite make it into this chart (from “Human Reproduction as Prisoner’s Dilemma”), but it looks as though we’d expect roughly 90 percent to be married at a 25th high school reunion:

A brilliant-by-today’s-standards career was apparently achievable for the Melrose ’51 cohort simply by showing up. Not only did these graduates have no immigrants to compete with, but the pay-to-cost-of-living ratio was sufficiently high that a lot of smart well-educated women withdrew from the labor force, thus leaving the field open to others. Example:

Nobody reports having joined the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. The editor’s introduction does not mention anyone having changed names except for female graduates (a defined term back then) who got married: “We have tried to make an accounting of the entire class. People are arranged alphabetically (girls by maiden name).”

How about my mom’s report?

Zillow still shows the crummy 1953 Cape Cod house in which we grew up (address above) and lists the mansion’s 1,603 square feet of space (we also used the basement, though, and a screen porch that was glassed in and maybe isn’t included). However, it was bulldozed within hours of being sold in 2012 and the Indian immigrants who purchased it built a McMansion in its place.

What were prices like back then? I scanned mom’s 1951 cross-country family trip album. A Chinese dinner for four in San Francisco was $11:

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Will colleges and universities keep their coronapanic principles or abandon them for filthy lucre?

by philg

From bestcolleges.com:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 14 to withhold federal funding from schools — including public colleges and universities — requiring COVID-19 vaccines for attendance.

The article then provides a partial list of the righteous:

I verified at https://www.oberlin.edu/obiesafe:

Oberlin College requires that all students, faculty and staff attending or working at Oberlin receive a full COVID-19 vaccine, unless an individual has an approved medical or religious exemption.

The above list may not be complete. Tufts in Maskachusetts isn’t listed, for example, but it does require medical, dental, PA, etc. students to receive the Sacrament of Fauci plus a Booster of Faucism. (They’re still following the Science as revealed by Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and Prof. Dr. Joe Biden, M.D., Ph.D. in which the COVID-19 “vaccine” prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2?) Does the Trump executive order come with an exemption for medical/dental schools or will Tufts have to choose between saving lives/its sacred principles and the sweet cash that flows out of Washington, D.C.?

After saying that nothing is more precious than human lives and the COVID-19 vaccine is essential, how does a college or university reverse course and explain that it no longer cares about saving lives? Will they defrost Claudine Gay so that she can explain that it is all about the context?

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Valentine’s Day: Human Reproduction as Prisoner’s Dilemma

by philg

A hedge fund manager pointed out “Human Reproduction as Prisoner’s Dilemma; The decline of marriage in the West.” (Aporia, January 21, 2025):

[the effort required to raise a child to adulthood] makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner’s dilemma. Both father and mother can choose to fully commit or pursue other options [“cooperate” or “defect”]. In this context, marriage provides a framework for encouraging, legitimizing, and stabilizing commitment. … A [men defect/women defect] society looks like the most primitive parts of sub-Saharan Africa or the Amazon rainforest. Women sleep around, while adult men prey on women and children and regularly kill each other for access to women. As men can have multiple wives and wives are not loyal, there is no respite from intrasexual competition; you can always be replaced. Without paternal certainty, men have no investment in the future and spend their time fighting, dancing or resting rather than working. Economically, these societies are desperately poor and largely incapable of collective action. In war, they shatter like glass when faced with an enemy that expect chastity and fidelity from women.

What was the U.S. for its first 200 years? A “men cooperate/women cooperate” society in which there was monogamy and “Divorce is difficult: the marriage contract can be created by mutual consent, but cannot be unilaterally dissolved.”

What has the U.S. been since no-fault (“unilateral”) divorce become available circa 1970?

The shift from a cooperate/cooperate marriage system, where both men and women made sacrifices to gain the security required for childbearing, to a cooperate/defect one, where men are expected to uphold their end of the bargain in exchange for nothing, has failed. This is the legacy of second wave feminism. Men are dropping out of work or burning things down, and both marriage and children are increasingly relics of the past. We are thereby moving towards a defect/defect system of the kind I described at the start.

