Love Meets Logic: Marriage & The Reality of Prenups | Yaron Brook Show - Yaron Brook Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A lot of them of little and an individual loss.
This is the show. Oh right, everybody, welcome to your

(00:21):
own book show on this Saturday, n Sober eleventh. Hope
everybody's having a fantastic weekend. It's the weekend, all right.
I know there's a lot of a lot of news
happening right now, and and we could have done another
new show today. Suddenly there's stuff coming out of Gaza

(00:43):
that's pretty horrific. There's a there's a new trade war
where China is just being escalated into the stratosphere. That
is gonna be fun to watch. Uh. And and there's
there's yeah, there's a bunch a bunch going on. But
I decided we should take a break from views a
little bit, just to step back a little bit from it.

(01:05):
I've also promised more what do you call it, uh
Yuan's Wolves for Life kind of shows, So this will
be a part of that. And and and we'll take
that on. So we're going to talk about today. We're
going to talk about marriage, the value of marriage and
and the benefits of it and why you should do

(01:26):
it generally speaking.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
And we'll also talk about prenup arrangements because I guess
it's it's it's it's big right now. The the Free
Press had a big article about prenups. Uh just this
uh this last week, why everyone is getting a prenup.
So we'll talk about my views and prenups. And I

(01:53):
also got a question from David who is a long
time and significant supporter of the show by pay Pal
or Patreon or one of these about peine ups. He he,
he wanted me to comment on pree ups and and uh,
and I thought it would make a good topic for
a show, So we're gonna we're gonna do that as well.

(02:14):
And I also got I've got a question more broadly
about marriage that I got a few months ago, a
few weeks ago, a few looks like a few months ago,
that we will we will cover and talk about as well,
because I think it is, uh, it is of interest.
So that that that's the topics Monday, maybe even tomorrow,

(02:39):
but Monday, we'll talk about tariffs and trade wars and Gaza.
A lot of talk about Gaza, really awful things happening
day right now. But by Monday we'll have we'll have
the hostages released that will definitely be in the news,
So that'll be good, and so they'll be There's a
lot to talk about over the next over the next,

(03:02):
uh next week in terms of a news. Today we're
talking about marriage and prenups and and so I thought
we'd start with prenups and then we'll go to marriage
and and I'm eager toa I'm eager to encourage you
to ask questions. Ask questions like, uh, can you know

(03:23):
somebody said I should run ada Abby's like like show.
So if you to ask, do you Abby like questions?
If you've got questions about life, marriage, relationships, love, sex, whatever, romance,
ask those. You can also ask about anything. Really, I've
already got a question about Taiwan. I ask about anything,

(03:46):
and and that that all works. So feel free to
use the super chat to ask about anything anything you want.
All right, So let's let's jump in with prenups. It's it's,
it's and then we'll broaden the discussion from there to

(04:06):
marriage to marriage. Yeah, we'll broaden it to marriage period.
I don't doesn't need to be a continuation of that sentence,
all right. So it turns out, it turns out that
prenups are big right now, Like everybody, most people who

(04:28):
are getting married right now. Fifty percent really people getting
right now married right now are using a prenup. A
peanut basically is a contract you signed before marriage. We'll
get into some of the clauses that are in these prenups.
We'll get into some of the things that people put
in that are often not legally valid. And let me

(04:48):
just say right after that, I'm not a lawyer. Nothing
I say here should be taking as legal advice. Yeah,
I mean that should be self evidence should be obvious.
Not a lawyer, don't the details reading off of what
I'm reading online. So people try to put in all
kinds of provisions which turned out to be non enforceable

(05:08):
by the quote. But sometimes they aren't forceable, so sometimes
how to tell? So people just stick them in there
and and worry about it later. So prenup is basically
a contract that states, primarily with regard to assets, primarily
with regard to income and assets, what happens when the

(05:32):
marriage is dissolved, and for that matter, who owns particular
assets while their marriage is in place. I mean, a
prenup can specify that let's say one of the parties
might have a business, and that business is one hundred
percent of theirs even after the marriage, whereas and and
and I think this is and prenups used to be
really really rare. So in the nineteen nineties, supposedly about

(05:57):
eight percent of married capule's had one, that's according to
the Free Press. You know, and when they did, when
they did happen, it was kind of whispered about in
scandalized tones. It was something you gossiped about, or something
they really rich did, and the famous and people who

(06:21):
divorced many times. But it wasn't something you know, normal people,
average people did. When I got married, which is way
before the nineties, or well a decade before the nineties. Yeah,
I mean, I didn't know there was such a thing
when I got married, but I got married very young.
We'll get to that because I think it's important in

(06:43):
terms of thinking about prenups as well. Ages is very relevant.
So today, forty seven percent, according to some surveys, getting
getting prenups, and some people believe the numbers even higher
than that. That's among millennials. And I guess with with

(07:03):
a gen Z is this about the same, So it's
over forty percent of millennials and gen zs are getting
getting prenups. And the question is why and doesn't make sense?
And what what do I think do I think it's
a good idea or bad idea. Let's let's talk about

(07:24):
what a prenup kind of is first. I mean, it's
a contract. It's a contract that settles issues around assets
and money and trist to you know, tries to determine
the allocation of such in case of divorce, what happens
in divorce And and let's start with a big challenge
with a prenup. I mean, the biggest challenge of a

(07:46):
peanup is that it's a very long term contract. And
it's a contract that covers huge amounts of if you will, uncertainty,
a huge amounts about certainly about the future uh and
uh and what are going to be the circumstances around
the future. For example, some of the provisions that courtes

(08:10):
uh deem unenforceable are provisions in prentups dealing with unborn children,
that is, dealing with children that you're going to have
in the future. Uh and and I think the courts
are saying you're not in a position before you have
kids to project some kind of decisions about what how

(08:31):
you're gonna in a divorce after you have kids, custody, alimony,
all that stuff that needs to be done after you've
had the kids. So children and the impact of children
having a marriage, and the impact of children having your finances, uh,
financial prospects of each one of the partners UH in
the marriage, the kind of jobs that they're going to get,

(08:54):
the kind of businesses they're going to start, the kind
of prospects that they have. That is a there's a
huge uncertainty about that into the future. There's uncertainty about
obviously where they're going to be happy together, the kind
of marriage, the kind of relationship, the kind of communication
you have, you know, the dynamics of the relationship. There's

(09:19):
a lot of uncertainty about that, I mean, and certainly
if you if you project further in and certainly about
retirement when you retirement, people are retiring early these days,
a big payoff. And then of course there's another aspect
of this, and that is inheritance. I mean, dealing with inheritance.

(09:39):
Will you have an inheritance? It's decades into the future.
So the biggest challenge with a prenup is that you're
dealing with a lot of moving pieces, and a lot
of uncertainty about over a very long period of time. Now,
it could be the marriage is short. If the marriage
is going to be five years, ten years, and it ends,

(10:00):
then then it's fairly easy. It's fairly it's it's not
that hard to predict what's going to happen over a
decade or so, but once you start talking about several decades,
it's just hard to think into the future. By the way,
one of the kinds of provisions that some prenups have
is some of them have sunset clauses where the preanup

(10:21):
goes away after a certain period of years, and others
have a review clauses to be the optional review clauses
that the agreement is revised upon some major life change
like children, business success or something like that. And right,
So that's these are the kind of things that a

(10:44):
peanup is supposed to handle and the challenge that it faces,
because I think that challenge comes from the just the
complexity and and the and the scope the length of
time that this contract is going to be in place,
and and trying to deal with things that one just
doesn't know what's going to happen. I mean, most contracts

(11:05):
are much more finite. Most contracts are much more narrow.
Most contracts to deal with a finite set of circumstances,
finite set of events. There's a lot about marriage which
is very open ended. So that's a challenge. On the

(11:26):
other hand, marriage is maybe the most important relationship you
will have in your life. It is a long term relationship.
It is a long term relationship that involves a lot.
It involves every aspect of your life, and it does
involve money and finances, and it does involve a lot

(11:48):
of decision making and ultimately will involve children. And it
is a relationship that can end. We know, you know,
something like fifty percent of all marriages and the divorce
it's not just a voce. Death is another way a
marriage can end. And one should think about how what
happens when one party dies and how did how did

(12:11):
how do their state their assets, how they dealt with
So given the importance of the of the of the relationship,
the length of time, and the complexity involved, I think
a prenup makes a lot of sense, makes a lot

