Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

eddie c — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:49:10 -0000

Talk about "unconstrained" gay sex, you can even find a local gay bath house by going to http://bathhouseguide.com/ LOL

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

david — Wed, 25 May 2005 11:46:03 -0000

Seems like for single people there are type
batting styles: either the style trying to
hit a whole lot of singles or the style trying
to swing for the fences (really good sex). The
batting average of the sluggers will be lower
than for the Tony Gywnns. We swing for the
fences because we know that if we succeed,
it may lock us into a long term contract,
something that is both a good source of future
hits (but maybe not frequency) but also has the
cost of locking us in at a somewhat low salary
compared to whatever tradeup we might be able
to find. Creatures of security that we are, most
opt for the long term contract at somewhat
reduced salary because the transaction costs
of switching houses and paying off the real
estate agents is just too ludicrous to
keep hoping for a 15% raise through a series
of job hops.

The real question is not for the uncoupled,
but for those in highly stable long term
contracts... as to why they don't have a higher
average of hits. The marginal response argument
is compelling and real, but the simpler answer
which is also at work is that the home runs
go much further when you are trying to impress
the dealmaker who signs the contract. Once the
ink is dry, you'll still hit hard and far but
not *as* hard and far ...since... your ink is dry.
Perhaps that is still part of a contractual
version of a marginal response (do the minimum
to stay employed once you are tenured).

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Ontario Emperor — Fri, 13 May 2005 11:38:52 -0000

Obviously this whole issue has struck a nerve - it's all over the blogosphere. I suspect that extensive studies will be conducted at the undergraduate level.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Leonard — Wed, 11 May 2005 06:50:53 -0000

Well, heterosexual singles also had more sex in the pre-AIDS era, or at least that's my impression. (I personally did not, but I was a bit young.) My point was that there are costs to sex; that is, I was mainly focusing on the demand side. It would be very difficult (though I suppose possible) to have sex five times per day with random partners while religiously wearing a condom each time. But of course, before AIDS nobody knew the costs were as high as they were, so why would they alter their behavior?

But yes, clearly women's desires (and their extended expression in culture and mores) are the largest braking factor on sex. This is not news to anyone, I hope. I would not call it a "problem", though.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Will Wilkinson — Tue, 10 May 2005 21:36:57 -0000

So, you're saying the problem is women.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Leonard — Tue, 10 May 2005 18:47:39 -0000

Following up on Friedman's point: one of the costs of sex in this day and age is AIDS, or risk thereof, and other STDs. That's a big fat risk.

If you want to see what sex can be when unconstrained, look at the behavior of gay men before AIDs. Some of them would go to bathhouses, every night, and have essentially anonymous sex with 5-10 partners per night.

See, for example, this:
http://www.gaytubs.com/ahistory.htm

Quoting it:

This Club Bath Chain ads was among many that were printed in gay magazines of the 1970's, such as Folsom, Blueboy, Numbers and Drummer Magazine.
One particular Club Bath advertisement from the late 1970's advertised their facilities as such: "If your (membership) card doesn't offer you 1400 rooms, on 64 floors, with 30 steam rooms, 25 saunas, 24 whirlpools, and 8 swimming pools, then you haven't got THE CARD."

More facts about the Club Baths:

In the late 1970's, statistics showed that the average Club customer was white, between thirty and thirty-five, earned $12,000 a year, and stayed at the Club for approximately five hours during which he climaxed three times.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

brb — Tue, 10 May 2005 14:46:12 -0000

Mr Hayden,
How can you say that she failed? She combined her genes with his superior genes, as did the other woman. He also succeeded in passing on his genes, some scattered to the wind, which is better than nothing, and some tended to carefully, even husbanded. Between evolutionary psycology and economics, the meaning of life lies.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Bruce Hayden — Tue, 10 May 2005 11:56:12 -0000

I agree that to some real extent, sex is not as cheap as is portrayed. First, it has a real emotional cost, esp. with women. There is a natural bonding that takes place during sex (indeed, that is probably why human females are capable of it, and can be interested in it, throughout their cycles). Bonding with a guy, then breaking that bond, can, and, IMHO, does cost women emotionally.

