That's not the best way to do it IMO, subsidies for dating apps that facilitate successful, long-term relationships would be a far better idea.
Have a law that lets citizens specify on which app they met their partner when getting married, and have the government pay a small (to the tune of $10) monthly subsidy to the makers of that app for as long as that marriage lasts. $10 per month per couple is not a lot of money for a government in the grand scheme of things, and the benefits to population growth and plain human happiness are incalculable.
As opposed to for-profit, ad-driven, surveillance capitalism companies with a demonstrated interest in short term profits and hoovering all the data they can?
Yeah.
I'd be willing to take that risk.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think the government is a good group to do this. I just think they're a less-bad group than the usual parties.
This might be heresy to say around these parts but arranged marriages
in Asian countries are typically successful and happy. Note there is a
world of difference between arranged and "forced" marriages.
Yes, there are downsides to what is seen in the "secular west" as an
illiberal over-involvement of families. 'Honour killings' and other
regressive horrors can occur. But they're not the norm. Plus side is
that healthy, supportive involvement from both sides of a family is
super valuable.
But why stop at the family? Throughout most of human history the
community, the village, respected friends etc, have held a really
important place in matchmaking. Just read some Jane Austen :)
We like the illusion of total independence and choice. In 2024 we can
have that. And thank goodness we've gotten past those old suffocating
social norms that kept people in traps of class and normative gender
roles.
But the model of isolated autonomous Bayesian-utility-maximising
actors rationally selecting each other ... is a crock. We just don't
do that. As soon as we get a serious date, what is the first thing we
do... introduce them to our friends for approval!
So sure, there are any number of groups from which we could take
healthier advice than from a for-profit company that feeds on
loneliness and isolation, including maybe a benevolent government that
funds services which ultimately result in better mental health and
social stability.
> This might be heresy to say around these parts but arranged marriages in Asian countries are typically successful and happy.
Estimated rates of domestic violence are pretty high in those countries. That is the thing, if you make divorce socially costly, people will stay together whether happy or not.
I am neither British, nor a shill, but the team behind gov.uk is pretty amazing. They have an excellent blog that explains about their design and tech processes.
Easy - OP's imagining the government forces you to date people - instead of offering a loss-leading alternative to a monopoly.
If you start with the presumption that the government can do nothing but be a dystopia - it's easy to imagine ways anything can end up being a dystopia.