(12:33):
of sense. Uh. In I'd say most circumstances of marriage, Uh,
you want to have some guiding principles that you agree upon. Now,
I think it's something that should be reviewed and revised
over time again mutual agreement. But it certainly makes sense

(12:59):
to have a contract that lays out the principles by
which you want to handle the end of that marriage
if it comes. And you know, one of the reasons
in the nineties there were almost no prenups and certainly

(13:19):
in you know, I don't remember them even existing, and
suddainly it was not something we when we got married
even considered is because one of the issues is when
you get married, right, like, if you get married like
I did, really really really really young. I got married

(13:42):
when I was twenty one, my wife still my wife
was nineteen. We were really really young. And part of
being really really really young was we had no assets.
I mean literally Z wrote nothing, no assets, and we

(14:03):
had no real idea about what assets were going to have.
We were literally at the very beginning of life. Have
a prenup under those circumstances makes no sense. Under those circumstances,
you're basically forming a partnership with the understanding that you're

(14:24):
gonna work things out as you go along, and that
everything is own fifty to fifty because you've phoned this
partnership and you're doing it together, and you're such a
beginning of life that everything that is created from now
on is being created jointly. So if you enter a
marriage in a position of literally having no assets and

(14:51):
you don't know what the future is, and you're literally
gonna make the future together, you're going to create the
future together, than a up makes absolutely no sense. Although
I mean, I will say this, and this is something
you always need to think about, whether you have a
peanup or not. There is a contract. The contract's implicit

(15:15):
of course in the very marriage, but the state imposers
terms on you. So if you don't have a prenup,
then you're leaving it up to the courts to decide
how your estate is going to split, be split and
so on. You know, and there are lots of horror
stories about people believing too justly or unjustly how to

(15:36):
tell that they were screwed by the courts. So given
that you're going to have an imposition of some kind
of legal regime on you, you might want to spell
out that regime in advance for yourself. And maybe even
if you get married very very early and with no assets,

(15:57):
you should spell out something like, okay, from now it's
five fifty, we're in partnership, and if we split, we
split down the down the middle or whatever, things like that, right,
just so that you don't get into situation later on
with somehow you know, there's the court to do it
differently or impose something different on you. So yeah, so

(16:27):
when I get married, I literally had nothing, so in
a Jewish wedding, and we had to have a religious
ceremony because even though we were both atheist, when we
got married in Israel, it doesn't it doesn't count unless
it's a religious wedding. You can leave Israel and get

(16:48):
a secular wedding outside of Israel and come back and
now recognize it. But if you get married in Israel,
it has to be a religious wedding. It could be
a Christian meeting or Muslim meting, a high wedding, it
could be lots of different religions, but it has to
be a religious authority signing off on it. So we
had to get a religious wedding. And in a religious
wedding in Israel, you have something you have in a

(17:09):
sense of contract, and it's only a one sided contract
because it's it's the male who is signing the contract
making certain promises about what happens if the marriage gets
dissolved in terms of his liability responsibility for the woman.
Such a very patriarchical system. And so I sit down

(17:30):
with a rabbi and I, you know, I didn't know
what the hell and and you know, he reads you.
It's a standard contract. He reads you all the stuff
I can't remember those in it. And there is a
provision there where you have to say, if we get divorced,
if this get marriage gets dissolved, you will give your

(17:50):
wife X amount of money you know, fill in the blank,
right whatever, and to this. And now this contract is
not legally binding. So what happens is in Israel people
just stick a number in there, and and they usually
put a big number in because they want to they
want to impress everybody, and and they know it's not

(18:11):
enforceable in the courts anyway. So it's like a prenup
that is that is reflective of intentions, but not not enforcible.
So people stick in a million dollars, you know, whatever
they put in there, a lot of money, because again
it's just to impress the people at the wedding, and

(18:32):
and it's not enforceable. You know, this contract, by the way,
is held by the mother of the bride, So so
you know, again symbolically you as the as, the as,
the as, the as, the husband don't ever have access
to it. It's a kind of a promisory node hanging
out there. But it's more moral claim than it is
a legal claim anyway. So the Rabbi is reading this

(18:55):
thing to me and he gets to, well, how much
how much money? And I think, got it. You know,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna promise to give more
money than I have, right I. I you know, I'm
not going to put a number in there that I
can't actually live up to. So how much money do

(19:17):
I have? And at that point, at that point in
my life, you know, all the money I had in
the world, the value of all the assets I had
in the world was about it was about two hundred
dollars A kid you not, I kid you not. That's
all I had had, about two hundred dollars. So I

(19:39):
said two hundred dollars and I think twenty five cents
or something like that. Basically the exact balance in my
checking in my bank account. I looked at me like
I'm nuts, and I said, no, I you know, that's
that's how much money I have. And literally this is
read in public, and it was in a big embarrassment
I think for H for the family when they got

(20:02):
to that section. Uh. The fact that all I was willing,
all I was willing to, uh, you know, always willing
to put up was the two hundred bucks, which is
all I I literally, all I literally had, right, all
I literally had. So yeah, I mean when we started,

(20:26):
we started with nothing. Neither of us had anything. So
we were both going to go to school, we were
both going to work while we were school. I think
our parents helped us a little bit, and we were
gonna make our way in life. I mean, uh, and
you know, ultimately we moved to the United States. We
came to the United States with nothing. It was zero.

(20:49):
And then I spent six years in school and we
had two kids while I was in school when we
had nothing. So h for a very very long time
we were we never thought of ourselves as poor, but
technically quite poor and uh, and had nothing, you know,

(21:09):
diaper as well, our highest our largest expensive By then
we were aready in late twenties anyway. So so maybe
a peanut makes sense in the circumstances, just to set
out kind of the standards, which how we're thinking about this,
what the what, what it should be. But I think
it's less important if you have nothing, and if you

(21:29):
have an understanding about what's important is to talk about it,
have an understanding about how you want to live your
life more than anything else. The flip side of that was,
or the flip side of that is that today people,

(21:50):
you guys, are getting married much later in life, and
you are much richer when you get married, typically today
getting married in your thirties, maybe in the late twenties,
after school. You've already got a career, You've got income,

(22:10):
maybe both of you have income. You might even own
some property, you might have for one ks and investment accounts.
Some of you have started businesses and already maybe you
know many of you might even have had an exit
in a business that's sitting on millions of dollars in

(22:33):
the bank account. So I think the more assets you
bring into a relationship and the more you kind of
now have an understanding of the relative earning power of both,
the more prenup makes sense, and you know how you

(22:56):
structured and what you decide to do, and where do
you decide to commingle everything and say it's all fifty
to fifty, or whether you carve out certain things or not.
I mean, that's you know, I don't have a position
about what should be in the prenup, but what I
think is incredibly valuable. What the prenup really facilitates more
than anything else, and why I would be very much

(23:18):
in favor of a prenup is it facilitates communication. It
forces you basically to sit down and talk about finance,
talk about money, talk about income, talk about intentions, talk
about plans, talk about how you see your career going it,

(23:39):
talk about expectations, about whether you both intend to work,
whether when you have kids, will when of you stop working?
You know, and you know, whether whether you know whatever
you might be. I don't know a teacher who's never
going to make a lot of money, you know, talk
about all that. I mean, I would suggest my suggestion

(24:04):
is throw it all in the pot and agree to
fifty to fifty. You know, the basically everything is commingled
and everything's shared, and you make decisions together at financial
decisions and life decisions generally now, but if there's a
massive imbalance, I don't know, you know, one side is

(24:24):
worth tens of millions of dollars or others worth nothing,
then yeah, I mean maybe maybe that's not how you
want to do it. I can completely. I mean, particularly
if you don't know how long the marriage is going
to last. I mean you intended to last for it
for a long time, but you don't know. Then having
some provisions to protect the person coming in with a
lot of money or expects a huge inhabitance or whatever,

(24:48):
all of that, you know, it makes sense maybe to
cove some of that out, But all of that it
makes sense to think about in advance and to lay
it out and to talk about it. Talking about it
is the most valuable thing here. And then to the

(25:08):
extent that I mean you should put in in writing
to loge extent, because you want to preempt whatever state
law is going to dictate. This way, you get to
decide in advance what it's going to be like, how
essay is going to be split, how they're going to
be dealt with in case of a dissolution or in
case of death, Rather than some judge so I mean

(25:38):
to me, it just makes enormous amount of sense to
make as much as you can and you can't do
a lot, but as much as you can make it
explicit and again talk about it and what makes sense
to put in writing, put in writing, and put into
the contract, so you know, things like here's some basic

(26:02):
stuff that go into peanuts. You know, first of all,
full financial disclosure, so you disclosed each other, what your
assets are, what you have, what you own, everything, It
all goes in real estate, put stock, portfolios, everything go in.
So first there's there's there's one hundred percent visibility before
the before the wedding actually happens. And then you decide

(26:27):
what is going to be marital property and what's going
to be separate property. I know people who were married
and kept separate bank accounts, and I'm sure some of
you maybe have separate bank accounts, and you know, I
think that can probably work for some people. We've never
had that. It doesn't make any sense for us. You know,
with one bank account, we make decisions together, any significant

(26:49):
financial decisions we make together. But everything is commingled. But
it makes sense for some people, or at least a
portion of their income goes into separate bank accounts, well
a chunk goes into a combined bank account. I mean again,
you can you can make a variety of different arrangements.

