"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

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Posted on an IVLE forum during reading week:

The Economics Of Prostitution

"The paper was remarkable not only for being accepted by a major journal but also because it considered wives and whores as economic "goods" that can be substituted for each other. Men buy, women sell.

Economists have been equating money and marriage ever since Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker published his seminal paper "A Theory of Marriage" in two parts in 1973 and 1974--also, not coincidentally, in the Journal of Political Economy.

Becker used market analysis to tackle the questions of whom, when and why we marry. His conclusions? Mate selection is a market, and marriages occur only if they are profitable for both parties involved.

Becker allowed nonmonetary elements, like romantic love and companionship, to be entered into courtship's profit and loss statement. And children, in particular, were important. "Sexual gratification, cleaning, feeding and other services can be purchased, but not children"...

Still, the economic analysis of marriage explains one age-old phenomenon: gold digging.

"In particular, does our analysis justify the popular belief that more beautiful, charming and talented women tend to marry wealthier and more successful men?" wrote Becker. His answer: "A positive sorting of nonmarket traits with nonhuman wealth always, and with earnings power, usually, maximizes commodity output over all marriages."

In other words, yes, supermodels do prefer aging billionaires. And Gary Becker proved it mathematically decades before The Donald married Melania."


Naturally, it brought on visceral reactions:

A: I am abhorred by this kind of theory.

Only amoral people will be suitable for their economic analysis in this way. Luckily the majority of human kind are not amoral.

I think that it is absurd to pursue any logic to far in social analysis: economic logic is definitely no exception. Becker has attempted to apply economics to a range of interesting social problems and put forward many excellent explanations for many social phenomenon using economic logics; but this time I think he has applied economic theory too wildly and therefore reached absurdity.

Me: Some might say the same of a market in kidneys.

If you dispute a theory not because of its methodological flaws but because of morals, then you're implicitly admitting that it's right, since you don't want to engage it.

A theory in itself is amoral. Applying the theory is another matter.

A: Yes.Theory is amoral. But the point here is, humans are not amoral. If a theory first assumes that human is amoral and considers every wild possibility of everything, then I really doubt the theory has any value for us to engage it. I am mostly concerned with the abuse of economic logic in social analysis that over-idealize and over-simplify the real world so much that the you can not make much sense out of it,except under extreme and possibly non-existent circumstances.

B: i agree with A that we should not simplify the world to an extent we can use theories to explain the phenomenon. after all, economic analysis is based on assumptions.

real world? no such assumptions.

Me: I wouldn't speak too soon before reading the paper itself. Unfortunately that'll only happen after the exams and by then this Forum would have been shut down.

So I'm afraid I'm gonna have to take a raincheck =D

I suppose those who object to this would also object to Levitt's paper which found that abortion lowers crime rates *shrug*


Unfortunately no one is reading anymore, so the raincheck will have to be extended.

Nonetheless, as with many other cases, people react viscerally, disproportionately and irrationally. Often, advocating morality is just short for "I don't like it, suspect I may be wrong and so will kick up a fuss without actually looking at what they're saying" (just like "God" is code for "I/We don't know").