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I find it utterly bizarre how you managed to write such a long post without mentioning the key reason why spouses need to be employed close to each other, which als blows up all your examples and which was the justification in all actual cases of spousal hiring I personally know about(not too many, admittedly): Children.
You can easily have a ldr without kids, me and my wife did phds in different countries, but you can't look after kids that way. If we want academics to be able to have children, we need to give them a way to live in the same place. None of your examples include looking after children, so none of them make sense to me.
This is a bit meta, but I find myself noticing and recoiling from this language formulation lately. It seems dismissive and uncharitable.
His post is in no way bizarre. There are better ways to say "I think you missed an important point".
Hmm maybe I should avoid using it. I was a bit sleepy and writing haphazardly, so if it came off as too abrasive, I apologize.
On the other hand, it's a genuine statement of bafflement on my side, and I marked it as such - I didn't say it's objectively bizarre, just that I personally find it as such. Children aren't just an important point among many, they are imo the entire point of human couple formation.
And in general, I do consider the modern insistence of decoupling relationships from family formation and treating the latter as just a life style among many, well, bizarre.
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This is where you're wrong, Inferential distance is a bitch.
I'm curious what you mean. Did you also find my post bizarre? If so, why?
For the reasons already stated, you've effectively dismissed of agency/interest on the part of any involved as a factor and then are acting surprised when your model based on a theory of perfectly spherical frictionless cows operating in a vacuum doesn't reflect the observed behavior of your local bovines.
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This is an interesting point, but I disagree that my post was "utterly bizarre" and that my thought experiments "make no sense" because they (mostly) don't involve children. Let me respond in three different ways.
First, I did kind of mention children, but only briefly and indirectly. I said that the academic career path makes it harder to start a family.
Second, all of the spousal hires that I am personally familiar with did not involve children (although it is always possible that the couple in question will have children later and in one case this did indeed happen). I realize that your experience was different. I have also never seen the existence of children used to justify specific spousal hires, but of course I don't know what was said in hiring committees or private conversations. In any case, from my experience it's absolutely clear that spousal hiring often takes place with no kids involved and that many people support it for reasons besides those involving children. So I don't think my thought experiments are invalid at all.
Third, and most importantly, I am not sure if the presence of children should make a difference. From a university's perspective, spousal hiring is justified because giving extra benefits to prestigious researchers makes them more likely to accept your job offer. You point out that the convenience does not just have to be the convenience of being in the same place as your romantic partner, it can also include the convenience of having your entire family (including children) in the same place. Part of the point of my thought experiments is that there are other notions of "convenience" (such as being in the same place as your close friend) that may be valued by researchers and could, in theory, be addressed by something similar to spousal hiring.
There are also other tricky ethical questions involving spousal hiring and children. Why does a university owe it to its employees to make it easier to have kids? Does the fact that a practice makes it easier to take care of kids make it not nepotism? Should couples with children be treated better than couples without children? Moreover, it seems hard to build a coherent policy where spousal hiring is justified mainly by concerns about raising children. If spousal hires are extended only to people with children then what about people who don't have children yet, but plan to? Or if spousal hires are extended to couples who have or plan to have children, what happens if a couple claims to plan to have children but then doesn't?
I want to emphasize that I don't necessarily disagree with you. I said that one of the strongest arguments in favor of spousal hiring is that it is convenient and makes the lives of (some) people in academia better. One part of that is that it helps people in romantic relationships in general and another part, as you point out, is that it helps people with kids. Perhaps someone who is strongly pro-natalist could also support it on the grounds that it may increase the number of children. I am genuinely unsure if spousal hiring is on net a good thing and the fact that it makes things easier for couples with kids is certainly part of the argument for it.
There is another point I would like to address. You say that "you can easily have a ldr without kids" and that "you can't look after kids [in different locations]." I don't fully agree with either of these. Many people find it difficult to maintain a relationship long-distance, especially when the long-distance phase lasts for many years. I know of at least one academic couple who have lived in separate states for decades but I think they are very unusual. In any case, it is clear that many people prefer to live in the same place as their romantic partners. Also, I have known couples with kids who lived apart for several years (including couples where one partner was in academia). It surely sucks a lot and I would not want to do it, but it's not impossible.
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