Legalize polyamory, and we get suicide bombings?

[elfs]

Professors of Social Science Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa at Hokkaido University have dropped another analysis of societies and have concluded

By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

The authors are, of course, talking about polygyny, not an egalitarian polyamory. But the evidence is strong that, for the vast populace, an egalitarian polyamory would result in far more polygyny than it would polyandry. It's just the way human beings are; maybe you're not that way, but you're an individual, not a statistic: the majority are that way, and we should no more wish otherwise than we should wish the rise of the new soviet man. Polyamory free from stigma's overall effect would be to benefit most women and a few men, leaving many men and a few women bereft.

Miller and Kanazawa do add:

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings.

Now, some people will sputter that there have been women suicide bombers. Sure there have; there have also been women serial killers. But they are statistical noise compared to the waves of young male kids throwing away their lives daily as guided missiles.

Just something lovely with which to start your day.