(27:11):
You can have a variety of different arrangements, uh, and
and and they can make sense. So I don't think
there's one way to do this. This is one of
the benefits of talking through is to is to figure
out what your preferences are and what works for the
two of you. You know, in a peanup, you would

(27:31):
talk about, Uh, what happens if a business that one
of your owns grows dramatically afterwards, how are you going
to handle that? Again, who does it belong to? Is
it marital property or is the business separate? What about
new assets? A new assets that are bought, does it
depend if it's brought from your separate accounts, that is,

(27:53):
if it's brought from a from the joint account, how
you're you going to handle all that? And then of
course what are you to do with real estate? And
and and and again what happens under divorce and for
all of these what happens under death? And this is
part of a prenup can be part of you know,
thinking about an estate plan. Another thing you should all
do is have a will, and if you have significant assets,

(28:16):
have an estate plan. You don't lay it out exactly
how you want this done both, particularly when you once
you have children, you need to handle things like that.
Then what about spousal support alimony if you get divorced.

(28:37):
Is there some agreement around this? Is this something you
want to re examine once you have kids. Again, if
you start putting in provisions around kids, most courtes won't
won't accept it. If you're gonna have alimony, if you're
gonna put that into the into the prenup, which might

(28:58):
be the case if one party is bringing a huge
amount of assets into the relationship, there might be a
promise of alimony in terms of in terms in the
case of separation. But if so, how much, for how long?
And if you're not gonna have alimony, if you both

(29:18):
decided you are not gonna have alimony, you have to
make that explicit because again I think that the courts
will air on the side of pro alimony. And by
the way, courts have often stricken out clauses around alimony
if they think it's quote grossly unfair. When it's enforced

(29:41):
relative to when it was signed, So get legal advice.
One of the things that they recommend in terms of
prenups is that each party should have their own lawyer,
and you should really take it seriously. It's a contract,
just like any other contract. Business interests, How the ownership,

(30:03):
the profits? How do they handle? Uh? Does the claim?
Does the spouse have a claim? Does they do they
have involvement? If they don't have involvement, did they have
a claim? All of that. Again, there's no one way
to do this, but it should be discussed. And then
what happens to a business if it if you do
get divorced, who owns the business? What happens to it?

(30:26):
And the inhabitances particularly these days, I mean, uh, millennials
and Gen zs are going to inherit trillions of dollars
from from baby boomers are who are going to be
dying here soon. I mean, this is a massive generation
that's accumulated a lot of wealth and they're gonna be
handing that wealth to millennials and Gen zs and uh,

(30:49):
it's a lot of money and for some families it's
a huge amount of money. Well, how are you going
to treat that there's not much you can say in
a prenup about children. As I said, if you have
existing children you can and you should. But in terms
of future children again, courtes won't uphold that much. And

(31:13):
then what about deaths? A lot of people today have
student debts, they have other debts. How those going to
be handled going into a marriage? Are you both liable
for them? Are they? Are they separate somehow are they
going to be taking care of out of the joint accounts?
Are the debts? What happens in the divorce if you
still have those debts? If one party takes on gambling debts,

(31:34):
what happens? I mean, what happens to debts? And then
can one spouse become liable for the personal debts of
another of his spouse? So these are the kind of things,
These are the kind of things that a prenup covers.

(31:55):
And again, to me, it makes complete sense to have one,
you know, not just when there's an imbalance in terms
of one party has more assets than the other, but
just in terms of getting everything on the table and
deciding how you want your life to work together. Now, again,
in my case, because we were so young, everything was

(32:17):
assumed that everything was going to be together. Everything was
going to be shared because we were going to share
a life together. Almost from the beginning, there was no
you know, everything we did we did together at that point,
from that point on, so it's impossible to separate it out,

(32:38):
and it's certainly impossible to predict that. But once you again,
once you get into your thirties, you have assets, there's
a separation there. There's a clear understanding of that separation
and makes sense to putting in writing. And even if
you decide to merge everything, which I think makes sense
for most people, put that in writing. Make it clear
that that's what you want and that's what your intention

(32:58):
is and how you intend to deal with it. Once
you're separate, I assume again, separate it out fifty to fifty. Now,
there's some crazy provisions people try to put into prenups.
These are funny, they're funny, and they're crazy, and most

(33:22):
of them would get thrown out of our courts. But
that doesn't mean then they don't enter into prenups. There are,
for example, weight clauses if you gain more than X
number pounds after the wedding, or you get fined, or
the prenupper is void, or you know, you lose x

(33:45):
amount of money from your account if you have a
separate account, or if we do get divorced and you
put out a lot of weights, then you you get
less alimony. Now, supposedly these are in several celebrity prenaps.
I did read in the in the Free Press article

(34:08):
that a provision like list was actually upheld by a
court and where somebody got penalized. I guess ten thousand
dollars for every ten pounds they gained or something like that,
and this was upheld byck court. But from everything else
I've seen, usually these are not enforced by the courts,
but they do sometimes there are other provisions around cheating, right,

(34:31):
so you can be fined anywhere supposedly between fifty thousand
dollars and five million dollars if you're unfaithful. I don't
know if this is per occurrence and how you measure occurrences.
Supposedly Catherine Zada Jones and Michael Douglas have a five

(34:54):
million dollar adultery clause. Again, not clear if any of
this is upheld, it would be upheld by a court,
but it seems kind of weird. It just seems weird.
Both the weights and the and the panel or all

(35:15):
of these these these are kind of I mean, first
of all, you know, is it really about money? If
this cheating going on, is that going to resolve the issue?
And is money supposed to stop somebody from cheating? Is that?
Oh shit, you know I'm not gonna cheat my wife

(35:37):
because that I mean, I have to pay a fifty
thousand dollars Now, I'm not going to do that. I'll
stop cheating because I don't want to lose the money.
Is that really what you want as the motivation? Is
there really how it should function? It strikes me as
a cheating of the relationship to put a to provide

(35:57):
incentives like that not to cheat, right, I mean, dishonesty
or dishonesty should be a basis for separation and divorce.
How you decide to manage your sexual relationships and how
close do you want your marriage to be, and how
seriously you want to take so called cheating or it

(36:21):
is an open question that you need to decide between
the two of you, and it should be discussed and
debated and agreed upon between the two of you. But
it shouldn't be monetized. It's not about incentives. It's about
shared values and about your view of sex, and about
your view of what your relationship means to one another.

(36:48):
So and and wait, god, I mean again, this is
you're really going to provide financial incentives for this? I
mean it isn't this about out self respect and and
about and and all kinds of extraneous circumstances. What if
one of the one of the couple gets sick and

(37:08):
and and and and part of being sick puts on weights.
I mean, I mean, how do you It seems like
that is that is a ridiculous kind of a provision.
Another one that they have in there is a frequency
of intimacy clauses how many how many times a week
you have sex? And I guess penalties against the party

(37:32):
who doesn't want to have sex, and and you know,
if it's less than twice a week or whatever, you
get penalized for it. If we get divorced one day. Again,
it doesn't strike me that, uh, sex should be something
that is monetized. Not very romantic, but you know, sex

(37:55):
should be I have no problem with sex being scheduled
and sex being thought about and making sure that you
have sex often enough, but that should be part of
an ongoing, ongoing discussion and ongoing your ongoing relationship that
should not be predetermined. And plus all of that changes

(38:18):
of a time are changes with children and changes with age,
It changes with uh, you know, busyness, and and you
can't regulate that travel. I mean there's so many uh,
there's so many circumstances in which you couldn't live up
to the frequency and intimacy cause clause. And is the

(38:38):
prenup really going to specify all the exceptions for that.
Some people have in laws clauses. In laws once files
cannot have the mother in law move in or visit
for more the next days. Now, I have a huge
amount of sympathy for this clause. I think that makes

(38:59):
it makes a lot of sense. But again, this is
the kind of thing that I don't think you put
into a legal document. It's the kind of thing you
manage and you agree upon. And I don't know, it's
weird to talk about this in advance, but if there's

(39:21):
a particularly clingy in law, or if your spouse to
be is particularly clinging to their parents, it certainly might
be something to talk about. You do not want in
laws in your life. Too much. I'm not against the
in laws in your life, but they shouldn't be in
your life too much. And what is too much? You know,

(39:41):
that's up to you. I guess I moved seven thousand
miles away from my in laws and my own parents.
That gives you an indication of my view of how
involved in law should be. But you know, you need
to make those decisions, and those should be things you
should talk about. Social media clauses this is a weird one.

