Spousal Bounty Hunters

It started out innocently enough. Bradman and myself were talking about something or other when all of the sudden the conversation took a weird wild tangent;

“I’ll pay $1,000 to whoever finds me my future wife.”

Tired of going to the clubs and bars (not that I really frequented them anyway) and tiring of courting ditz after drug-addict after psycho-path after spoiled brat daddy’s girl, dating has quickly gone from something that would put you on cloud nine for a week when you were 16 to a chore you abhor by the age of 31. And instead of having that giddy optimistic feeling of (what was that thing called again….ummm…OH YEAH) hope, now I find myself asking, “OK, what the hell is going to be wrong with this one.” Thus, without any rational economic thinking, I just blurted out, “Look, I’ll pay you or anybody who finds me my wife $1,000.”

But the more I thought about this idea, the more I realized this was genius. Outsourcing your dating to other people. And not just one person, but allowing the competitive free market to work for you by just posting a bounty and letting other people vie for the money. This would not only free you from the financial burden of going out and the expenses of dating, but would also free up your time to allow you to pursue whatever pursuits you desire. You could play video games all day, work out, swim. A compelling economic argument exists that you could work instead, thereby earning more than the $1,000.

Enthralled by this idea, I was more than willing to pay Brad, or anybody else for that matter, the $1,000 bounty for finding me a spouse.

But Brad is a greedy bastard.

Brad pointed out that;

$1,000 is a one time fee. There is not much economic incentive to go hit the pavement, let a lone poke around when the “benefits of marriage” would arguably be more than one year.
Therefore he should get “retaining fees” or “royalties” annually.

Being the economist, I concurred. Not only should the bounty hunter be rewarded, but this would tie his/her financial incentives in with my long term marriage incentives. For without annual retaining fees, the bounty hunter may have the incentive to just grab any ol’ person that can put on a good game for a year, get married, and then make my life hell for the next 30 years. Thus, I proposed a sliding scale compensation scheme.

Each year the bounty hunter’s royalty would be based on the level of “happiness” I would have with my marriage. This would be rated on a scale of 1-10. 1 good, 10 bad and 5 being average. If the marriage scored anywhere between 1-5 then the spousal bounty hunter would receive no royalties. However, if it was rated 6 or higher, the following compensation would be paid out;

6 – I might make it to year 2 - $100
7 – I’m reasonably happy with my wife - $200
8 – Wow, I kind of still actually like my wife and enjoy spending time with here, GOOD JOB BRAD! - $300
9 – DAMN! Life is ACTUALLY BETTER WITH HER! This is a rare woman indeed! - $400
10 – She serves me martini’s while in French Maid lingerie, reads The Economist, does not want children, and makes better charts that I” - $500

All good and well, but what incase of divorce? Divorce would be an obvious failure on the part of the spousal bounty hunter. Thus I proposed that if I were to get divorced, Brad would have to pay me $2,000 AND $2,000 towards lawyers fees.

Then the cynical Andrew L came in and suggested this was just an elaborate scheme to swindle $1,000 from Brad. As if I’d go through the hell of being married for one year for a cheap grand.

But that was another point to all this. The original $1,000. Was that the true economic price that somebody would be willing to pay? Would be enough to incentive enough people to look. So I asked around.

I asked my producer who said, “no way, not in a million years for only $1,000.”

I asked my best friend, who presumably would just do me the favor of setting me up without financial recompense, “no way, not in a million years for only $1,000.”

I asked myself if I would look around if somebody paid me a $1,000. Hell no, it wasn’t worth the time.

It seems that it is already well known what a hideous waste of precious time and resources this is, let alone a lot of my friends are already currently pissing away their resources on this futile pursuit. A mere $1,000 is not going to incentive them to bother looking.

So I went and did what all economists try to do but what efficient markets end up doing for us anyway; estimate the price of things that are not estimatible, but we’ll give it a go anyway because an estimate must be concocted.

And based on the projected total outlays for dating and courtship, assuming the average age one gets married, prorating one’s time at the market wage and discounting it to today’s value I came up with a rough estimate of $44,420. ie- you are going to spend $44,420 in time and money on chasing down your spouse and should be the economic price you are willing to pay to find somebody else out there thereby freeing up your life to pursue other pursuits.

Of course, just like Brad, I am a cheap bastard. That’s the costs to me, that doesn’t mean I can’t tender the offer to the public and let the forces of competition whittle away at the price. Besides, that’s the whole idea of outsourcing; specialists can do it better and cheaper than what I can. Furthermore, I should be paid for my financial innovation and genius and being the first to market with this idea.

Alas, I will gladly pay whoever finds me my spouse $5,000, without any of the complicated “retainer fees/divorce penalties” proposed by Brad. Just a straight flat fee of $5,000.

And now that I’ve effectively outsourced that heinous burden, you’ll excuse me whilst I no longer go to a bar or approach a girl ever again and pursue life’s pursuits that interest me. Ahhh, the life of an economist.