Lab b2: Marriage and Divorce laws
Marriage and Divorce laws
Marriage and divorce are highly regulated in countries on earth. Some people might still marry according to religious or customary laws and traditions, but at the end of the day, the state regulates how you live.
Planet o-box takes a completely different approach. All contracts between two consenting adults are made based on their free will and can be adapted to individual needs. There is no state-administered standard for marriage. Some people choose to get married according to religious or cultural standards, others choose to design their own version of marriage. While some religious institutions still provide basic guidelines and standards for what they define as marriage, the general construct is free to individual interpretation. This means: if you want to marry your partner, you can. If you want to marry your same-sex partner, you can. If you want to marry fifteen of the most beautiful people around you, great, as long as they consent!
On OboxPlanet, people can choose to live together with or without a contract. There are many different contracts, many orient themselves at religious teachings and historic customs.
There are contracts for Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, and all you can imagine. And there are contracts for life or for certain periods of time or even conditional, e.g.“as long as you keep your weight below 200 pounds”. Anything goes, because on OboxPlanet, contracts are voluntary agreements between consenting adults which can be revoked whenever both parties agree. They have little in common with our state laws, which will be enforced by the taxman or the social bureaucracy even against the will of both contracting parties.
On OboxPlanet, there are standardized contracts which simplify matters for the contracting parties and outsiders. Some contracts have abbreviations, like f.ex. “married, rcs”, which means Roman Catholic Standard, a contract offered by the Vatican. Some offer a “engaged” status with corresponding rights and duties. Then there is rcl, Roman Catholic Light with the possibility of additions and divorces, with pre-determined rules in case of a divorce. There is the “mcs” for a mixed couple, one Muslim and one Christian, without the blessing of either Religion but with contractual certainty. There are of course contracts for gays and just about all other combinations you can imagine, including arrangements with several participants, f.ex. harems.
What experiences on Earth, past and present, help us understand life on the OboxPlanet?
For many individuals, marriage represents one of the most significant decisions in their lives. To better understand family life on the OboxPlanet, let’s examine the options available on Earth.
The state offers us a binary choice: yes or no. Saying “yes” means subjecting ourselves to a set of rules that may change over time. In a democratic system, these rules represent the compromise of the majority, inevitably leading to the slight frustration of some of the majority and major frustrations for a significant portion of the minority.
As for the type of laws, they are rather arbitrary and ever changing. In the 1980s in Switzerland, for example, women faced significant disadvantages in divorce proceedings, but later reforms reversed the situation to the other extreme. The increasing number of couples who choose not to marry in order to avoid rules and tax penalties find themselves subject to state regulations governing “married-like” relationships.
Last but not least, there are ongoing struggles related to same-sex relationships.
All of these conflicts could be mitigated if the state were to withdraw from regulating personal relationships. It is important to remember that the absence of laws does not imply a lack of rules. Private, contractual arrangements could provide a more flexible and efficient alternative to state regulations
Now it’s your turn: What contract would you choose? Let us know!
Things we could learn and implement from the OboxPlanet:
Abolish all marriage laws and requirements, privatize the courts
