The Jealousy Paradox

On this blog, I have randomly put up ideas about relationships and applying my economic knowledge to it. In economics, there are many paradoxes. These paradoxes describe something that happens but when using economic calculation they should be doing the opposite. One of those is the “voting paradox.” This states that people do not have an individual incentive to actually go in vote as there is a better chance of you dying on the way to the polls then actually changing the election. Regardless of this, people still vote. So what is the jealousy paradox?

The Jelousy Paradox happens to most people at one time in their life. The story usually goes that Joey loves Susie and Susie loves Joey. This causes them to get into a relationship. Next thing you know, Susie goes off to college in a different town than Joey. Susie makes a new friend named Bob and Bob flirts with Susie. Susie tells Joey because she thinks it is funny. Joey deep down goes nuts and begins to worry. He begins to think about Bob and Susie running off together.

The paradox here is that she wouldn’t tell Joey if she truly thought that she would leave Joey for Bob. In fact, she is being completely honest and trustworthy by telling Joey, but at the same time Joey is losing trust in her. So this begs the question why do we assume that our significant other will run off with someone else when they are telling us about it? The real worry is the person that you never hear about until the day arrives when they run away with them.

I know this is quite a different theme than normal for this blog but its something to think about.

~PCCapitalist

The Future of the Internet and Economics

Sometimes on this blog, I like to take a step away from current events and talk about what is on my mind.

Economics is a growing discipline that seems to be invading all other disciplines. For example, the title of this blog comes from Public Choice Economics, which was a direct invasion into political science. At the same time, I have taken a class at George Mason University called the Economics of Religion. Both of these topics are of great interest to me along with many of the classic microeconomic problems we deal with everyday.

What is curious to me is how will the new social internet application be analyzed by Economics. Even though many Economists have blogs and are networking sites, we would imagine that it would take a while for Economists to get a full grasp on what is going on. One of the sub-disciplines I have always been interested in is the Economics of Dating and Relationships. All these sub-disciplines do is apply rational choice and methological individualism as a framework to analyze these certain areas. They also attempt to take models or simple laws of supply and demand and apply them to various things.

The internet is it’s own market. There are advertisements, spam, efficient ways to order stuff, and searches that will bring you to various producers you never knew existed. I mean the Economics of Spam would be a very interesting topic all in itself. I believe that 100% of the time the laws of supply and demand work, but if anything has ever brought doubt to my mind it is spam. Who buys stuff off of spam emails? After doing a quick search I found those guys over at Marginal Revolution have talked about it. But this proves my point the internet has revolutionized research and it will revolutionize Economics.

On a worse note, Economics has made a turn towards the math. I, in fact, could possibly be barred from being and economist due to my weakness in math (as I was rejected by the GMU Ph.d Program). With Economics’s turn towards math will that reinforce the view of the economist as a savior not as a person who studies how man acts? I, of course, believe we should move more towards the latter, but only time will tell.

~PCCapitalist

Central Planning and Relationships

Sometimes on this blog, I post random stuff that I think about and this is one of those times. Many of us know the argument against central planning an economy. One of the best arguments is that what the central planning wants and what you want may be completely different. It is also impossible for him to know what you want because sometimes you do not even know what you want. So how does this all relate to relationships?

When people are in the dating world, there is a huge informational problem. In fact, the new movie “He’s just not that in to you…” is based upon that very fact. Some people do not know what they want, while others know what they want but do not know if the other person wants it too. People in the dating world get hurt all the time. Breakups and cheating are all a part of this. Somewhat comparable to product information problems in the market. This usually calls for a common argument for central planning, which is that you are a lonely innocent fish in a pond full of sharks. Sharks being the profit greedy corporations.

Central planned dating sounds completely ridiculous but many cultures today still have a system of arranged marriages. Arrange marriages were definitely put in place because the father of the family thought he knew what was better for his son or daughter than themselves. Most of the western world has moved away from this and we accept the information problems because at least the choice is upon us. We realize that many of the problems that central planned arranged marriages have. These are, for example, being matched up with someone horrible or someone you never fall in love with. We have decided even though our father picking our spouse would take care of all the dating problems, we still do not turn to this system.

In the marketplace, less emphasis is put on the choice. This may have to do with that we have not had a complete socialized system, so unlike arranged marriages we do not know all the costs. You would hear very few people making the argument today for arranged marriages, even though some jokingly do so in times of trouble. It has become a television hit for friends to make pacts that “if we are not married by age ___ (usually ranges from 30-40) then let’s get married.” The idea is nobody wants to be alone, just like nobody wants to be burned in the marketplace. So with socialism you would prevent people from being burn with bad choices and with relationship socialization you would prevent broken hearts. In your attempt to protect people from breaking their hearts, you never allow them to find true love. That is not a chance people willing to take.

Even with all of it’s faults people choose freedom in dating over central planning.

~PCCapitalist