Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young. Thomas Sowell
Last night I started listening to Thomas Sowell’s audiobook “Knowledge and Decisions.” One of the things he states which we might all consider is this:
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
On the other hand, I spent two nights watching Bridgerton. This is a fantasy set in the early 1800s showing what was true then and is still true now, who we marry is one of the most important decisions of our lives.
The dowry that came with the bride played a big role in society at the time. A husband could not divorce his wife without returning the dowry. A dowry was given at the time of a daughter’s marriage and the eldest son inherited lands and titles upon his father’s death with all the responsibilities that entailed. It is not possible to divide up a title and large estates only remain large if they don’t get cut up over the years.
Is there a perfect way to handle an inheritance? For many families dividing everything up equally is probably workable unless there are reasons that it isn’t. If the eldest son stayed with his father to continue to build a business while his siblings went off to build big careers is it fair if everything is divided equally upon the father’s death?
We have to be careful when we look at how society worked in the past that we don’t think people did not agonize on how to make things s as fair and good for their children as they could.
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. Thomas Sowell
We may pat ourselves on the back thinking we are creating a better society than has been created before. I think all of us look more critically at someone else’s life than we do on our own. We probably look more critically at times gone by than we do the one we live in. We have some understanding of why things are the way they are in our own time, but can we understand the choices and decisions of a different time?
Historically based period pieces can make us think about how things must have been, the considerations, and constraints people dealt with. Passing things on to the next generation is always messy. It’s still messy today and many businesses built into large corporations don’t survive into the third generation.
If a daughter gets a dowry for her wedding and she and her husband get to use that windfall their whole lives and a son doesn’t get his inheritance until his father’s death he could be an old man not able to do with it what his sister and her husband could do with her dowry. Women were encouraged to marry up so there is also that to consider.
A dowry, I think would have equalized some of the relationships. The woman came into the relationship with something and if it didn’t work out she had her dowry to fall back on. Families might have empowered their daughters a lot more than we think they did. A man with a title could marry a woman with a fat dowry and it was a win for both of them. She moved up in society and they were better off because of the money she brought to the marriage.
As we wrestle with what we think is fair, just, equitable, equal, and what works we need to realize parents have for the most part always wanted better for their children and probably for society in general. We all want to see our children build a great life, we might not all agree on what makes a great life, and what rules a good society should impose to create a great society.
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. Thomas Sowell
Sometimes it seems there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions. Thomas Sowell
Life, in general, has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government. Thomas Sowell
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