The productive economy is not a
zero-sum game: one man working alone can build a shelter; two men working
together can build two, each better than they would have been managed on their
own. The essence of the market is cooperation. Competition is incidental: it
serves more of a motivational purpose than a strictly productive one. As
leftists everywhere like to point out as justification for their harebrained
central-planning schemes, competition can be considered a sort
of inefficiency. From a strictly academic standpoint, scarce resources are
better spent learning from and helping each other than by trying to win a
contest for its own sake.
So it is with sexual
competition. As anyone remotely familiar with the theory of natural selection
knows, reproduction is the ultimate goal of any living thing, and so it’s
natural that we direct a lot of resources towards getting the best possible
sexual deal.
But like any
competition, it’s a game unto itself, a tautology. The fight for the best mate
yields nothing more than an improving capacity, over the generations, of
finding an even better mate (and even that being subject to the whims of that
infamous bitch, Fate). It says little about the ability of a species to survive
and thrive in other ways. Mankind is a lot better off having
made an effort towards taming nature than it would have been by simply beating
each other to death over the best mate.
So there is a
point of diminishing returns in resources invested into direct sexual
competition, and that point isn’t just some theoretical curiosity – it is one
of the crucial behaviors that separate us from other individual animals (as
opposed to hive animals) who do a bare minimum to survive and then spend the
rest of their time lounging about or fighting over mates. Humans, and human
males in particular, have found a different way of increasing their
attractiveness, a way that has incredibly positive externalities: increasing
their command over scarce resources by being productive. Being
industrious as bees, adventurous as cats, and smarter than either of them is
how mankind became as dominant as it is today.
So my contention is
that there is such a thing as malinvestment in sexual
competition. Sure it’s healthy to spend time and money trying to woo the best
girl you have a chance to get, but one has to keep the ROI in mind. As in the
“conventional” economy, building ten thousand homes when you can only sell one
thousand profitably may be impressive – look at all those shiny new buildings!
– but it’s also pointless. Worse, it bid up the price of resources that would
have been better used elsewhere.
So it is in the sexual
marketplace. Resources that could have been spent on other things – certainly a
portion of it would have been used to build capital – are spent trying to grab
and keep the best woman. And much worse, it tells women that they are special
snowflakes; that they don’t need to work on being faithful or industrious or
good mothers: just look pretty and they’ll come.
I haven’t doubled down
on reading Sex and Culture yet, but it seems to me that this reasoning is in
accordance with the findings in the book. Of course, being an apparent
ignoramus on economic matters and focusing instead on psychoanalytical
masturbation, J.D. Unwin came up with the most amusing excuses for why
societies where women were sexually freer tended to be less prosperous and/or
expansive. It’s the economy, stupid!
It certainly fits with
what I see in Brazil versus what I sense to be the reality in developed
societies. Brazilian men are like gluttonous donkeys running after carrots on
sticks when it comes to women. I’ve literally been told that “I can’t be like
that” when I said that chasing after women is too costly, while the rewards are
uncertain and likely ephemeral. Of course I damn well can be like that, and if
other men were like that as well, Brazilian women just might be a bit humbler
and less bitchy – plus the men might start getting their shit together instead
of goofing around trying to look badass.
