Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Economics of the Sex and Attention Exchange

Pour over the millions of articles written in thousands of magazine for the past hundred years about the dynamics and relations between men and women, and none of them will come close to the truth.  And that truth is:

Men want sex,
women want attention
and we trade.

Of course in the olden days it was

"Men want sex,
women want resources and security,
and we trade"

but with the welfare state and government providing resources and security to women, respectively, women have replaced "security and resources" with "attention."

So imagine my laughing when I read this little article sent to me by one of our Dancing Agents in the Field.

To sum it up it was written by a woman who was SHOCKED, SHOCKED that men would dare to have the audacity to... (are you ready for this)

USE SALSA DANCING AS A MEANS TO GET SEX!!!  *GASP!*

I KNOW!!!  ME TOO!

What evil men would do this!!!????

Sarcasm aside, what we are witnessing here is what we could call asymmetric information in the "Sex-Attention" market, ie - one of the parties are mis or uninformed about the true nature of the market exchange.  In this case it happens to be the women, but what is interesting is not so much that women are misinformed, but HOW they came to be misinformed.

First, ladies, you have to understand that for the most part, everything men do (especially when they are younger) is to try to get women.  Their primary goal, more often than not is NOT

to get to know you
to learn to salsa dance
or because they have the same interest in movies or art that you do

They want to have sex with you.

Whether you like this or not, is irrelevant.  And whether you deem this "moral or not," is moot.  It is factual.  It is a law.  If you don't like this you might as well get angry at things like "The Law of Gravity" or the fact that fire is hot.  Besides, you can see the empirical proof of this in two ways.

1.  When the hot girls leave ANY dance scene it quickly dries up and becomes a 40 something virgin Christian singles scene or a greencard market

and

2.  Ladies night.  Do you REALLY think ladies night is just because bar owners want to be nice to ladies?  It is because they are acutely aware of the law of the sex-attention exchange and know young men will spend tons of money on women buying them drinks...just like on non-ladies nights.

So when a guys asks you to dance, yes, he may genuinely like to salsa.  And yes, he may genuinely want to improve his dancing.  But in the end his primary goal is to either get with you OR use you to improve his skills so that he may get with another girl he is attracted to.

Second, knowing the true nature of "ballroom dancing dynamics," we must investigate why women are so misinformed about this and suffer from asymmetrical information.  And the answer is simple:

Propaganda or "social conditioning."

The biggest canard told to women today is that men's primary interest in them should be anything but sexual.  And if a man's primary interest was sexual, then he was a cad, a lout, and a scumbag (as explicitly detailed in the aforementioned link).  But once again, by the laws of nature, men's primary interest in women IS sexual and thus anything you've been told otherwise is a lie.  The problem, however, is if women believe these lies they are deluded into thinking they can get attention for free.  That men just selflessly, and pointlessly

spend hours, nay weeks, learning the various dances,
fork over thousands of dollars in cover charges and dance lessons,
waste months of their free time at clubs with (typically) lousy music,
suffer rejection roughly 1 in every 2 times they ask a girl to dance,

all for S's and G's and good ole fashioned, innocent, geewhillikers wholesome Jimmy Stewart, church-going fun.

So when an accomplished dancer parades his female partner at the epicenter of the hottest night club, twirling her like a tornado, dipping her like fondue, making all the other women jealous, and thus begetting her more attention in 4 minutes than she received in the past 4 years, women SERIOUSLY expect there to be no-counter cost or price to that.  That the guy just made her the center of attention altruistically and selflessly.

Only 20 years of media, government, feminist, and educational brainwashing could render women so asymmetrically naive.

The sad, but natural consequence of this delusion is that as hotter women are approached more and are "insulted" men dared to have a sexual interest in them, they leave.  As there are less hot chicks, the better dancing males leave.  The overall quality of looks and talent drops, and the dance scene bubble pops.

So how is a man supposed to approach the debate of whether he should learn to ballroom dance?  If the majority of women aren't there for romantic/sexual purposes, why expend the enormous amounts of energy learning to dance?

Well boys, let the Ole Captain tell you. 

You SHOULD go and learn to dance.  But you should not learn to dance as means to pick up girls.

Not to say you won't pick up girls at a swing dance club or a salsa joint.  Sometimes you will.  But the primary benefit and reason every man should learn to dance is so that he can reward a quality woman he's already dating with attention.  Since (by my estimation) 85% of women on any dance scene are not there for sexual/courting reasons and are really just there for exercise/fun/attention reasons, 85% of your efforts will be wasted (bar the apprenticeship period where you're sole goal is to learn).  But if you have a loved one in your life and girl that DESERVES to be the center of attention on a dance floor or a night club, that's when you break out your rare talent.  In short use women to learn how to dance so that you may award quality women in the future with that skill.

This post sponsored by Asshole Consulting.  You want to be lied to?  Hire a regular consultant.  Want the truth?  Hire an asshole.  Asshole Consulting - cheaper and better because assholes don't care about your feelings.

11 comments:

Peregrine John said...

Hey, if their attention strokes are the same as our... um, other strokes, and they can collect them in public and from one and all, any pick-up that goes on is a distant 2nd place when it comes to emotional satisfaction. So go for it. They just hate that you're getting anything at all out of it.

Torgo said...

"all for S's and G's"

I see your "No cursing" goal extends to the written word.

"If you don't like this you might as well get angry at things like "The Law of Gravity" or the fact that fire is hot."