(40:05):
No posting embarrassing on flattering photos. Like if your spouse
is posting on flattering embarrassing you know, photos, and you
ask them not to and they don't pay any attention
to it, You've got some problems in your marriage and
your relationship, and I don't think that is something that

(40:29):
should be negotiated up front. I think you should just
agree to take each other seriously and to you know,
when somebody has concerns about your behavior. If your spouse
has concerns about your behavior, you agree to take them seriously.
But how many photos and what kind there are others?

(40:50):
You know, appearance upkeep? I guess in in in some
some couples have this, uh they specify the cosmetic surgery
costs will be covered by the joint account. I guess
they also specify that each spouse will maintain their attractiveness.
You know, you assign in your twenties a budget for

(41:13):
plastic surgery into your eighties, that makes a lot of sense.
And then pet clauses. Pet clauses probably do make sense,
particularly if you're bringing a pet into a relationship. Who
gets the dog, who gets the cat? The fact that
an animal is coming into the relationship, all that makes sense.

(41:33):
There also other quirky stuff, you know, people put into
prenup shopping limits, vacation requirements, household duties, who does what?
None of these inforcable, by the way, I think, don't
seem like they're enforceable. But again, things that you would
think would be negotiated as you live your life, Like

(41:57):
we're getting all these things. Things are going to change
over time. To think that you in your twenties and
thirties can determine these kind of things thirty years into
the future. It's just silly household duties who takes out
the garbage and who cooks dinner? And again, but all
of that you think will change with children with different
career paths with. I mean that is something you are.

(42:19):
Part of marriage is the constant negotiation around these things,
the constant understanding of who does what. If you're not
willing to engage in ongoing constant negotiating around these things
and don't get married career conditions, I guess whose career

(42:43):
is more important, I don't know. I mean, you can
imagine move clauses. If a job acquires, a move is
the spouse will quiet by contract to follow you. Again,
these are the kind of things that should be negotiated
within the marriage agreed upon. But if there is, what
if your spouse to be tells you, look, I always,

(43:06):
for the rest of my life want to live in
Iowa City. I'm never going to be twenty miles away
from my parents and my siblings and my family, and
I never want to leave Iowa City. Well, that's good
to know in advance. Good to know in advance because

(43:29):
you might have different ambitions. So those are kind of
things that are good to put on the table, good
to discuss, good to talk about before you get married.
I mean, one of the things that I loved about
my wife is before we got before we got married,
you know, I said something like one day, I want

(43:51):
to move to the US. And my wife had never
been outside Israel, she'd never been on an airplane. And
her response was, when do we leave? Right? That's my
kind of woman, right, eger and and excited about the adventure.

(44:13):
If she'd said, oh, no, I never want to leave Israel,
that would have been a killer, could have been a killer,
would definitely been a problem. Right. So you want to
know these things in advance. You want to know these
things in advance. Do you want to have children? Shouldn't
be in the contract, but you should know in advance.

(44:36):
You know, we decided when we got married, no children
for at least seven years. We had our first child
seven years later. Give a take. So you want to
have you want to have an understanding about these things.
It's really really important. Religion. You want to talk about religion, right,

(45:01):
your expectations about religion and your expectations about raising kids
and religion visavi the kids. I mean, that's important. It's
going to be a real point of contention if you
leave it for later, somebody upset because they haven't answered
the question yet. I get to the questions afterwards, So

(45:25):
I get to all the questions but I get to
the questions in the next few minutes. We'll get there.
But once I finish my spiel, I don't do it
while i'm doing it. So all of these kinds of
issues should be on the table, even if you don't
really want to put them into a contract. All right,

(45:47):
So here's my bottom line on prenups. I think they're
a good idea. I think they should primarily be limited
to financial issues and financial disclosure and financial planning. Uh,
but they're a good idea, But there are an opportunity
to bring up a lot of other issues about expectations

(46:09):
regarding children and sex and uh, religion and travel and
where you're going to live and all these other things.
Particularly again, the older you are, the more setting your
ways you are. You want to know how your spouse
is also set in their ways. I mean, the younger

(46:30):
you are, the more flexible you tend to be, the
less setting in your ways you are, the more you're
going to grow together. The big advantage of marrying young
the significant disadvantages, But there's some real advantages. The biggest
advantage of marrying young is that you grow up together.
That is your you, You you shape you, hope, shape

(46:52):
each other. You're literally your values. You know, if you
do this well, if you do it right, and if
if you fed, you are you are growing your values.
You're choosing your values together. You know you're making and
creating a joint life from nothing. You come with no

(47:15):
really very little baggage, with no pre preconditions, no set ways,
no particular place, no particular money, no particular profession, and
you're now going to create something a marriage, a relationship,
a joint venture right together, not as two separate entities,

(47:35):
but together. And the later you marry, the more difficult.
There's a sense in which the more difficult that together.
And that says because you're bringing so much of the
kind of life you've already created for yourself into that relationship.
It's why I think at some point there's probably a
sweet spot for Wind to get married. At some spot

(47:56):
it starts getting hotter and harder. You kind of you've got,
You've created a whole set of habits, whole set of
values associated with living alone, and now it's much harder
to share, much harder to share. So anyway, that is

(48:21):
that is my view of prenupts. I'll see what questions
you have I did want to answer this one question.
I do want to answer this one question because I
thought it was a good question. It relates to a
show I did in February about love and sex. If
you haven't heard that show, you can check it out.
It was sometime in mid February. I did a show

(48:44):
in Love and Sex, and this is the question he asked.
He says, since values changed over time, I wonder what
you think would be helpful to prevent someone from devalue
in your life. Is there anything people can do to

(49:04):
keep each other as their highest values? Or is it
essentially fate. I think it's a really good question because
one of the great challenges is living with somebody else
for a long period of time. Is what happens when
you drift apart? And what does it mean to drift apart?
What it means to drift apart is to now have

(49:28):
different values to be focused on or seek different things important.
And as you each one of you has different values,
you become less of a value to each other because
there's less values overlap between you. So I think this

(49:51):
is a I mean, I think it's a really good question,
and I think it's a really really important question. And
it's one that is particularly as you get engaged in
different careers, or if one spouse is taking to give
the kids and the others working. You could see how
that drift can happen. You engage in work all the time,
and they engage in childhooing, and and you've got different

(50:12):
sets of problems, and you suddenly find that you're thinking
about different things, and your different energy levels, and your
different different perspectives on the future and the present and everything.
It's hard. So how do you how do you work
at Is it possible, first of all, to work at

(50:34):
keeping your values aligned or is it just fate? Is
it just gonna work and not going to work? And
I'm not a big believer in fate. I am a
big believer in in working on stuff. And sometimes you
do it more consciously and sometimes you do it less consciously.
But I think the right approach is to always find

(50:57):
those values that you share that important to both of
you and cultivate those, spend time on those, invest in
those well, appreciating the fact that you're also going to
have separate values, interests that are not aligned, but so

(51:18):
respect for the values of the other. That is the
fact that somebody has a value that is not yours.
My wife loves learning languages, or she loves dancing. I
don't like dancing, and I have no interest in foreign languages.
But I have a huge amount of respect for the
fact that she values these things, that she's passionate about them.

