Between The V and The W

Christian Husband gave reasons why he didn’t think the supply-demand model applied to sex and threw out a few examples and analogies based on his understanding of economics. He alluded to it but did not directly address the fundamental aspect of economics; the principle of scarcity.

As XH said, price does not generally drive demand but is the result of the interplay of supply and demand such that an equilibrium is attained to where there are no surpluses and no shortages. Price is merely a measure of where the supply and demand curves cross in a totally free market.

But I think the principal of scarcity does have a bearing on the economics and politics of sex. Economics is merely the treatment of scarcity and politics having to do with the allocation of resources. But one subject at a time…

Satan theorized that her making sex always available had the effect of lessening her partner’s sex drive because the value of it was lower. He was willing to expend a whole lot less effort to get it. I believe there’s some merit to this based on scarcity and opportunity cost.

The Concepts of Scarcity and Opportunity Cost

Everything is scarce. Even something as plentiful as air can become scarce if we talk about clean air or scuba diving or interplanetary travel. Dirt could be scarce. Remember Waterworld? Fact is, nothing is infinitely limitless. The value something has is related to scarcity vs demand. Currently on Earth, there is enough air to go around for all of us. If we were traveling on a spaceship or in a submarine, things might be different.

Opportunity costs relate to how we choose to allocate our limited resources, mainly our time. Time is the ultimate in scarcity. We all have the same 24 hours with many, many options in how to spend it. The game The Sims is built around this whole concept of allocating time towards various activities. You can not allocate the exact same segment of time to two totally separate activities such as sleeping versus eating. We can multitask, but even this is limited. Eventually, we all have to sleep, eat and use the bathroom. So a person has to choose how to spend their time. Most people spend a portion of their time making money, which is simply the currency for acquiring scarce goods and services. Money is symbolic of resources that can be spent but it is still derived from time spent or invested.

So why doesn’t this woman's partner want sex when he seemed to want it all the time early on? Why does it seem that women’s desire for sex seems (generally) inversely proportional to the commitment achieved?

Scarcity.

Arwyn fucked the begeezus out of me the first few months of our relationship for a reason. Why? It wasn’t because she couldn’t get sex elsewhere or that sex was in short supply. But there is a limited supply of men with degrees, jobs, morals in a particular age bracket who might also be gullible enough to fall for this age-old deal. Sex was the currency she used to obtain what she wanted. Instead of sleeping, working, doing laundry, cleaning and taking care of her cats, she chose to fuck me. This was the opportunity cost of getting a husband who might be a good father to her children.

The opportunity cost of getting fucked (which is generally in far shorter supply for men) is providing security. This means investing the necessary time to get an education, working, running the rat race and generally having a fat enough wallet or potential for a fat wallet eventually and an agreeable enough personality to help take care of children.

So there are two separate economies at work, here. Fucking is a lot less scarce for women than men and therefore they control the supply for the most part. Even Biting Beaver agrees with that much. Historically, men have been able to acquire more resources to provide security. This is not necessarily the case today, but it is still an arrangment that works for many.

Generally, in a free market, supply and demand determine a fair market value of a good or service. It measures sufficient opportunity cost to acquire a scarce good or service.

The End of Free Market

So what happens once a commitment is made? We no longer have a free market. Now, due to moral constraints, the cost of divorce and all the entanglements of marriage the supply and demand are no longer equal. Now the LL partner becomes the OPEC or DeBeers of sex. It is in her best interest to keep supply low. With constant demand, the price increases. The opportunity costs for sex are now way higher than a dinner and a movie. By increasing the opportunity costs, we are, in fact, increasing the scarcity.

If this were a free market, the HL partner could go elsewhere thus the LL partner could not control the cost of sex. They would have to continue to be more available. But once the exclusive arrangement is signed and sealed, that particular incentive is GONE. Which is why there needs to be other incentives for sex to continue. And according to that article, about 60% of the women surveyed don’t have any other incentives. The need for sexual currency is over. They have, in essence, gone into sexual retirement.

For the HL women, the dynamics are similar except they probably provide sources of comfort and stability beyond financial. A LL man will similarly have less need to put out once he feels secure in obtaining these other things.

