The Real Hustle of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a hustle. Always has been.

Just like Thanksgiving, Christmas, "New Year's", Easter, Juneteenth. They are holidays for the hustlers and snake oil salesmen.

"Hey, it's Christmas! Buy this red Santa hat."

"Hey, it's New Year's! Buy some alcohol to celebrate."

"Hey, it's Juneteenth! Buy this shirt to combat white supremacy."

In 1849, Massachusetts native Esther Howland received a gift from one of her father's colleagues. The 19-year-old was given a paper card with lace embroidering and Victorian-style decorations. Inside the card was a decorated, hand-written letter.

You guessed it. A valentine.

Given that Howland came from a family of entrepreneurs, this was the epiphany of a great business venture.

Valentines were in their infancy of popularity in America during this time but were a major hit in England.

Esther Howland soon created a valentine business with an all-woman workforce. As the business grew, Howland would send a courier to an employee's home with all the materials to create valentines. A week later, the courier would return to pick up the creations. It was the first coronation of a work-from-home business model.

At its peak, Esther's valentine creation business generated about $100,000 in annual revenue, which translates to over $3.7 million today. One reason for her success was that Esther opened valentine exchanges from being a romantic exercise only the wealthy participated to something everyone could afford.

Marriage used to be something only the rich could afford.

That was by design.

Across history, the upper crust of societies used marriage as a political tool to keep power away from those beneath them. They did not marry out of love, lust, or wanting to make ends meet. Child-bearing was a practice to keep power in the family.

Take the Roman Empire, for instance.

Polygamy and monogamy were outlawed based on the political climate and how well it helped their conquest efforts. Before third century CE, polygamy was widely accepted. However, by the turn of the third century, to help with the recruitment of new warriors, Roman officials criminalized men who married multiple women. The edict read, "anyone under Roman rule who has two wives will be branded with infamy." Romans deemed infamous were stripped of certain rights and privileges, including voting, holding public office, and making legal contracts. They also faced other restrictions and penalties, such as being barred from public spaces and activities as well as exclusion from certain social circles. By the sixth century, Roman officials declared polygamy was "contrary to nature."

The Romans had massive appetites for dominion. Monogamy helped its cause.

Historian and psychologist Michael Price writes, "Why can monogamous groups grow larger? Because men want wives, and if you need a lot of men on your team, you must offer them something that they want. In monogamous groups, unlike polygamous ones, high-status males cannot hoard large numbers of women for themselves. The more equal distribution of women in monogamous groups means that more men can acquire wives, and fewer men have to leave the group to search for wives elsewhere."

"Socially imposed monogamy, therefore, emerged in the West as a reciprocal arrangement in which elite males allowed lower-ranking males to marry, in exchange for their military service and tax contribution."

Did you catch that?

Allowed lower-ranking males to marry.

That is elitism to the nth degree. While conservatives once understood this, now liberal elites view marriage as a political institution. It's why they fought so hard to redefine marriage with the Marriage Equality Act. Nowadays, conservative men are too busy going their own way.

Gaslighting, psychological manipulation, and inept fiscal activity steer society away from marriage.

Take this piece from The New York Times.

In 2012, Catherine Rampell wrote a column titled Marriage Is for Rich People. She starts, "The rich are different from you and me: they're more likely to get married." Of course, she interjects her leftist economic philosophies (This is The New York Times, after all): "...the concentration of marriage among the richest Americans is amplifying the increase in income inequality. Rich men are marrying rich women, creating doubly rich households for them and their children. And the poor are staying poor and alone."

A quick Google search reveals that Rampell comes from a two-parent Jewish household. I bring up her Jewish ethnicity because they have some of the highest marriage rates in the country. Her father attended Princeton and later The Wharton School of Business. She married Christopher Conlon, an economics professor at New York University, in 2014, which means they could have been dating in 2012 when she wrote the article. Her estimated net worth is somewhere between $4 and $6 million, earning $80 to $85K a month.

This woman is rich. Has probably always been rich. She also knows the power and advantages of marriage and growing up with both parents under the same roof.

Valentine's Day has become so commercialized with hearts, teddy bears, chocolates, wine, and fancy restaurants. At the same time, people neglect what should be the true meaning behind February 14th: marriage.

Many of the iconoclast elites are married. The vast majority of politicians here and abroad are married. Marriage, politics, power, and wealth are as connected as a chainlink fence. There are some exceptions, most notably Elon Musk, but they are not the rule. The Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Freemans, Vanderbilts, DuPonts, and the Kardashians-Jenners all amassed great wealth through marriage.

Marriage comes from the Bible. Yet, even atheists know how important marriage is. 54% of self-described atheists over 30 years old are married.

Lucy Rock of The Guardian wrote a 2017 piece titled, Can you afford to get married? In the US, it's increasingly the privilege of the rich.

That's how the elites want it.

The Valentine's Day hustle is about power and politics, not selling candy and cards.