Money and monogamy are two of the world’s oldest institutions. Are they connected? Monogamy is an equalizer, which serves to distribute men’s sexual access to women in patriarchal society. Without it, a few wealthy and powerful males could monopolize the gene pool, to the great chagrin of other men. Hordes of young males driven by sexual frustration render society unstable. Monogamy is like democracy: one person, one vote.

Despite huge disparities of wealth today, a man can effectively “have” only one woman at a time, just as he can “have” only one body and one life of his own. It is not a moral issue, but a practical social one. In a sense, monogamy is a principle of fairness that compensates for other inequities. While there is no moral reason why you should be loyal to one person only, there are economic and emotional reasons. Love is no more exclusive than sex, but we must live realistically within our means.

Money, in contrast, aggravates inequality. It serves ultimately to concentrate the distribution of wealth in ever fewer hands. It is hard to steal or swindle someone out of their harvested crop or the things they have made by hand. But as soon as that crop or artifact is exchangeable for cash or other symbolic widgets, institutionalized theft becomes inevitable and even invisible. Money is so portable, anonymous, and abstract that swindling (politely called investment or profit), has become the normal way of life, the very basis of capitalist economy.

Money represents material and social assets, the value of goods and services, including access to women. A man may have genetic assets to bargain with. He can also bargain with money. In other words, money can represent the value of persons as well as of things. There is no limit to what one can own as personal property, except (now by polite and legal convention) other persons. Yet, marriage is a form of contract resembling roughly mutual ownership. Laws pertaining to it essentially regulate the disposition of property, including children. The world might be better off if a monogamous relationship applied not only to people but to material possessions as well. For example: if you could “own” only one house, one car, one tv, one share in a corporation, etc., just as you can have only one spouse, one body, and one life.

Besides quantity of assets, there is a range in their size and quality, or in the market value of shares. Yet the worth of these things to an individual is relative to physical needs, which are standard issue for human bodies. You may have a thousand times more money than your neighbor, but you cannot eat a thousand times more food or sleep a thousand times more soundly. Your gourmet meal could cost a thousand times more but cannot taste a thousand times better. Your exotic car cannot go a thousand times faster or be a thousand times more comfortable. Even if your fancy wristwatch could tell time a thousand times more accurately, how would that serve you? You pay exponentially more for diminishing returns.

Your lover cannot be a thousand times more attractive than other sexual partners. Monogamy has a sobering effect within dizzying patriarchal, capitalist, consumer society. As they say, money can’t buy you love. It can buy you sex, of course, and influence over the human gene pool (as it did notably for Genghis Khan). It can also buy you power, the deference of others, and influence over society. Yet, aside from its objective effects on the world, the subjective worth of power for the individual is relative to psychological need, which is also fairly standard issue. Having a thousand times more power cannot make you feel a thousand times more important or worthy. In compensation, neither is it possible to feel a thousand times less secure if you are poor.