Scarcity is the controlling factor in economics. The golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rule. If gold wasn’t scarce it wouldn’t matter. In clashing libidos, sex becomes the “gold” and the one who wants it less being the one who controls the supply.

As I have said over and over, sex on demand is not necessarily a good thing. Hot and cold running sex would result in the same waste and abuse we see of our water supply. I believe its scarcity does add value. However the scarcity should not become so acute as to result in emotional poverty for the HL partner.

We often see a lot more sex amongst dating and premarital partners than after they get married. One factor is because of the sexual monopoly created by monogamy. We often hear the excuses of real life and jobs and careers and other obligations taking up the time previously allocated for sex. But this is a red herring, because maintaining two seperate households could hardly be easier and less expensive than maintaining one. No, the sole change is that it is no longer a free market. The LL partner has little incentive to keep paying the opportunity cost of competing on an open market. Sex, having little intrinsic value becomes the bargaining chip. The HL partner is not morally (or legally) permitted to seek sex on the “open market.”

Which is where my Top 10 list kicks in, because those factors have to do with sex having intrinsic value beyond the emotional and symbolic and economic aspect. The LL partner will still have control but her own desire for sex may keep it from becoming totally desperate.

Market Adjustments

Okay, so lets say a woman has to expend a lot more effort to get sex. She wants it, he doesn’t, so she has to pay the opportunity costs and she still might not get it. What options does she have?

-Advertise: This is the Cosmo solution of lingerie and whipped cream. This is the guy trying to create a romantic mood with candles and flowers. Basically, we’re trying create a demand from our partner for what we have and they seldom seem to want. I can’t think of a proper economic analogy for this except maybe if M&Ms were money and we made the candy seem so good that OPEC would provide more oil in order to get more of our M&Ms through increased sales volume.

When she advertises, does the value go up? And if its rejected, does it go down?

-Find another supplier: Affairs and prostitution become the “black market” of the sexual economy. Yeah, it’s cheating but it also means that the cost of sex is artificially too high or the supply is kept artificially too low. Either way, black markets develop in the face of artificially trying to control supply and demand. An underground free market evolves to correct the market.

- Lower demand: We quit asking and demanding so much, hoping that the cost might decrease into a more affordable range. We simply get by on less or nothing.

The "guilt" factor perhaps?

- Substitution: We find alternatives which also lowers demand. Masturbation, porn, kinks, work, drugs, other activities and diversions all can be attempts at substitutions. Unlike the above, where we simply quit asking, here we find alternatives thus perhaps we suffer a bit less.

Addictive no less. So what if she orgasms everytime she does herself and never when with you? si you are out?

- Coercion: If we have some other bargaining chip, we can threaten. Better be willing and able to back it up, though. Be prepared to follow through on those embargoes and other economic sanctions.

Mimi nitaenda kutafuta kwingine if you don't want to do it.

- Take it by force: Just a step up from coercion, it’s basically rape in the sexual economy.

- Appeal to altruism: Think Sally Struthers and the starving children. But when grain and food is given to these starving countries out of charity, don’t believe for a second that these goods are top quality. Welcome to the mercy fuck. And look at how bad things had to get before the trucks would come rolling in.

"Ameteseka sana so nikamuonea huruma na kumpea"

- Work harder and pay a higher price: this is what usually happens, as the HL (High Libido) deals with the realities of this new economic reality as the old one no longer applies. They just have a higher opportunity cost that gradually gets higher and higher.

-Economic Collapse or declaring bankruptcy: Divorce is messy and basically is tearing things to pieces before rebuilding. Russia still doesn’t have a proper economy after the fall of communism nearly 20 years ago. But there are opportunities there for some. Fact is, it takes a long time to recover.

Of course, I have simplified things down a lot. Notice “love” is not included anywhere. Loyalty and devotion are forces beyond the scope of basic economics. And there are those who absolutely oppose capitalism in any sense of the word. Marriage is hardly a capitalistic institution and when it comes to sex, it does often seem like a communist system! “Produce all you can, take only what you need.” Or “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And it works just about as well as communism did, sometimes. Which is to say not very well.

I DON'T like the supply and demand theory.

Supply and demand in short.

