Economic Wisdom to Apply in Your Twenties

Chapter 66

Chapter 8 Section 6 There Is No Free Sex in the World
A website in the United States has conducted such a survey: If God gave you 25 hours a day, what would you do with the extra hour?
90% of men and 65% of women gave the same answer: make love.

Similar studies have also shown that sexual pleasure is second only to the physical pleasure provided by drugs.

From the above research and investigation, it is not difficult to deduce that sex has become a very important part of people's lives.When it comes to "sex", most people will instinctively feel that sexual behavior is about love and is synonymous with impulsiveness and madness.However, economists believe that sex is also the realization of human rationality.Sexual behavior is a precious and scarce resource, and it is a transaction that takes gender as the cost. How much value and benefits this cost can create, or lose, depends on people's rational choices.

Pozner said that sex is the realization of human reason.Someone went on to explain: If I knew that Jodie Foster was infected with AIDS, no matter how much I admired her, I wouldn't sleep with her, it was too risky.This shows that making love itself is an economic act, with demand, supply, risk, and benefits, and the ratio of input to output must be calculated.

Before making a decisive choice, both sexes tend to think rationally about the cost of sexual behavior: whether they can foresee and afford these costs, or in other words, consider the consequences of sexual behavior; also consider the use of means to reduce negative consequences , For example, condoms, to avoid unwanted pregnancy and infection of sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS.

Just like the classic saying of economics "there is no free lunch", economists also believe that there is no free sex in the world.Making love is a life experience in which the participants fully cooperate to produce an "effect". To achieve the ideal state, two prerequisites must be met: first, both parties cannot escape their due responsibilities;That is to say, the sexual partners are all pursuing the same goal, and this characteristic makes sex different from ordinary daily activities and especially business transactions.

There is a saying widely spread by economists: For both parties in the system, sex is like a piece of chewing gum that is always chewed in the mouth. Toothache; the disadvantage is that the more you chew, the more tasteless it becomes. The brown sugar is chewed into a leather insole, and in the end it becomes a pure habit. The "seven-year itch" statement not only shows that the two parties in the transaction are tired of a single product and indiscriminate service, but also proves the diminishing marginal utility in the use of sexual resources: at first, the handshake is full of energy, and the whole body trembles after a kiss. The more you kiss and kiss, the less attractive you are.

In addition, sex in marriage has more advantages, that is, more costs for less.Kant, the founder of German classical philosophy, believed that the meaning of marriage lies in "legal use of the other party's sexual organs"; Chinese economist Xue Zhaofeng said that marriage is "a lifelong wholesale futures contract".

Whether it is love, marriage, or even sex, people are always used to thinking that these are pure and sacred.However, economists are accustomed to "naked" analysis of various relationships in social phenomena from a "secular but rational" perspective.However, what we need to understand is that the principles of economics can only explain the phenomena of life, but they can never determine life.Using economics to analyze is just to let us look at various social phenomena more rationally and objectively, solve problems with clearer thinking, and eliminate troubles.

Wisdom Pieces: The Economics of Sex

1. The principle of diminishing marginal utility.A study in the United States shows that no matter how much a man likes a woman at first, after having sex with her fifteen times in a row, his "sexual" interest will begin to weaken.Explained by the principle of diminishing marginal utility in economics, if there are too many times of sex in a day, the increased enjoyment will be less than the previous time with each additional time. After several consecutive times, it may become a burden, that is, negative utility.

2. Sexual gratification value depreciation.The value of men and women as sexual objects, that is, the value of bringing sexual satisfaction to heterosexual partners, basically decreases after adulthood, which is equivalent to depreciation in economics.The value depreciation of male sexual objects is basically linear, and there is a downward inflection point after the occurrence of major diseases.The depreciation of the value of female sexual objects is faster than that of males, and it is non-linear, showing a huge downward turning point at the three time points of devirginization, marriage, and childbirth.

3. The absence of the principle of equivalent exchange.According to the previous analysis, if we follow the principle of equivalent exchange and look for a sexual partner who is consistent with our own sexual value, we will have to change our sexual partner every few years.Due to the deviation between value and desire, a sexual partner whose value is equivalent to one's own sexual object cannot satisfy the desire, which causes both men and women to be in a state of dissatisfaction with desire.Therefore, in real life, it is difficult for us to find the law of marriage according to the principle of equivalent exchange of sexual object value.

(End of this chapter)