Romney: A Failure of Imagination

That reminds me of Christopher Hitchens's silly statement that Shaha Riza has received "the nastiest character assassination I have ever seen." As Daniel Larison noted: "So, it’s nastier than the character assassination carried out against, to name a few, John Tower, Clarence Thomas, Pat Buchanan, Max Cleland, Jim Webb and Pim Fortuyn (the latter then being actually assassinated as a result)? It is nastier than all of these (which involved various smears, including accusations of criminal conduct, cheap attacks against the person’s patriotism or frequent comparisons to Nazis) to suggest that the woman effectively got a pay raise as a result of being Wolfowitz’s woman?"

I think it's a bit ridiculous to claim that "women wouldn't put up with it" is a reason that we won't have polygamy. After all, it's unclear that polygamy would do anything other than expand women's choices. (Yes, modern polygamous societies are also societies that deprive women of rights, but it's not clear that the polygamy causes that. Perhaps men only favor polygamy when other laws restrict women from using the additional power in might grant them. In addition, the modern polygamous societies have all sorts of other inequalities, not just been men and women.) "Modern women wouldn't put up with it" to a similar degree that they wouldn't "put up with" being the "other woman" or mistress to a powerful and wealthy man.

It may still be uncommon, but I suspect that it would be the men missing out who would complain more.