(51:39):
And you know, I give her the space and encouragement
and support to pursue the things that she loves and engages,
including the fact that I don't dance, so she gets
to dance with other guys and that's just part of
her love of dance. There's no other way to do
it right. The one way is to allow your spouse

(52:03):
to grow, never to hold them back, to give them space,
to give them space to grow, to give them space
to seek out those values, but to establish as much
as possible a base where your values are shared. You know,

(52:25):
for us, for example, a love of art. Right, we
both learned about art together, she more so than I
because she has degrees in it. But we learned about art.
We've collected art, we go to museums together, we got
the upper together, we have concerts together. We're constantly engaged
in this pursuit together. She's an artist. I'm not, but

(52:47):
I love art. So it's a shared value. And we,
you know, we grow together having children, loving those children,
investing in those children, raising those children, be involved in that.
Having that shared value you constantly. You know, for us, objectivism,
the philosophy of objectivism, we learned it together. We studied

(53:08):
it together. I studied it most seriously because my inclination
is going intellectual. But she took all of Land and
Peacock's courses and we took them together, and we went
over Opah. She was in the study group when we
did Opah together. We did it all together so that
we shared in that leve of the philosophy. Conferences together,
events together, lectures together, so we're sharing that. So you've

(53:31):
got to find those values that you share which brought
you together, hopefully, and then cultivate them together and make
sure that you're allocating time to cultivating your shared values.
You're each going to go off and do your thing,
invest in your values, do the thing that interests you separately,

(53:54):
and you've got to each give space to the other
to be able to do that. And then you've got
to come together too, you know, to together experience and
work on and invest in the values that you share

(54:20):
and you've got to invest in that. It won't just happen.
It's easy to drift apart. That's easy, that's a noursha,
that's fate. The work has to be done in finding
the share values and investing in those shared values, and
devoting the time to the shared values, and devoting time

(54:41):
to one another, spending time with one another, and doing
that when life is crazy and you have kids running
around and it's insane, or when the job is really
really tough, for when you're traveling a lot of find
the time to spend time together and invest in that
relationship and invest in those values. Sex here is really

(55:07):
important because sex is a real way in which you bond.
You're bonding around pleasure. You're bonding around a shared value.
You're bonding around something that you're both enjoying, that you
both value, that you both you know, really having fun
doing together that as much fun separately. So those are

(55:31):
kind of things constantly to be investing in to make
sure that you don't drift apart and that you stay
a value to each other. And if you have enough
shared values, if you invest enough time, if you have
pleasure together, if you invest in pleasure together. Then it's

(55:58):
likely you will remain each other's top value. You will
remain at value to each other. But again, you have
to work on it. You have to work on it.
All right, let's see, all right, let's call that a

(56:22):
show that's about an hour. Wow, Okay, I talked about
that for a Now. I didn't think I had enough
that much to say about prenups. But there you go.
Almond just came in with one hundred dollars a sticker.
Thank you, Almond, really really really appreciate that. Thank you.
You guys can still ask questions. There's a I think

(56:45):
there's a lot of content here. There's a lot of
stuff that can be asked if you're interested, of course,
so please use the supit chat to ask the question.
Even with amen, we still don't really have We still
haven't made it. You will our kind of target for

(57:06):
the for the first hour. We have targets. The show
could not be possible without support from you, guys, and
we have targets for that support. So please consider supporting
the show, uh, and keeping the show on the air
and keeping the show thriving and uh, you know your
host motivated, and you can do that by expressing your support,

(57:29):
expressing the fact that you value the show with your support,
financial with your financial support. That is the trade, the
trade that we have. All Right, let's see what the
others stickers on and thank you again, really appreciate it.
It's good to see you, Gary, thank you, Steven, thank you.

(57:50):
All Right, so let's let's stick some of your questions
and and see where we go from there. Let's start
with Andrew, Paul, thank you for the stick I appreciate it.
Andrew says, lives merge together in marriage, but that doesn't
mean collectivism. Ran once said that individualists make the best

(58:12):
husbands and wives, but she didn't expound, how do you
think individualism is relevant to this context? Well, I mean
it's everything in this context. A good marriage is a
marriage in which each partner in the marriage, and this
is true of a partnership in business. It's the true
of any partnership that each partner in the manage has

(58:35):
the opportunity to fully pursue their values and express who
they are and what they are, and that they are
pursuing their values, that they are, you know, constantly in

(58:56):
a sense, making themselves better, at making themselves interesting, making
themselves doing things that are interesting and fun and exciting
because of individuals, because they care about themselves. It's what
makes them appealing to the other partner, right. I mean,
I think a nightmare marriage is when one partner grows
and the other one doesn't. When one partner cares about

(59:19):
himself or herself and builds and creates and pursues values,
and the other one it doesn't care about, you know,
is not selfish enough to grow. Another thing is when
one partner grows and the other partner gets all of
their satisfaction in life from the growth of the other partner,

(59:41):
but they don't have a life for themselves, so they
never build up their own character, they never build up
their own sense of self, they never build up their
own values, and then they kind of left behind. And
I think a lot of marriages fall apart exactly for
those reasons, because the the two partners are not are

(01:00:03):
not both growing, they're not both ambitious, they're not both achieving.
I mean, think about what collectivism would mean in a marriage.
It would mean you never pursue individual values. You never
pursuing values that you don't share. Well, you can't share

(01:00:24):
all your values. We're all gonna have find things that
are interesting that the other site doesn't find interesting. Careers
A careers are going to be different, for example, So
collectivism would mean one party has to always sacrifice to
the other. I don't know how you determine who sacrificed

(01:00:46):
to whom, but sacrifice is needed. But again that would
be that would create resentment. Why am I sacrificing or
why am I being sacrificed to? Either way would create resentment,
And again that would not lead to or lead to

(01:01:08):
the achievement of success in marriage. Success in marriage is
going to be achieved by each party pursuing their own
values in harmony with the other. I mean individualists pursue
interest in harmony. It's not Marriage is not a zoo
sum world. It's an ever growing pie, ever growing pie economically, hopefully, spiritually, emotionally,

(01:01:38):
values wise, there's not You don't want to stagnate. So
individualists make the best marriage partners. Individuals make the best
business partners. The individuals make the best team members because
they are independent thinkers who contribute, and everybody wants to

(01:02:00):
contribute to the relationship. That's a good relationship where everybody's contributing.
Thank you, Andrew rational frontier A connected topic. But what
do you think a proper meaning of the concept of
marriage is. Is it reproductive, financial, romantic, or mixture of all.

(01:02:21):
How would it be different from a serious long term
romantic relationship. I mean, the only thing that makes it
different is that it's codified. It is now a represents
a certain commitment, a commitment to make this a long
term relationship, make it long term. Now, I have no

(01:02:42):
problem with people not getting married. I don't think marriage
is necessary. Marriage is there more to give it a
contractual essence and to have basically the court to be
able to facilitate any disagreement. But marriage symbolically is that

(01:03:04):
long term commitment. That's all it is. When you're living
with somebody in a serious long term relationship, you haven't
made the long term commitment. You haven't moved into. The
difference between that and marriage is the difference between Okay,
now I'm saying, yeah, this is for as long as
I can imagine it. Also is I think important for

(01:03:29):
having children because you can have a long term romantic
relationship and you can have a contract, and you can
arrange your finances in a way that a fine and
if you split it's not a problem. You can buy
assets and have them split in the right way. You
can manage all that. But if you have children, now
it's a real complication. Children cannot be split. How do

(01:03:52):
you deal with children? How do you deal with the
fact that you might you know, divorce if you want, well,
if you don't have the marriage contract. Marriage is a contract,
after all, then you're going to have to make it
up as you go along with regards to children, or
the courts will have to step in and make decisions

(01:04:14):
about it without the benefit of having a marriage contract
that shapes it all. How do you shape your assets
with children? So I think marriage is primarily in terms
of the contract. It's primarily there for dealing with the
complexity of having children, and it's there as a long

(01:04:40):
term as a statement to the world and to yourselves
that you're making a long term commitment. That's the roles.
I think marriage makes plays. But I have no problem
with people living together and not being married and not
ever getting married. I don't think marriage has any kind
of sacred you know, something that you have to do.

