Sex and the Wealth of Nations
So Amrit is going to teach a class on economics. I thought I'd help him out by finding some good stuff, but I've gotten bogged down on questions that probably don't deserve too much attention, like behavioral economics.
Anyway, it struck me the other day that most male behavior can probably be explained by the desire to get laid. I get up in the morning and dress in conformist clothes and clip a Blackberry to my belt because these are the behaviors that establish me in my community. The young gentlemen that I see on the subway, engaging in sharply different behavior, are really doing the same thing in a community that values different attributes. At first glance, I'm more successful than they are, but one rather suspects that by the relevant metric they are vastly more successful.
Of course, we are playing to our strengths. I have to compensate for being physically unattractive and intellectually uncreative by making money and "selling" my other attributes. It would be different if my talents were athletic or musical or existent at all.
This is my new theory on the relative wealth of nations. If a nation grants status and sexual success to its conformist, white-collar workers, it will prosper. See Japan. If women favor attractive, nonconformist men (as they generally do absent socialization), the country will fail to develop (economically; culturally it might thrive). The United States is a mix. To some extent we bridge the gap by having our women marry conformist white collar workers but sleep with, for example, musicians. We also split by age: young men do worse by conforming and being boring, but in middle age these are the attributes women seem to prefer. In a sense my behavior is an investment in the future. Women who today prefer interesting, attractive men may decide that they prefer to drive a Lexus or something.
Of course, it would be best to be interesting, attractive, AND wealthy, but that's not an option for too many people. Note also that as women improve their economic prospects, the pressure to find an affluent husband will diminish. This will mute the "Japan" effect identified above, but many of those professional men will be replaced by women, so the net effect on the economy is uncertain. So maybe I'm making a very bad investment. In the future, the women will buy their own Lexus's, and men will compete for sexual success by developing their physical and creative attributes. This bodes ill for people like me.
Anyway, it struck me the other day that most male behavior can probably be explained by the desire to get laid. I get up in the morning and dress in conformist clothes and clip a Blackberry to my belt because these are the behaviors that establish me in my community. The young gentlemen that I see on the subway, engaging in sharply different behavior, are really doing the same thing in a community that values different attributes. At first glance, I'm more successful than they are, but one rather suspects that by the relevant metric they are vastly more successful.
Of course, we are playing to our strengths. I have to compensate for being physically unattractive and intellectually uncreative by making money and "selling" my other attributes. It would be different if my talents were athletic or musical or existent at all.
This is my new theory on the relative wealth of nations. If a nation grants status and sexual success to its conformist, white-collar workers, it will prosper. See Japan. If women favor attractive, nonconformist men (as they generally do absent socialization), the country will fail to develop (economically; culturally it might thrive). The United States is a mix. To some extent we bridge the gap by having our women marry conformist white collar workers but sleep with, for example, musicians. We also split by age: young men do worse by conforming and being boring, but in middle age these are the attributes women seem to prefer. In a sense my behavior is an investment in the future. Women who today prefer interesting, attractive men may decide that they prefer to drive a Lexus or something.
Of course, it would be best to be interesting, attractive, AND wealthy, but that's not an option for too many people. Note also that as women improve their economic prospects, the pressure to find an affluent husband will diminish. This will mute the "Japan" effect identified above, but many of those professional men will be replaced by women, so the net effect on the economy is uncertain. So maybe I'm making a very bad investment. In the future, the women will buy their own Lexus's, and men will compete for sexual success by developing their physical and creative attributes. This bodes ill for people like me.
posted by James | 12:57 PM
3 Comments:
I really like this discussion.
Thought: even as economies approach the kind of gender parity that allows women to buy their own Lexus, that (wealth-generating) path for women will still have to compete with the old one (invest in appearance and wiles to snag a wealthy, high-status male). The outcome of that competition will not be identical to the "Japan" equilibrium you describe, but it seems safe to say that -- unless women are much, much better than men at making money -- the "make a lot of money" reproductive strategy for men will continue to pay off. It's a sort of "comparative advantage" situation.
PS My new blog URL is: http://www.davegottlieb.com/blog/
Sociobiologically speaking, it's been proven that high-status women actually place a greater value on the wealth of the male.
You're looking at this from a purely rational, economic point of view. In reality we are constrained by hard-wired biological mechanisms that date back to the Pleistocene era.
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