Oct 19 2009
The economics of love
I have recently started to read Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics, an interesting view of the science (is it?) of Economics. The book starts with the following definition:
Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources, which have alternative uses
As I started going over Sowell’s examples of the efficient use of scarce resources, I thought how they would apply to love. Yes, I know that trying to equate economics with the way emotions work is a long shot. However, economics involves decision-making. Aren’t we always at least a little bit emotional in whatever decision we make? And isn’t the emotional factor at times fundamental to make the right decision? Or shall I say inevitable? Well…on that assumption, we should perhaps face the fact that even love can abide by the rules of economics.
Let me take the following example from Sowell’s book to illustrate this further:
When a military medical team arrives on a battlefield where soldiers have a variety of
wounds, they are confronted with the classic economic problem of allocating scarce
resources, which have alternative uses. Unless their time and medications are allocated
efficiently, some wounded will die needlessly.
How do we apply this to love, you might wonder? First you would have to bear with me, and think that love is indeed a scarce resource…or at least good love is. So, why not allocating love efficiently? Let me put it this way. We grow and are educated to let the love variable justify some of our wildest actions (like taking a plane on a whim to spend a year abroad with the guy you happened to meet when traveling as a backpacker). Is that an efficient use of your time or your scarce resources, be it love, money or anything else? There is no way of knowing, unless you try. Yet the effort of trying here will be less perceived as an inefficient allocation of the scarce resource of your life than a bad financial investment would.
The question is that love, and its erratic nature, is factored in as a “good” in our society. Even in its most nonsensical expression, love can eventually be validated by marriage. That is where economics enters the picture, efficiency being measured by how well you married — did you pick the affluent guy with a promising career, or were you inefficient enough to take a lazy bum as a husband and surrender to a life with a string of debts and kids? However, I would argue that is the efficient allocation of marriage, not love.
Let us leave marriage aside for a moment now. What about that phone call you are making? Wouldn’t you rather be in bed reading, or moving forward with your thesis, due in two weeks? Instead, you choose to have a lengthy conversation with her in which you exchange soft, loving words with a permanent smile on your face. And yes, you know tomorrow morning waking up will be a major challenge. Is that an efficient or inefficient use of love? Oh, well, I am sure we would have countering opinions here. Is it efficient, because after that one-hour talk you have more energy to resume your writing and finish on time? Or is it inefficient because the rope is now around your neck and you know you won’t have enough time to meet your deadline?
You see? That is the problem. The alternative uses of love — or the time you spend growing it — can be potentially determined by selfishness. Paradoxically, the very essence of good love starts with you, and is only possible when you are fully you. But being aware of your “self” is quite different from being simply “selfish”. Alas, yet for most the line is oftentimes blurred… and then love can be tainted by selfish insecurity, and hence reduced to a question of control. But it is not the control of scarce resources that is efficient, but their good allocation. Control is a misuse of power that has little to do with the efficient management of your time, your life, your love.
Is that the reason why good love — or efficient love, in economic terms — is so hard to find? Is it because our concept of love is easily distorted by our need for control that it sometimes flounders, becoming a sad addiction? Is that why love, unless we are reminded of its cost and the daily efforts it requires becomes a subsidy we take for granted every month until it stops and we are forced to get out there and start anew?
What do I understand by the efficiency of love? I think that efficiency is a consequence of value, and you value what you have struggled to get, or what you know you would regret to lose. People are not easy, so how could love be? Yet we seem to assume that once we get butterflies in our stomach, everything will be all right and nothing else needs to be done. On the contrary, those signs are just the beginning of your knowledge of the grand autre, the stranger who, as she unravels, will push you into a permanent decision-making process…stay or let go. Nothing holds in life, so why should love?
Love is what we feel, but also what we make of it… a scarce, unique resource. Its efficiency depends on the parties involved. If calling her tonight is a sacrifice of your time, and you are giving up on what you really want for yourself that very minute, then you are allocating your scarce resource inefficiently, and it will have a cost. Me? I root for choice instead of sacrifice as the starting point for the economics of good love.
