They’re not talking about lending a set of hands to help construct the new reform Valhalla of tort reform, market deregulation, and health savings accounts.

Wotan builds Valhalla to compensate for a loveless marriage; Alberich forswears love to forge the Ring.

The condition of singleness, after all, is traditionally understood as a sort of existential antechamber to the Valhalla of marriage, or of otherwise “settling down.”