Why are there so many females trying to have babies with rich guys?

Polygamy is a natural attractor state for humans, since it satisfies the desires of powerful men to have multiple wives and the desires of women to have elite husbands. Monogamy requires both elite men and many women to sacrifice their desires. … Rather than invest in additional wives, men in monogamous societies invest in their original wife and children, with the result that almost everyone is better off.

Where’s the game theory promised by the article title?

But unilateral divorce doesn’t just destabilize marriage. It also changes the power dynamics within marriage from favoring the more committed partner to favouring the less committed partner. Hence, “under unilateral divorce, the distribution of resources within marriage favors the spouse who wished to divorce” (Reynoso 2024). In addition to destabilizing marriage, unilateral divorce incentivizes poor behavior within it, since the threat of ending the marriage on unfavorable terms for the undutiful partner no longer exists. This “weakens the bargaining power of dutiful partners who wish their marriage to continue or who wish to end their marriage because of serious mistreatment by the other partner” (Rowthorn 1999).

Unilateral divorce is sometimes portrayed as an advance in human freedom, but this is a mistake. By removing the ability to credibly commit to a long-term relationship, unilateral divorce prevents couples from reaching a mutually-beneficial bargain that greatly assists in the raising of children. Without forced marriage, which has never been part of the Western tradition, unilateral divorce actually removes an important choice.

The fact that individuals can now exit easily, and unilaterally, from a relationship makes it difficult for couples to make credible commitments to each other. They can promise anything they want, but most of these promises are no longer legally enforceable, and many are undermined by social policies which reward those who break their promises.

Because it no longer guarantees security (or anything else), marriage is much less useful and therefore less appealing.

What about marrying the government?

Rather than merely supporting their own wife and children, men are expected to support women to whom they have no relation, and from whom they can claim nothing in return. Not only is this much less motivating, but it also removes a major incentive for women to marry in the first place. The state can simply extract a potential husband’s wealth and transfer it to her, no marriage required.

How long will it take for family law to turn the U.S. into a richer version of the poorest African countries?

It takes generations to see these effects in full. Not only are we the product of millennia of selection for marriageability; social norms are sticky. At first, men see that their fathers worked hard to get married and that their older acquaintances are doing the same, and imitate them. Women aspire to marry as their mothers did. Even when the law has changed, the norms do not immediately disappear. But they get weaker every generation. People see that marriage no longer offers stability. They see their peers and parents ruined by divorce. They see that they can get the economic and sexual benefits of marriage without giving up options. And the old norms erode.

Why are prime-age men disappearing from the labor force (Obama White House)?

The post-60s settlement attempts to force men to transfer resources to women via the welfare state and child support. But as the Soviets discovered, it’s very difficult to get men to work to the best of their abilities through coercion alone. Without marriage, the state loses its taxpayers and society loses the men who make it work.

What about the baby bust that Elon Musk, whose first wife and mother of his children suggested divorce, decries?

By providing a solution to the prisoner’s dilemma of human reproduction, marriage greatly boosts fertility, even today. It’s not surprising that the shift from a cooperate/cooperate marriage system to a cooperate/defect one, and the attendant devastation of the institution itself, corresponds precisely to the end of the Baby Boom.

Happy Valentine’s Day, therefore, to those who celebrate, those who are married, and those who are married to the government!

(Bad news for those who are married: The article notes that, despite the ease of exiting unhappy marriages provided by no-fault divorce, marriages today are less happy than in the (good/bad) old days.)

Male readers: What percentage of your time is spent doing tasks that you wouldn’t have to do but for the fact that you’re part of a family with children? My personal number is about 80 percent. This includes house-related tasks (if it were just me and Mindy the Crippler I could live comfortably in an apartment or condo). It includes all work for wages (I have enough money from previous work for everything that I might reasonably want to buy between now and age 100+; a big motivation for me to work is that I don’t want the kids to see me idle).

Since it is Valentine’s Day, let’s have some flowers… (front-yard orchids; tie them to a tree in the shade and walk away):

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