There is also the fact that a woman having too much sex becomes less desirable as a mate. Why? Presumably because her apparent ability to be loyal to a guy decreases.

Traditionally, a lot of our culture, taboos, etc. have come as a result of a men's concern over the parentage of their mates's children. The men are expected and expecting to raise those kids, and it is a bad trade if he wastes his time and resources raising someone else's genes. So, he had better make sure that they are his own, before committing to spending his scarce resources taking care of a woman and her children.

That is not to say that there isn't a bit of cheating going on, outside of marriages. Always has been. Happens with other, apparently bonded, species also. Traditionally, some percentage (some have estimated as high as 25%) of kids raised by their ostensible father were actually fathered by some other man. In other words, both the actual father and the mother cheated on him. The trick has always been not to get caught. Only time will tell whether or not genetic testing affects this.

This brings me to another interesting phenomenum. Apparently, certain (alpha) males get many more dates (and sex) than others. Women most often pick one type of guy to date, and another to marry. But one interesting thing here is that this is not universal. Most women pick a guy that they think will be loyal. But not, for the most part, alpha females, who are much more likely to marry the guy who could have almost any woman.

One suggestion on why this is true is that these women believe that they can keep the alpha male, against all comers. But, it often doesn't work, regardless of her looks. My girlfriend fits in that category. Perfect body. Perfect features. When she met her ex 20 years ago, she still had enough baby fat on her face to make her look almost like an angel (with a DD cup). And he was (and still is, in his 50s) 6'3", 250 lbs of pure muscle. But 10 years into the marriage she stumbled into the fact that he was supporting two other kids out of wedlock (from the same woman), and later found that the mother of his other kids was not the only one, but rather, one of many.

In other words, she thought that she could beat the odds through her looks, sex, etc., and failed. For him, sex was always easy, and he felt, cheap. Turns out, it wasn't cheap in the long run, as he ended up supporting two families, with neither woman as his wife.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

pouncer — Tue, 10 May 2005 08:06:34 -0000

Actually the monogamy problem is interesting in that each provider and consumer has both monopoly and monopsony power.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

fling93 — Mon, 09 May 2005 19:09:18 -0000

Dave Tufte: I wonder why don't people who have found partners have more sex?

Might be because you tend to value what you don't have (yet) more than what you already do have (which you tend to take for granted, even a little bit).

To be sure, there's always that honeymoon phase where you're having sex very often, but most relationships -- including successful ones -- cool down after that.

BTW, Will, did you know that your blog clears the comment form when you hit Preview?

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Patri Friedman — Mon, 09 May 2005 17:29:23 -0000

I agree that the answer is that cost is not low, but I think it requires some further explanation as to why that is true. That is, all you need is a 25 cent condom and two consenting individuals, and sex can happen. But mostly it doesn't. Why?

The answer seems very obvious to me: because our sexual instincts are the product of evolution, they are very discriminate (and far more so for women than men). Men want partners who appear young and healthy, and women want a lot more than that. Further, because we are a species with a reasonable amount of monogamy and committment, there are relationship issues too.

As evidence for this perspective, I'm pretty sure that young gay men have a lot more sex than young heterosexual men.

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Dave Tufte — Mon, 09 May 2005 12:54:12 -0000

I wrote two posts about this today (see the trackbacks above).

But, I comment because there is something broader here. Your post takes the position that sex is rarer than it should be because it is difficult or costly to find partners. This is reasonable as far as it goes.

But I wonder why don't people who have found partners have more sex? It would seem to me that if search was so costly that there would be a lot more nookie going on once that phase was over. If anything, this is the opposite of what happens (at least after the first few weeks or months).

Re: Barriers to Hedonic Trade

Gabriel Mihalache — Mon, 09 May 2005 11:46:59 -0000

I agree. If we consider sex with different persons as different goods (since in basic terminology they are not interchangeable), then we have some sex that's very cheap ($10-$15 "anything you want" in some neighborhoods of Romania) to extremely expensive (sex with your ideal partner)

Since your ideal partner will probably want to have sex with you too (ideal matching, right?) then all the high cost must come from "hooking up".

I'd love to see some supply-and-demand deductions on this, in the style of G.S. Becker's "An Economic Approach to Human Behaviour"... or didn't he do that in that very book?