Human desire is limitless. We always want and want and want. But we each are unique in our desire. I might want thing A more than widget B and you might be the opposite. We individually place value on things by comparing how much we want them to how much we want something else. We do it subconsciously. When we decide whether or not to buy something -- whether or not is is "worth" the price -- we do it by comparing how much we want the thing to how much we want other things we could buy with the same money.

So, the desire for any individual thing -- how much we value it -- is different for every person, and so the total DEMAND forms a spectrum. Some people would pay a lot for it, while some people might not buy it unless it was very cheap (comparitavely). Most people are in the middle. This is total demand -- total want. How much people buy -- the effective demand -- is determined by price. The price cuts out all those people who want the thing (because we ALL want it, human demand being limitless), but not enough to pay the set price. Therefore, there exists a price such that the effective demand equals the supply of the object and there are neither shortages or surpluses.

So, price doesn't determine demand, price just limits consumption to those who REALLY want it. When price drops, consumption increases because more people are willing to pay the price. At the extreme, when something is free (well, nothing is totally free because it still takes committment and time and energy even if it doesn't take money) then consumption would be very high. Of course, at such extremes the rules break down a little, but the general rule still holds -- as something becomes cheaper, people use more of it.

So, sex. When it is always available "for free" people should consume more. Price doesn't, generally, determine percieved value.

EXCEPT in cases like backward-bending demand curves. This is where price DOES determine value because of vanity. Classic example is a Russian watch manufacturer that make extremely high quality watches that were very cheap, and couldn't sell any. The clientel they were after would rather buy a more expensive watch just for the sake of having the logo of the expensive watch. Vanity. Status. The company raised their prices and sold more because their product achieved "status."

But would this actually apply to sex? Only if someone is wanting to have sex with you to feel special and good about themselves because of the "conquest." Nailing the unattainable girl. Ryan Phillipe in Cruel Intentions chasing Reese Witherspoon just to say he banged the virgin-queen. Why would this sort of attitude apply in a loving relationship?

Thinking deeper, I guess the infinite supply = less value thing would, in some sense, apply to most things in a very limited fashion (if it was worth anything, why would they give it away?), but not in general, and it is not a universal rule. Because, when something reaches the extreme of being "free" it is usually for other reasons, which must be taken into consideration. For instance, I use Linux, which is free, and most people who use it don't think it's value is somehow reflected in it's price -- mainly because we know why the developers give it away. Mainly ideology (stupid Linux-commies). I know that they aren't determining their price because of financial considerations, but because of other, more emotional reasons.

Which is how I also approach sex. If my wife gave me sex on demand would I value it less? Or would I just assume that she was giving it to me because of love? Not because it didn't have value to her, but because it had such GREAT value.

There are also hormonal considerations. Generally, when a woman orgasms her testasterone levels increase somewhere around 200% -- and testasterone is the main chemical controlling female libido. Which is why, as sexual frequency increases women's sex drive usually increases as well. They become aroused easier, orgasm easier, and generally want it more as they get it more. When sexual frequency declines, the opposite happens. They kind of go into hibernation. For us males, it is the opposite. As we get less sex we become more and more compelled to get it. Which is why a guy goes off on a hair-trigger when it's been awhile. The biological imperitve to ejaculate every 48 hours or so comes to dominate.

So the "when sex is plentiful, women want less" idea contridicts the basic female biology. All of which is why I believe this effect is more because of why the sex is so plentiful -- or what the women feel the motivation is. If they feel the sex is just about sex most women will reject it. They need the sex to be an organic out-growth of the affection in the relationship. If the guy isn't showing her that he loves her OUTSIDE the bedroom, then she's probably going to feel like nothing more than a sex-object and a sperm receptacle and not generally be wanting it. With him at any rate.

I think it is more that when the relationship is secure the man becomes more likely to EXPECT sex, to feel entitled to sex, and not feel the need to dance and romance her. To feel that, now that we're married and all you should just roll over and put out on command when I want it. I already did all that dating and courting stuff. I got the ring on your finger, now spread 'em.


That sort of casual disregard for her feelings is rather typically male. Especially as we generally want to communicate our affection through sex. So, we still feel we are showing her we love her because we want to do her, and she feels used and cheap. And so she wants it less, and her sex drive drops and then we end up in this place where we feel we have some chemical mis-match.