>Here's one of my pet theories/speculations about the rise
>in the divorce rate in the U. S. over the past 100 years; it
>also explains the "red state" divorce disparity. As more
>and more of social life becomes commodified, people
>take for granted that even intimate relations are (and
>should be) market transactions: e.g., the marriage
>market, "I'm not getting anything out of this relationship",
>the trophy wife, etc. --So what do you do when the
>novelty of the commodity wears off? You buy a new one!
>Even intimate relations reflect the mentality of
>the market, and thus the rapid obsolescence of romantic
>relationships.
That's a rather tendentious way of describing it. Having been there, I can testify it's really a lot more complicated than tiring of a commodity. I'd also say that expecting deep emotional rewards out of an intimate partnership is a good thing.
>So, wildly speculating, I'd say people in the red states
>have been more effectively enculturated into market
>culture, and apply that logic to their romantic
>relationships. (This also nicely explains why right
>wing loonbats like Limbaugh engage in serial
>monogamy.)
But California and New York, states where capitalism is very well developed and tertiary industries are dominant, have relatively low divorce rates. The south, which is in many ways our internal colony, with relatively low incomes and other social indicators, where tertiary industries still mostly take a back seat to the primary and secondary, has a high divorce rate. I'd guess that it's the infulence of religion, which forces people to marry whenever they feel like fucking.
Doug