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Good_Burning_Plastic comments on Rational approach to finding life partners - Less Wrong
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Yes, though I disagree that the availability of inferior substitutes (buses to Poland in my analogy? flights to Moldova?) would make the market failure worse, and possibly (I'm not sure what exactly advancedatheist is thinking) also about how much of a market failure there actually is vs how much certain men are just actually less sexually attractive to women than others (much like I guess you'd agree certain workers are just actually less productive than others) and would stay so even in a hypothetical perfect efficient market.
More like, the 'powers that be' doesn't actually want to fix the market failure, and thinks offering inferior substitutes will at least cause the poeple complaning about it to shut up.
Well, the market failure was a lot less in the recent past.
I wouldn't agree that this is an explanation for a rise in unemployment.
Remind me, why are you calling the inability of some to find sex a "market failure"? It might well be that the "market" does not think the package they are offering in exchange is good enough.
The fact that I can't acquire a superyacht is not a market failure.
Instead, the basic complaint looks much more like the classic entitlement narrative of "I have a right, I couldn't exercise this right, so I'm a victim, somebody make sure I can exercise my rights!"
Let, me translate that into the unemployment analogy for you:
Consider what the reaction would be to someone who made the above statement. Heck, I'm not even sure Donald Trump could survive making it.
Except have you seen any other instance of the entitlement narrative get the same kind of reaction.
Mild. There has been a mostly polite discussion of the so-called zero marginal product workers, that is, people who are of no use (and, actually, often bring negative utility) to an employer. More generally, the idea that some people can't hold (and eventually can't find) a job is not particularly controversial.
I don't know what reaction are you talking about.
That's not what I said. I said, consider what the reaction would be if someone made the above statement (in those words).
Also, most of the discussion of zero marginal product workers is along the lines of, "it is the fault of government regulation that these workers are zmp, hence said regulations should be repealed".
<shrug> Depending on the audience, of course. Among smart people, mild. Could it create a Twitter shitstorm? Probably could. So what?
Yeah, even statements with uncontroversial factual accuracy can be offensive when worded in a sufficiently disingenuous way. That's a quite general phenomenon, with hardly anything specific to your example. So what's your point?
But it isn't worded in a "sufficiently disingenuous way", it's worded in a way similar to Lumifer's sex statement. If it isn't acceptable because of the offensive wording, why is the sex statement acceptable?
I think the implication is that the sexual marketplace is inefficient (with an implied dig at the idea that employment is a right in the sense that you describe). Given roughly equal numbers of men and women who want sex and/or relationships, and treating men and women as fungible, there is an inefficiency if everybody isn't satisfied, as partners can be rearranged to produce a greater number of satisfied people.
On the down side for this view, people aren't in fact fungible. On the up side for this view, there are some obvious inefficiencies in the sexual marketplace, such as the distribution of genders across cities. On the "whatever" side for this view, I'm inclined to say that the root of the problem is that value on the sexual marketplace has greater variance for men than women, so the tails on both ends are dominated by men whose preferences cannot be satisfied, and the middle of the distribution has more women than there are men available to satisfy their preferences.
There are, of course, complications :-)
First, people are not fungible at all (outside of the fairly rare "any hole will do" approach and no, I don't mean bisexuals).
Second, there is a lot of fuzziness about what's actually being traded because under consideration is the whole spectrum from casual one-night stands to till death do us part. Notably when talking about the sex marketplace, what many people want is actually a relationship and that's a bit different.
Third, there are difficulties because what you offer to exchange is not well-defined, partially hidden, and, to top it off, the participants have an incentive to lie about it.
Fourth, as you note, the market isn't quite symmetric in that men and women have different needs, expectations, approaches, and techniques.
All in all, the market certainly isn't perfect, but I don't know if I would characterize the situation as a "market failure". It's just the usual human mess that most manage to muddle through.
How do you know it's not the past which had a market failure making women have more sex with unattractive men than they would have had ideally?
Plus one point for treating women as consumers, rather than products, in the sexual marketplace. Minus one point for treating men as inferior products, rather than unsatisfied consumers, in the sexual marketplace.