Shake n Stomp

For your benefit I have calculated the cost-effectiveness of marriage.

For purposes of this exercise we are using the assumption that a wife costs 50% of after tax income. I am also making the assumption that a wife provides sex 3 times per week for aproximately half an hour.

Using Nevada prices averaging around $300 for a prostitute per 30 minute sexual encounter I calculate the cost of sex to be $46,800. Rounding this to $50,000 a year we can conclude that for anyone with an income below $100,000 a year a wife's sexual value alone makes marriage cost effective.

However, it also has to be taken into account that a wife provides either additional income, or domestic service to the household. Estimating the costs of a domestic worker a wife also provides at least $30,000 in the form of income or domestic work. ($10 wage rate x 8 hours a day 365 days a year = $29200).

Therefore for anyone earning an income below $160,000 a year marriage is probably cost effective.

For all others marriage is cost effective if:

(income - $100,000)/2 < wifes income

This is fairly positive for marriage. For example a man expecting to earn $250,000 per anum would be rational to marry any woman with an earning power of $75,000 of more per anum. So it is probably only those earning very large sums who would be ill advised to marry. For the majority (earning less than $160,000) marriage is likely to be cost effective.

It must be remembered that this is AFTER TAX income. So in actuality the before tax income would have to be closer to $250,000 for marriage to be uneconomical.

If, however, you are expecting to earn several hundred thousand a year, and believe marriage would be uneconomical, I would suggest Fernley Nevada, Lyon County as a good place to live.

It is well known to economists that currency comes about so as to improve trade. To simplify here is how it works:

To trade good A for good B the owner of each must want what the other has - this is called double coincidence of wants. If I want your pie but you don't want my meat then trade cannot occur.

To solve this currency occurs so that if I want your pie I can buy it with cash. And you can spend the money on whatever you want. That's a gross simplification, but hopefully makes sense.

When it comes to sex however we rely on the occurance of a double coincidence of wants. We have to find someone who not only has what we want (ie. their hot sexy body) but is also willing to trade it for what we have (our body). This creates a massive under supply of sex in the market, this is market inefficiancy as demand is never met!

So the solution, surely, is to pay for sex. In this way we trade it like any other good or service. The prices will adjust and markets will clear (assuming no barriers to entry etc.) And all the people who would be having sex anyway can still trade without money. By insisting that sex must be free we only remove a large amount of trade, and therefore utility gains, from the economy.

Not only does this mean that people can have as much sex as they can afford. It also means that people can derive income to spend on whatever they want. So although you could spend the money you made from having sex on having sex with someone else, you could also spend it on, say, a nice vase.

As well as a lucrative career for the underqualified there is a potentially huge market in part time prostitution as a supplementary income for say housewives and college students, who don't have the time for full time jobs. Furthermore, assuming high demand from the male demographic this could really help close the pay gap.

I think you will all agree with me that this is a much more economically efficient way of exchanging bodily fluids.

If you don't know the song I'm not surprised. A lot of my music tastes are fairly obscure, in this case 60s garage rock.

The purpose of this post is to examine why women appear so stubborn and irrational. Why they are infact rational, and why as a guy it's probably best just to let them get their way.

Assume that a boy and girl are in a relationship. The girl would like to go out to dinner. However she expects the boy to pay (which he would prefer not to).

To form a model I make the assumptions that dinner for the girl is worth +2 points, and for the boy -1 (because he doesn't want to go). Sex for the girl is worth +2 points and for the boy +3. These numbers are somewhat arbitrary but they can be adjusted within reason and the results are the same.

In my model I give each player two options, the boy can take her to dinner or not, the girl can have sex with the boy or not. I have tried to draw this in a table, I hope it works:

................................Girl
......................NO Sex.......Sex
..NO Dinner....0,0............3,2
..Boy
....Dinner........-1,2............2,4

The first number is the boys utility the second the girls.

From this assuming rational self-interest the Nash Equilibrium is Sex and No Dinner.

To elaborate, the girl would be rational to have sex even if she doesn't get to go to dinner because she gains some utility whereas otherwise she would gain none.

However, this is not what would happen. Because girls are stubborn! And boys know it. In actual fact the girl will only have sex if she gets to go to dinner even if this means she is not maximising her utility.

Because all guys know this then the options become.

No dinner = 0
Dinner = 2

Why is it that game theory apprently fails?

Because a more in depth understanding of game theory tells us that over multiple games things change. Dinner and sex can become a Nash equilibrium if the game is repeated. Infact I have reason to believe it is the most likely outcome based on pure mathematics. Firstly it has the highest total social outcome of 6, but I think more importantly is the concept of punishment. If the girl refuses sex because she does not get dinner her utility is 0. But her loss of utility is only 2. Her potential gain is +2. Therefore if she gets dinner next time the game is played she has already broken even, and assuming she gets even 2 dinners out of this there is a net gain. For the guy the punishment incurs a loss of 3 utility points. His possible gain by not buying dinner is only 1. The punishment is not only harder on him, his potential gain from being stubborn is less. In a stand off say he refuses her dinner twice he would need to have sex without paying for dinner 5 times to benefit! The girl could refuse sex twice and only need 3 dinners to win.

If the game theory is too much for you just take away this moral. Buy your girlfriend dinner, it is in your best interests.