Polygamy and Human Nature:

With that new HBO show, there has been lots of talk on the blogsphere about polygamy and its relationship to gay marriage. (See this post by Ann Althouse.)

As a libertarian, I see only one valid reason for forbidding polygamy, but recognizing gay marriage: The inevitable pattern that emerges with polygamy, wherever practiced, is one man/many women, which invariably leads to large factors of the male population with no marriageable mates. The response is that that was the "old" polygamy as practiced in unfree, unequal illiberal societies. The "new" polygamy or "polyamory," premised on equality of choice, will see all sorts of group marriage and one-woman/many-men variants that things should "balance out" and there won't be such a shortage.

Well, what about that intractable thing called human nature? In today's free, equality of opportunity, inequality of results, capitalist society, what happens when Donald Trump, Bill Gates (who probably wouldn't indulge, but certainly has the power to), Bill Clinton et al. end up hoarding the entire crop of fertile females to the exclusion of the average "lesser" Joes?