Economic Wisdom to Apply in Your Twenties

Chapter 61

Chapter 8 In your twenties, love is not just romance

From an economic point of view, a love is essentially a game, a competition, in which both men and women want to "conquer" or "defeat" each other.When a spark of love arises between a man and a woman, the game between a man and a woman begins.

Chapter 1 Love is not romantic in the eyes of economists
I once heard a 28-year-old talented woman say proudly: "Currently, I spend 90% of my time and energy on work." That's right, 28 years old is the golden age of career, but the problem is that next, the girl's voice suddenly Low and deep: "But... I can't find a good man."

If economists are allowed to comfort this talented woman with a successful career, the truth is actually very simple.While this girl spends 90% of her time at work, she hardly has time for relationships.In the eyes of economists, it takes time and energy to get the love of a good man.
In the eyes of many people, love is a non-utilitarian phenomenon that only pays attention to dedication and does not talk about taking. But from the perspective of economics, no matter what kind of irrational motive love is due to, it responds the same as economic behavior .There is no love without a reason in the world, and there is no love that does not need to be paid back at all.To put it harshly, on the surface we love each other, but in fact we love ourselves, because the loved one is actually the objectification of the self.As long as we observe the phenomenon of love a little, we will find the following facts:
1. People can find personal happiness, happiness and satisfaction from love.

2. Happiness in love is produced by people using the main inputs such as dating time, sweet words, etc., supplemented by factors such as spending time and going down to the halls and halls.

3. The benefits of producing love depend on the talent and human capital investment of the parties in this area, such as language talent, sex skills, and love concepts.

You have to admit that love is actually an economic behavior under the guidance of rationality, a relationship between input and output, and a transaction.

Economists also pointed out that "flowers on cow dung" is a special phenomenon in love transactions, which can be explained from the theory of human consumption preferences and information asymmetry.Different people or the same person have different preferences in different environments and at different times. Fat, thin, tall and short, each has its own preferences.

From the perspective of the physiological needs of men and women, men and women are each other's consumer goods and customers.Marriage is the union of two separate economically free entities.At the same time, in the mutual cooperation between the pair of consumer products and customers, both men and women themselves exist as commodities.The content of the transaction is the gender difference, material money, power and reputation, appearance and talent of the other party.

When people are looking for a partner, they always consciously or unconsciously form a standard for choosing a spouse in terms of physical conditions, social conditions and material conditions.Physical conditions include age, height, appearance, figure, etc. Social conditions include education, family background, etc. Material conditions include work, income, property, etc.Among these conditions, physical condition decays with age and is a decreasing function in love and marriage.Increases and decreases in social and material conditions can be expected empirically.These two conditions indicate the quality of family income and spiritual life in the future, that is, the size of the utility of marriage.

Usually, men pay more attention to appearance when choosing a woman, and a woman's good appearance can bring confidence and superiority to men.Women pay more attention to the social and material conditions of the man, and they pay more attention to the material support after marriage.

Among the above elements, the one with the highest comprehensive score will become a "sought-after item", and everyone will get their place.Rational individuals always choose the right partner under the constraints of their own objective conditions to maximize the utility of marriage.

Pieces of Wisdom: The Doctor's Notes on Love
Dr. Xiao Guangen, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Wuhan University, wrote a note on love:
First Love: An infant industry, a relationship that has not yet had the experience or skills needed to achieve economies of scale in the course of their lives.The industry usually requires the protection of teachers or parents, the imposition of tariff barriers such as education and punishment, and the result is usually nothing.

Lovelorn: A market economy under imperfect competition and asymmetric information is bound to be unstable.There are two kinds of frictional lovelorn and periodic lovelorn.The former is temporarily lost in love due to lack of technical experience, and there is a chance to re-employ after improvement; there are also some experienced people who change jobs in order to find a more ideal spouse.Cyclical romances are caused by low levels of aggregate demand.

Polygamy: Polygamy takes place on the premise of insufficient resources.This commodity is a scarce resource, and this economic form belongs to an open economy. As a result, a large number of lovers will inevitably be produced.The loser will act according to the principle of minimum cost and choose commodities with relatively low prices.

Marriage: Long-term deal, one-time buyout, hedging.It is the man's choice of breadth economy in the trade-off of the cost of sexual intercourse and reproduction - that is, the cost of producing sex and offspring at the same time (that is, the "interest" of Zige) is lower than the cost of producing two products alone.

Husband: Destination, ultimate financial burden of one or more taxes, victim of double billing.A certain initial fee must be paid for the right to buy marriage, such as dowry, physical strength, and filial piety; a separate user fee must be paid for the purchase of a wife, that is, monthly salary bonuses are handed over.

Divorce: Both husband and wife or one party thinks that the existence of marriage and family is a long-term behavior for him or her that the cost exceeds the benefit. Under this premise, they may propose no longer cooperation.The incentive may be the price decline caused by the decline in the quality of husbands and wives in various aspects, or the emergence of another larger buyer's market, that is, the emergence of extramarital affairs.

(End of this chapter)