Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That’s interesting. I don’t know exactly how you would discourage divorce in a subsidy structure, but I’m open to it. I don’t know. Do you have a white paper on that? There is a big literature on comparative divorce law, which I don’t know well. But there are some systems across the states which discourage divorce. I’m not sure they’re good for human happiness. If you just look at the parents, it seems especially women are worse off. But the more you wait, a higher number of people is a good thing. Obviously, you’re confronted with the tradeoff. Look, I think back when everybody was debating same-sex marriage, right? Andrew Sullivan, I think, had a troll take where he was like, “How come none of these people talking about the sanctity of marriage are talking about revisiting no-fault divorce?” I think that was actually a good point. It would be worth looking at. I don’t know exactly what the literature on that says or where the tradeoff would be, or what’s even politically plausible. Obviously, if you tell people straight up, “Well, we’re going to make you miserable, but it has some hazy long-term payoff,” that doesn’t work in the political system. But I think that’s a subject people should think about. I think in so many areas of life, we look back on the 1970s and we say, “We maybe made some bad decisions back then.” And I don’t think we should completely exempt divorce and marriage law from that general critique.…

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