Or as Robinson Jeffers wrote, Be Angry At The Sun http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/be-angry-at-the-sun/

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

Uncle Elmer said...

That's funny Captain. I had similar experiences during the dance craze. The salsa essay could be titled "Women Hurt Most by Insincere Dance Enthusiasts"

leeholsen said...

i agree with this overall, years ago i learned to dance and it was to make an impression on women; but i dont use it for sex. todays culture of feminism, tatoos and peircings has turned me off wanting sex. if i date a woman today and dont get sex from her anytime soon, it doesnt matter to me and if i'm really needing sex(which has yet to win over cigars and good beer in 5 yrs now); i know where the easy women are in my town.

Kristophr said...

Off topic:

World largest bitcoin exchanged hacked, and shut down when the discover the "coins" are gone:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bitcoin-collapse-20140226,0,5968430.story#axzz2uRwNfmYx

Bitcoins "belong" to whoever has the key to a given coin. Cryptographic keys can be stolen electronically, and can't be recovered from the thief in real life.

Electronic credit fraud CAN be backed out, if you do it fast enough for the thieves to not convert stolen funds into goods.

Dreamer said...

I always have a distaste for taking up an activity solely for the idea of meeting girls just for sex. I seen the "everything we do is to get sex", this doesn't mean every other reason is untrue. Because there is a difference between doing an activity one enjoys versus an activity one hates but likes its rewards.

It is this mental issue that stop me from doing more ballroom/salsa. If I'm just doing it for the girls, it is tool-ish and by what you seem to be saying - doesn't work (anymore at least).

But, I'm returning again to salsa. I have no girl to reward nor in position of such a girl gaining that reward, but I'm still going back. Regardless if I'm just trying to meet more girls or whatever. I look back in 2013 and earlier years and thought about how much more advanced I could be by now. Standing still to not be a fool is unproductive paralysis.

Then there is also those rare and but still re-occurring moments where somehow I get into a situation where if I knew salsa/ballroom the moment would have went much better for me.

So I'm taking up salsa again. I might be conflicted that my real motivation maybe just to go after girls, but choosing against it have not really helped me the last 3.5 years. So this way at least I keep picking up and learning stuff regardless of my motivation.

Celtic Tiger dad said...

In the late 80's in Boulder, CO I knew a guy who was into Jazzercise. Jazzercise was one of those exercise fads like Palates or Zumba is today. It was an all-female activity, and had a fashion all its own with bunched up leggings, spandex suits and bright sweat bans.
So I figured this guy was surely gay. But, I would see him all the time with these knock-out babes on his arm. I came to the realization that this guy (who was not handsome, rich, or drove a cool car) was getting laid constantly by some of the foxiest chicks in Boulder. All he had to do was go to these jazzercise classes and pay attention to and listen to the girls.
While I saw the wisdom in this stratagem, I could never see myself participating in an exercise group designed for women. A cooking class was an option for me though. Part of the wooing of my Japanese wife was taking a Sushi class with her and her mom, and paying close attention her heritage and listening to her closely while rolling sushi and cutting sashimi. It worked.

JKB said...

Also, someday you'll be old. If you are a good dancer, you'll get the time of day from young attractive women...as long as you understand the situation, i.e., you are a prop. Or you're safe.

Red Knight said...

Captain, honestly, I think you're missing the point the author of that article makes. I suspect the way you were tipped of the article predisposed you towards it.

The author isn't complaining about the fact that men try to get sex from the women they're dancing with, or even how that's their whole purpose. What she's complaining about is how they go about it, which is the very darkest, most ruthless, deceptive and manipulative underside of Game.

Since you insisted on putting it in economic terms, I'll do so too. You speak of the whole affair as something happening on a commercial exchange. But, if what the author describes is a true description of the state of the dancing scene, it's an exchange on which scamming and false advertising takes place. Pretty much all economists (as in, everyone except a few who are extreme even by Austrian standards) agree that (1) There is such a thing as market failure, and that (2) Asymmetry of information is a significant cause of it.

No economist with any significant influence or following is actually advocating that false advertising has a positive effect on the functionality of markets, or be legalized. But on the sexual marketplace such advertising is so endemic to be considered an established part of the game. Even more so with capital-G Game, which for most of its practicioners (especially the Roissyites) is about, as (I think) Zippy put it, triggering the instinctive responses in women that makes them subconsciously perceive the player as alpha, even though the player himself might be an omega in the actual ecological sense of the Greek letters.

And the analogy with gravity is just absurd. Gravity is a law of nature. That men have sexual urges is a law of nature. That a man acts on those urges is not a law of nature, it is a conscious choice by a conscious agent.

Unknown said...

This just boils back down to the culture of entitlement, though.
These women believe they are ENTITLED to a man's attention, to his time, to his money. So they're shocked when they hear he wants something in return.
It's like a man buying a woman drinks: she's ENTITLED to the drinks, and is horrified when he suggests sex, or even that it's her turn to buy him one.
Or, in other words: women deserve everything they want and to obtain it effortlessly, because women; men deserve nothing they want, even if they work for it, because men.

Anonymous said...

Hey Cap, you sort of left out that distinction that some men are involved in the dance scene to meet "A Girl" as opposed to "Any Girl". This is borne out by the many long-term serious relationships and even marriages and that have come out of the various dance scenes. I submit that pretty much any of the given "social dance scenes" have proven themselves much better places to find a "mate" than the "club scene". - JFargo