(01:05:02):
The most important thing is having that relationship, having that
long term close relationship. That's what you get the value from.
But again, if you intend to have children, get married,
it makes it just makes it much easier, much more
legally predictable. Andrew, is there a connection between envy and collectivism? God,

(01:05:30):
I mean to an extent that collectivism is made on altruism,
and there's definitely a relationship between envy and altruism. Then yes,
I mean envy is often a consequence of the fact
that we're brought up to care about others more than
about ourselves, and many people don't want that that they

(01:05:50):
they resent that, and they internalize that resentment, and ultimately
that resentment turns into hatred of other people. Hatred of
other people because they are now the focal point of
my morality rather than me being in the focal point
of my morality. So I resent them because I'm supposed
to sacrifice for them. I resent them because I'm supposed
to I'm sort to give them stuff, or I resent

(01:06:13):
them because they're supposed to sacrifice to me and then
not sacrificing, and as a consequence I have I hate them,
and that hatred is becomes becomes a form of envy,
and of course that is connected to collectivism because collectivism,
say hear that will all as individuals don't matter. What

(01:06:35):
matters is the group. It can only exist in an
altruistic society in which it says that your life doesn't matter,
what matters is their life. You should be sacrificed to them.
So it's it's that sacrificial element is the essential in
collectivism is what makes it work, it, what makes it
stick it, what makes people adhere to it, And so

(01:07:00):
it's connected to envy in that way. Mike, he says,
I just got here, but I'll watch later. Looks interesting.
Thanks Mike, appreciate it, appreciate the support. Uh jjgbs. You
touched on this. But modern life has made it so
easy to live by yourself that it seems many people

(01:07:20):
find it hard to compromise. Why share a toilet fridge
when you can easily live by yourself and still find intimacy? Well,
I mean, can you really find intimacy? Can you real
find intimacy to the same extent as when you share
a toilet and a fridge with somebody you know it
doesn't have for she to have kind of the kind

(01:07:41):
of interestry that you're never going to have by yourself.
You can certainly have sex without having a without getting married,
But can you have everything else? Can you have the
experience of sharing life with somebody, of pursuing values together
and and having the kind of visibility that comes from

(01:08:03):
somebody who knows you intimately, not just through sex, and
not because you've spent a couple of weeks together, but
because you've spent years and decades together and now you
know each other, and in that sense you provide each
other with the kind of visibility and the kind of support.
And there is also the the you know, they getting

(01:08:28):
the supporting one one another when when things are not
so good, which I know people like John Peterson emphasize
and I think wrongly they make a marriage all about that.
But it is a value. You know, when if you
get sick, there's somebody to take care of you. There's
somebody to make you soup, there's you know, there's somebody
to give to to be compassionate towards you, and to

(01:08:49):
provide you with attention. There's a value there. But it's
even more important when you're both healthy and doing fun stuff.
You get to do it with somebody always everywhere, and
at the same time you can also have you alone time,
so it doesn't preclude that. And in a modern household,

(01:09:10):
why couldn't you each have your own bathroom if that
was really important to you. I mean, most homes have
more than one toilet, and certainly we're all wealthy enough
to be able to forward more than one toilet. And
you can even have more than one fridge if you
really wanted to. It's not that hard. So if there's
certain things that bother you about living with somebody else,

(01:09:31):
you can find ways around those and yet benefit from them.
The enormity of having a loving relationship with somebody. We
haven't mentioned the word love, right, but intimacy is not love.
Love is much more than intimacy. Intimacy is an aspect
of love, but the intimacy is much deeper and much

(01:09:51):
more meaningful if love stands behind that. To have another
person that represents to you a high value is an
enormo benefit to you. Think of friendship on steroids, although
it's it's even a different dimension than friendship. So so

(01:10:15):
you to give up having your own toilets and having
your own fridge for the opportunity to spend decades with
somebody you love, to share values together, to experience life together,
to experience the beauty together, to experience children together, to
experience the successes together, but also to support one another

(01:10:37):
when things are not going well. It seems like a
cheap price to pay, fridge and a toilet doesn't seem
like a serious thing to worry about in the when
when the upside is so massive, and the upside is massive.
Take those periods of intimacy we are with somebody on

(01:10:59):
a short run, and now extrapolate that the full fledged
long term relationship, and you get a sense of the scale,
of the intimate, of the benefits. And of course again
the intimacy is far deeper, far more meaningful, because it
is associated with a loving relationship and the knowledge of
one another that you just can't get with, you know, uh. Intimacy.

(01:11:23):
By the way, living alone was always a possibility. It's
you know, it's it's richer today's it's a little easier,
but it's always possible. Jacob, thank you for the sticker.
Appreciate it. Eric says, I just got married three weeks ago.
Congratulations after nine years together. Excellent. I'm glad you were
together before you got married. That highly recommended, lived together

(01:11:46):
for a while, have sex together for a while before
you get married, marriage is too big of a commitment,
too important of a commitment, not to check it out
and test it out beforehand. Sex and living together A
good way is to do that, he writes. Eric says,
our values aligned with respect to ethics. Even though we

(01:12:07):
disagree politically, politics are not very important to me. Your
thoughts are objectives. Marrying non objectives. Yeah, I mean, what
choice do you have. They're not enough objectivists anyway in
the world. But no, I mean it's challenging more so
than if you're both objectivists, because there's going to be

(01:12:30):
things you disagree about, and they might not be important
to you right now, they might be more important to
you in the future. So it's going to be challenging.
But if your values aligned around other things, and if
there's real love there, and if you've lived together for
nine years and it works and you love being with
one another, then the disagreement is about politics are about

(01:12:53):
other things are insignificant as comparative to the joy and
the wonder of being together, and I would focus on that.
But you do have to recognize that there will be
points at which you will be frustrated with one another,
but that happens in every marriage. Even when you agree
and stuff, you don't always agree on everything, right, So

(01:13:17):
you just walk through those things. You work through those things,
and you focus on the positives, and you focus on
the things you share. All right, Thank you, Eric, and
congratulations Jennifer. A beautiful line from Put Neil Put regarding

(01:13:38):
getting to know someone quote, we are strangers to each other,
each one's life in novel no one else has read,
even joined in bonds of love. We are linked to
one another by such slender threads. Yes, although those threads

(01:13:58):
get thicker, yeah, and stronger and more meaningful. The longer
you live together, the longer you share values together, the
longer you get to read each other's novels, and the
longer you're writing a novel together. How's that for me?
Riffing off of a Neil Put. Thank you, Jennifer Wes,

(01:14:22):
Thank you Wes fifty dollars stick. I really really appreciate that.
Thank you. We're chipping away at those goals. I appreciate that.
All right. Jacob asks taking us into politics, I guess
what is your advised opinion on West Taiwanese action on

(01:14:45):
Eastern Taiwan. He calls China, West Taiwan. If yes, what
form will it take? Blockade, troops on the ground, et cetera. Look,
I don't know, but I think ultimately, the weaker America becomes,
and it certainly seems like it's becoming weaker, the more

(01:15:06):
likely it is the troops on the ground. I think
if the Chinese are smart, they do it quickly, with
overwhelming force, without any warning signs. Uh, you know, drop
special forces into the into Taiwan, take out, take out

(01:15:31):
whatever defenses they have from within, Flood the Taiwan straits
with ships so that even the best anti ship defences
just get they just get blown away by the fact
that you're flooding them. Use your hypersonic missiles to take
out whatever defenses they have on land, and just take

(01:15:55):
the island quickly, a blitz grieg to the extent that
you can do that on an eye island. I think
that's what they do, uh, When I have no idea,
They're probably not ready yet, and they and they probably
want to wait until America is weaker. Although there's a
chance they become weaker too, it's not clear that they're
becoming stronger. Jason, thank you for the sticker. Really appreciate it. Michael.

(01:16:22):
If she won't sign a prenup, she's in for something
other than love. Oh god, Michael, I don't know he's
got He's a tough one it. Yeah, I mean that's
for you to work out with your loved one. And uh,
I don't know that love just comes and goes based

(01:16:44):
on whether they sign a prenup or not. You know.
Part of it is to explore why, what's stopping somebody
from signing a prenup? What's going on now? Michael obviously
has money, so he's entering the relationship with funds and
and and and it is a concern for him. But yeah,
I understand why it's importance. But I wouldn't give up

(01:17:08):
on somebody you love that quickly. You got to fight
for her. You got to fight for her, Jamie. In
a private health care system, what would happen to people
with disabilities, people denied claims, people with mental health conditions?
What percentage people do you think wouldn't be able to
get insurance? And should government pay for them? So let

(01:17:32):
me start with the final question. The final one is
no goverment has no role here, no role in any
of this. So whatever solutions we come up with. Government
cannot be a part of the solution because none of
these none of these issues justify the use of coasion,
justify the use of force. The fact that you have

(01:17:54):
a disability does not give you a right to my stuff,
does not give you a right to use force against me,
even if you're using that force indirectly by hiring the
government to come in after me. So it cannot be
that the government is the solution. So what's left, Well,
what's left is us society, people, individuals. So with the

(01:18:20):
fact that people have families, families will take care of
people with disabilities. Families will take people who for some
reason can't get insurance. That's part of what families do.
That's part of the job of families. And in a
world like that, I have to mention, we would also
be quite a bit richer. I think it's important to

