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ThisSpaceAvailable comments on Decision Auctions aka "How to fairly assign chores, or decide who gets the last cookie" - Less Wrong Discussion
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Taking the word "afford" literally, if you can only afford $50 on the first auction, and you lose the auction, then you'll have an extra $50 on the next auction, and will be able to afford $100. If you lose that auction, you'll be able to afford $200 on the auction after that. I think that the concept you're thinking of is not so much afford, as marginal utility cost. For someone with a yearly income of $200,000, a marginal util is going to cost a lot more than for someone with a yearly income of $40,000. Thus, the richer person may be willing to bid more, because the utils are worth more to that person. It is therefore more efficient (that is, it is a Pareto improvement) for the richer person to win the auction, and give money to the poorer person that the poorer person can use to buy utils elsewhere. And I really wonder at who's deciding what goes in the Google Chrome spell checker dictionary, because apparently "util" is in it, but "externality" is not.
Could you elaborate your interpretation to the extreme, i.e. a classical marriage, with one person earning money and the other caring for home and children?
One person earns money through work, and the other one stays home and earns money for all of the chores. The stay-at-home partner needs to bid high enough on e.g. childcare to pay half the rent, but not so high that other options become better.