General Macroeconomic Principles in Sexual Marketplaces

Economic concepts and relationships

The account applies economic concepts to dating and relationships. Some, such as elasticity and transaction costs, are usually questions of microeconomics; inflation concerns the general price level. Each concept needs a clear definition before it can be extended by analogy. Relationships do not have a common currency, standardized goods, or a single agreed measure of value.

Price elasticity

Price elasticity of demand describes how responsive quantity demanded is to a change in price. An inelastic response is relatively small; an elastic response is relatively large. The source assumes men’s demand for women is largely inelastic, but it gives no measurement that would establish this for relationships.

Graph 5 Price Elasticity

It invokes "Sexodus" and Japan’s herbivore men as examples of men foregoing relationships when perceived costs rise (20). That interpretation is a hypothesis about their choices. To establish an elasticity, the analysis would need a defined cost, an observed response, and a way to distinguish that response from other influences.

Price elasticity of supply concerns how quantity supplied responds to price. In ordinary markets it can depend on production constraints, time, inventories, and spare capacity. The account likens the availability of preferred partners to a slow production process based on birth rates. That analogy overlooks changes in who participates, what people want, and which relationships they consider possible. It does not establish a fixed supply of people with a measurable dating value.

The source next invokes "beer googles" and proposes a perfect correlation with BAC x T, combining blood-alcohol concentration and time until closing. No data or defined price measure supports that formula here. A change in judgment or willingness to approach someone is not, by itself, a price elasticity. Nor can alcohol be assumed to produce the same response in every person or to make a relationship more likely in a predictable way.

Market frictions

Transaction costs can make an exchange harder to arrange or carry out. The account groups them into search and information costs, bargaining costs, and policing and enforcement costs (9). Information asymmetry is a related concern: one party may know something the other does not. These concepts can help identify questions about relationships without treating people as interchangeable products.

Search and information costs

People spend time finding possible partners and learning whether their interests, expectations, and circumstances fit. Someone seeking a lasting relationship may want different information from someone seeking a brief encounter. The relevant effort depends on the people and the decision; it cannot be inferred from gender alone.

The distinction is between finding an opportunity to meet and learning enough to make a commitment. A crowded venue may reduce the first kind of effort while doing little to reduce the second.

Bargaining costs

In a transaction, bargaining costs are the resources spent reaching an acceptable agreement. The source extends this to courtship and contrasts what it calls a Beta strategy, illustrated by a 1950s-dating pattern, with an Alpha strategy. It assumes women delay sex to extract greater investment from some men. That explanation does not follow merely from a series of dates or a decision to wait.

The account then claims that women above 30 impose higher costs as their dating value falls, even when they say they seek commitment rather than "fun". These assertions require evidence about actual preferences and circumstances. They cannot be established by assigning someone to an Alpha or Beta category.

Time or money already spent may contribute to sunk-cost thinking, but neither creates an entitlement to sex or a continuing relationship. Clear discussion of expectations can reveal a mismatch earlier than trying to infer a hidden bargaining strategy.

Policing and enforcement costs

Economic agreements can involve costs of checking performance and resolving disputes. In relationships, expectations may concern exclusivity, shared expenses, parenting, or property. The account discusses conflict over these matters, but the relevant obligations and remedies depend on the particular agreement and legal setting.

An analogy to enforcement has limits. A relationship is not a contract for continued affection or consent. Distinguish an enforceable obligation from a personal expectation, and disagreement from evidence of deliberate deception.

Inflation and deflation

Inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level; deflation is a sustained decrease. Their effects depend on circumstances. Inflation can reduce the real burden of an existing fixed nominal debt while eroding money’s purchasing power. Rapid or unpredictable price changes can complicate saving and investment. Deflation can increase purchasing power while raising the real burden of nominal debt. A rate below 0 describes deflation, but it does not settle whether every person benefits or loses.

The source calls men’s accumulated achievements a currency and treats below-average dating value as a debt. It then argues that inflation benefits some men and deflation benefits others. Without a common price index, a unit of value, and a defined obligation, these are metaphors rather than consequences of economic definitions.

Its description of women as consuming a trust fund of attractiveness makes a different assumption: that women begin with a fixed stock of value that age exhausts. The complaint "where are all the good men" is offered as evidence, but the phrase cannot establish that model or a general age-related schedule of attraction. Individual preferences, goals, and opportunities vary.

Finally, the source invokes World War 2 as a change in the number of potential partners. It claims women previously required a +2 or +3 difference on its dating-value scale and later accepted an equal rating. The scale and the claimed historical change are not demonstrated here. Demographic changes can motivate questions about opportunities and choices, but they do not establish those precise thresholds or an inflation rate for relationships.