(01:18:42):
note imagine how much less taxes you would be paying
if health care was truly private. And by the way,
health insurance would be a lot, a lot cheaper. Now
we would only cover you mostly for catastrophic stuff. It
would be a lot cheaper. The whole healthcare industry would

(01:19:02):
be completely restructured. And would be more fodable and cheaper,
and you would be richer. And that's important to take
into accounts in all of this. Now, if family doesn't exist,
or family doesn't have the money, or family can't do it,
then charity they would have. There would be charitable institutions

(01:19:26):
that would take care of people. Hospitals would have charitable
charity wings that have charity funds. Doctors might have that
where they see a certain number of patients a goddess,
they do a certain number of operations without charging. Charity
would have to take care of patients. What percentage of

(01:19:49):
people do you think wouldn't be able to get insurance?
I think after a while you'd have to let the
system grow and mature and markets to adjust and market
to get created. In a mature, free market healthcare system,
I think the number would be close to zero. And
I'm serious because there would be so many different types

(01:20:12):
of insurance, and there was be so many different ways
in which to insure against not having insurance that almost nobody,
very very few people would have would have would not

(01:20:34):
be able to find some form of insurance to cover them.
And remember, insurance would be really really cheap in America, today,
if you had no regulations on insurance, a catastrophic insurance
policy costs less than your cell phone bill, and everybody
has a cell phone already pays that bill. Everybody could
pay for health insurance and says I'm hoping most students

(01:21:01):
take the doctor Mommy inductive biology course and cure disabilities. Yeah,
take the doctor Mommy Induction Biology course. Where is that? Where?
I mean, where do people take that? They take that
on YouTube? How do they find it? Doctor Mommy? All right, Andrew,
didn't expect you to tie altruism to envy. Very interesting.

(01:21:26):
You didn't expect that seems obvious to me. I'd also
add envy that collectivists compare with others is an unhealthy
zero sum way. Others gain not the threat to me,
and can be an inspiration. Okay. So yeah, that's another
way in which collectivism, that is collectivism teaches us to

(01:21:52):
look always at other people and evaluate everything in the
relative to other people. And that means that we start
looking looking at others. How you know, how much money
do they have, and what kind of car do they drive?
And what you know all of that, and then it's
about keeping up with the Joneses and then when you
can't keep up with the jones is, then you resent them,

(01:22:13):
and that builds up the envy around them, and that
collectivism encourages. Whereas individualists don't care about what the neighbors have.
They're focused on what they can create, what they can build,
what they can have, what they can make, and what
the neighbors have. The neighbors have, they're not taking it
from me. Generally, zero some mentalities and zero some perspectives

(01:22:35):
encourage envy because other people's success comes at seemingly my expense.
That's the meaning of zero sum. All right, guys, full
more twenty dollars questions, and we make our goal a
second hour goal. Let's see if that can happen. We
could also do eight or nine ten dollars questions, but fast.

(01:22:57):
If we do, then twenty dollars questions. Islam Ali can
cheating be forgiven? Well, I mean it depends. What do
you mean by cheating? Uh? You know? Is it? What
is it that is unforgivable about cheating? Is the deception unforgivable?

(01:23:18):
Is the lying unforgivable? Or is having sex with somebody
else unforgivable? Which one of those unforgivable? And to me,
the lying and deception might be unforgivable. That is, if
somebody is lying about it, particularly if it's over a
period of time. It's not like it was last week
and they only they only told me about it today.

(01:23:41):
But if it's if it's a pattern of deception and lying,
that is unforgivable. Somebody having sex outside of marriage, is
that unforgivable? I think it's forgivable. I don't think it's unforgivable.
I don't think it's it's that big of a deal.
But you know, obviously people are going to have different

(01:24:02):
views about fidelity sexual fidelity, and mine affaily liberal if
you will. So you know, I don't think I think
the expectation of the expectation of monogamy forever. Yeah, I
don't think it's that important or that or that substantive.

(01:24:23):
It's the lining in deception which I think are problematic.
And you know, the lying in deception, that's a real
violation of of of of what do you call it,
of real virtues, of moral virtues. It's a sign of immorality,
and it is a sign of immorality. It's reflective of

(01:24:44):
it's going to apply to other things. Why why would
you think somebody would line deceive you only in one
area of life? What about other areas of life? So
I'm less concerned about, you know, monogamy and sexual s exclusivity,
then I am about lying and cheating and lying and cheating,

(01:25:04):
which I think are very difficult to forgive, and they
have to be they would have to be you know, real,
I mean, they'd have to be a real context in
which you could figure out how to forgive somebody for that.
But that would be hard. And I'm not for polyomerie.
I don't believe in I don't think you can sustain
a marriage with more than one person. I don't think

(01:25:26):
you can sustain relationships with more than one person. I
don't think that's possible. But I'm also not you know,
so I also don't think somebody having a one night
stand or having a relationship with somebody under certain circumstances

(01:25:49):
is such a sin or or such a big deal.
So I think sustaining intense, loving relationship with more than
one person is probably not doable. It's probably too complicated,
and it's probably just I don't think we have enough energy.

(01:26:09):
I don't think we have enough focus. I mean sustaining
a lasting long term relationship with one person is really, really,
really hard. It requires a lot of effort sustaining that
kind of relationship that with that intensity and that intimacy
with more than one person at the same time. I

(01:26:29):
just don't think it's sustainable for very long. But that
that doesn't mean it necessitates sexual exclusivity. So anyway, I'll
let you figure what that out exactly, how that plays out.
The values too intense to share it with a lot
of people for more than a short period of time.

(01:26:51):
I'm not saying you couldn't have it for a short
period of time. I just don't think you could have
it for very long. Jacob, what is your opinion on
honeymoon duration. We're thinking of a reception in Taipei, tennis
days in Japan and tennish in Italy in the fall

(01:27:11):
of twenty twenty seven. I mean, I have no opinion
about that. I mean that depends on how much money
you have, how much time you can be away from work.
It depends on how much you like traveling and what
you like to do when you travel. And I mean
ten days in Japan and ten days in Italy sounds
amazing to me. Good for you. I mean, that's great.

(01:27:34):
My honeymoon was I think it was two nights in
a hotel in Jerusalem and a nice dinner because that's
all I could afford. I mean, and I remember I
had two hundred bucks in the bank. It really really
depends depends on what stage in life you are. It
depends on how much energy you have, but also how

(01:27:58):
much money you have. H Jacob, our income split will
be sixty five thirty five for most of our life,
yet we will need to move around for my job
multiple times. Should full one k be split along income lines?

(01:28:19):
I mean, I don't think so. That doesn't strike me
as a big enough gap to justify that. I and
I would, I mean, I think you should merge your
accounts and and and just split everything fifty to fifty.
Remember why your income split might be sixty five thirty five,
and she will have to move because of your work
when you have if you have kids, and when you

(01:28:41):
have kids, the division might not be fifty to fifty.
Somebody might have to take time off of work. There
might be a lot of other things going on where
you're not gonna divvy everything up fifty to fifty or
sixty five thirty five. So I would just throw everything
into and you're not gonna you're not gonna necessarily spend
the money sixty five thirty I would generally just put

(01:29:02):
it all into one pool unless there is real big differences,
and thirty five sixty five doesn't strike me at that big.
All differences in the wealth you're bringing into the arrangement.
But again there is there is plenty of I don't

(01:29:24):
know what that is. There's plenty too, there's plenty of
optionality here that you get to decide. I don't have
strong opinions about any of that. Andrew Conservative's attitude towards
marriage is that you should get married because that's what
others do. It's like a tribalistic duty. It's unintellectual, a

(01:29:47):
failure to rationally explain the value. Yeah, I think that's true.
It's what everybody's always done. You have to have kids,
and marriage is the only way to within what you
have kids. You know, again, Paterson has this attitude of
you want to get married so that the other person
takes care of you when you have cancer, which again
is not a which is a value. It's it's not worthless,

(01:30:12):
but it shouldn't be the reason to you want to
get married so that you have somebody with you, so
you know, not lonely, because a lot of people don't
have that many values and they don't know what to
do with themselves. You know, Conservatives might get married again
because they believe in sex. Sex should be within marriage,

(01:30:33):
and they don't believe in too much sex. A little bit,
but not too much sex outside of marriage. Lots of
reasons why conservatives get married, many of them not very good. Andrew,
A great part of having a similar sense of life
with another is that it allows for particular interests to defer.
It's like the fabric of your souls are interwoven despite

(01:30:54):
different shades overlaid. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that
cheaps overlaid. Yes, I agree with that. It's the sense
of life is the thing that holds you together. It's

