I’m confused about what your definition of the “Lib” solution. AFAIU your taxonomy is:
Trad: Emotion C is allowed with anyone of the same sex and (optionally) your monogamous heterosexual lover, sex is only allowed with your monogamous heterosexual lover.
“Lib”: Emotion C is allowed with ???, sex is only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Lefty”: Both emotion C (beyond some threshold) and sex are only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Communism”: Emotion C and sex are allowed with anyone you want.
Personally, I’m a fan of hierarchical poly. You can have unlimited emotion C and sex with multiple people, but when resources get scarce, your primary gets priority. Like you said, people like stability, hence once you merge your utility functions with your primary, you can do things like “I won’t leave Alice for Bob, even if Bob seems a locally better option, because a priori both Alice and I prefer the world where I stay with Alice no matter what, to a world where with 50% probability I meet Bob and leave Alice for him and with 50% she meets Carol and leaves me for her”.
Also, it’s true that hierarchical poly requires you navigating difficult questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my secondary, if it comes at the price of spending time with my primary”. But I don’t think this is fundamentally different from what happens in monogamy. In a monogamous relationship you also have to contend with questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my platonic friends, or on hobbies that I don’t share with my lover, or even on work, if it comes at the price of spending time with my lover”. I don’t think you can ever have clear-cut deonotological rules for this kind of thing, you have to do it the hard way and actually search for the mutually-optimal consequential solution.
[Disclaimer: I’m poly for only approximately 5 years]
I’m confused about what your definition of the “Lib” solution. AFAIU your taxonomy is:
Trad: Emotion C is allowed with anyone of the same sex and (optionally) your monogamous heterosexual lover, sex is only allowed with your monogamous heterosexual lover.
“Lib”: Emotion C is allowed with ???, sex is only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Lefty”: Both emotion C (beyond some threshold) and sex are only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Communism”: Emotion C and sex are allowed with anyone you want.
Personally, I’m a fan of hierarchical poly. You can have unlimited emotion C and sex with multiple people, but when resources get scarce, your primary gets priority. Like you said, people like stability, hence once you merge your utility functions with your primary, you can do things like “I won’t leave Alice for Bob, even if Bob seems a locally better option, because a priori both Alice and I prefer the world where I stay with Alice no matter what, to a world where with 50% probability I meet Bob and leave Alice for him and with 50% she meets Carol and leaves me for her”.
Also, it’s true that hierarchical poly requires you navigating difficult questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my secondary, if it comes at the price of spending time with my primary”. But I don’t think this is fundamentally different from what happens in monogamy. In a monogamous relationship you also have to contend with questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my platonic friends, or on hobbies that I don’t share with my lover, or even on work, if it comes at the price of spending time with my lover”. I don’t think you can ever have clear-cut deonotological rules for this kind of thing, you have to do it the hard way and actually search for the mutually-optimal consequential solution.
[Disclaimer: I’m poly for only approximately 5 years]