(01:31:15):
the it's the thing that underlies the shape values. It's
a thing that emotionally connects you. It's a thing that
spiritually connects you, and and and at the same time,
you can have other values, but you always go back
to that rational frontier reference to my previous question plus

(01:31:37):
more support. Thank you appreciate that Eric. By the way,
if you think it was a mistake to marry a
non objectivest I will have to respectfully disagree. I don't
think that, so no disagreement required. Jason, can you spend

(01:31:59):
a minute talking about the morality and the extent of
the fees of voluntary taxes we would should pay for
contracts like prenups and marriage licenses to be covered by
the courts. Got it? Yeah, I mean, I don't know
what there is to say beyond I think in a

(01:32:23):
rational society where the government does not tax you, you
would pay in order for a contract that you signed
to be enforced by the government, to be enforced by
the courts and by the policing power of the government.
So beyond arbitration, just straight voluntary arbitration, you I think

(01:32:45):
would have to pay a fee, some kind of filing fee,
and that filing fee would go to sustaining the courts
and the policing power of the government so that they
could enforce and that they could they could spend the
money on the on the trial. I think that is

(01:33:06):
a way. Basically, it's a it's it's voluntary because you
don't have to do it. You can just keep it
at arbitration, and it's a it's a way to fund
the government uh by using a voluntary mechanism that is
not involved cosion. I don't know if they have much
more to say about that than that, Linda, keeping art

(01:33:29):
records pre and post marriage can be very important. Well,
I mean art, yes, I mean to the extent art
as an asset. I think the art that I had
before I was married was a poster, uh, a sufferdol
Dali poster. That was all the arts I had before
I got married. And the funny thing is my wife
had exactly the same poster. It's one of the things

(01:33:49):
that we connected on. She had exactly the same poster
in her bedroom as I had in mind. So yes,
but if you have any asset, including art, keeping records
of that and putting it into the peanut makes sense.
And talking about how you want to divvy up that

(01:34:10):
art if you ever get divorced and divvy up all
the art you're going to proach this together. There there's
a lot of that we need more. Your run book law.
What is your run book law? Give me an example
of your run Brook law. L O R E. I
don't know what that is. Okay, I guess this is

(01:34:31):
the last super check question. So if you still want
to ask a question, if you're still interested in any
of this, jump in, I like numbers says, since you've
called for EU Media to publish Muhammad cartoons, maybe you
could put them on your website to set an example.
I mean I did years ago, And yeah, I mean,

(01:34:55):
I don't know where I have put them on the website,
but I certainly would put them up when the occasion occurred,
and when they become news, I would certainly do that.
But yeah, I mean, I think if there's an appropriate
place on my website to put them, maybe with a
video next to a video with them I used to have.

(01:35:16):
I used to have I think the thumbnail, so the
thumbnail I had for a show I did on a
cartoon's had the cartoons so it was always up on
my YouTube channel. Still up. I think it's still up there.
I think Jamie also on prenups.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
If I ask her for one and she doesn't want one,
we're both essentially we're both essentially saying we believe there's
a chance it will fail.

Speaker 1 (01:35:45):
How do you figure out who's right and who should
get their way? I don't think there's a formula for that.
I mean, look, the possibility of failure is a fact.
It's not an opinion. You know, you don't know what

(01:36:07):
the future holds. You just don't. That is a reality.
You cannot predict the future with certainty. And the possibility
of failure is just facing up to reality. It's being objective,
it's being rational. What to do about it is the
question should you have a peanup or shouldn't you? And

(01:36:28):
here I think you have a have a discussion, a
discussion about why she's opposed to it? What is it
about that she doesn't like? What is it about that
that she's the worries? Sir? How can you deal with
those worries, deal with the fact, deal with her concerns
interrational in a rational building kind of way. So I

(01:36:56):
wouldn't make the fact that she won't sign a peanup
that's it. I'm walking away, That's the beginning of a conversation.
And it could be that at the end of the
conversation is to try to walk away. But then it's
the nature of the conversation it's going to lead you
to that, not the fact that you won't sign a prenup.

(01:37:17):
Maybe she has a false idea of what a peanup is.
Maybe she has a false idea about what is involved,
of what could be provisions in it, about how you
want to handle the asset distribution or whatever. Have the conversation,
figure out what exactly is going on that. I mean,
one of the most important things about marriage is communication.

(01:37:39):
You've got to communicate. You've got to talk these things out.
You're not going to agree on everything, You're often going
to disagree. Well, how do you pash out the disagreements?
How do you deal with them? Well, this is a
good opportunity to start. Okay, Andrew, I'm dealing with the

(01:38:01):
last vestiges of collectivism in my mind with your help.
Is it your view that altruism is the essential factor
that binds us to others falsely and leads to a
collectivistic psyche. I think it usually is unless you've had
a particularly tribal upbringing that kind of skipped over altruism

(01:38:25):
and just bound you to a particular tribe, a particular group.
And you can imagine that if you were raised a Mormon,
and or and I just speaking on moments, you were
raised in Israel. When I was raised in Israel. You know,
where a lot of energy is spent on the tribe,
the importance of the tribe, the meaning of the tribe,

(01:38:47):
that the reliance on the tribe that they you know,
that everything is engaged with. The type usually goes with
altruism because what they're demanding is your sacrifice to the tribe.
But it could skip an explicit altruistic theory and just
focus on the group and the value of the group,
and the importance of the group, and the fact that

(01:39:08):
you have to be a member, and that the group
is more important than you. And I think certain tribes, religions,
nationalities do a lot of that, and they use guilt
in order to achieve a lot of that. So altruism
is often there, but I guess not always. Doesn't always

(01:39:32):
have to be at forefront and center of it, okay, Islamili.
The discernment in cheating makes perfect sense. But isn't sex
tight to love? How can a partner be comfortable with
the others sleeping with someone else? I mean, look, sleeping
with someone else is tight to love, but doesn't have

(01:39:56):
to be tight to love. You could be in a
situation where there's shared values with somebody else and there
is real passion, and there's real sexual attraction that does
not involve full pledge love, and there's nothing wrong with that.
It's not the ideal. The ideal is sex combined with love.

(01:40:16):
But there might be moments in your life, at times
in your life where you know the pleasure that comes
from sex, not with somebody that represents no value to
they have to represent some value to you, but somebody
who represents value to you, not just because they're hot.

(01:40:38):
I don't think that's enough. You know, physical characteristics, I
don't think anywhere near enough, but because something you've just
I don't know, you've worked closely together, you know, on
a project, and I mean, be careful with doing this
with a coworker, but you know that there are all
kinds of circumstances which bind you intimately with somebody else

(01:41:02):
and that can result in sex. And I'm just not
ready to say that I'm willing to put aside an
entire relationship because somebody engaged in that. I just don't
think that that is right with it. Even if you
think it's wrong, I don't think it's a wrong that
rises to that level. And what if somebody you know

(01:41:27):
thought they were falling in love with somebody again. There's
nothing metaphysical that says you can only love one person
at one time. Again, I don't think it's sustainable to
love more than one person for very long, but for
a short period it's possible. Anyway. I am far from

(01:41:49):
being an expert on these things, and if we have
a psychologist of sex and love, we can ask them
for more on this. All right, let's see. I think
that's it. I think we covered all the questions. Thank you, guys.
Thanks to all the super shatters, really, really, really really,

(01:42:13):
I'm thankful for your support. Thank you to Amin who
came in with one hundred dollars, really appreciate that. And
to Wes who did fifty. Thank you to all the
super chatters who asked great questions. I think I got
all the stickers they did, and I will see you guys,
probably do something tomorrow, maybe more newsy, maybe not. You
like this show, I mean this kind of stuff you

(01:42:35):
like me to talk about. Let me know if you
like me talking about this kind of stuff. By the way,
one of the ways you can let me know you
like me talking about this kind of stuff is by
reaching out targets on these kind of shows and then
I go, oh, if I talk about like sex and
marriage and love and Evonn's rules for life and stuff
like that, they really value it because they put their

(01:42:57):
money where their mouth is, where they values are, any
with their values are, and they show me the love.
So that's one way, uh, that's one way to do
uh to do it to guide me towards the content
that you would like me to talk about. Jacob just
chimed in with five bucks, expressing his preferences clearly. Thank you, Jacob.

(01:43:22):
All right, guys, I will see you all, probably tomorrow,
but certainly on Monday and most of next week. I
will be traveling towards the end of the week. And yeah,
see you soon. Bye, everybody.

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