Gresham’s Law: It Also Applies to Sex and Culture

Folks, this is giong to be an argument about how degenerate culture drives out civilized culture, but we’re going to have to start this one off with some economic definitions; links to Wikipedia if I go too fast, but I think you’ll be able to keep up; so let’s jump into it:

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

1. Gresham’s Law: “When a government compulsorily overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.” The best examples involve either devaluing the coinage, or failing to devalue the coinage when your currency works on Keynesian/inflationary principles.  IE: a quarter from 1960 was 90% silver, resulting in a lump of metal which I would guesstimate to be worth about $5 today – yet its transactional value is still only 25¢.  As a consequence, anyone who receives such a coin is liable to horde it, while spending their quarters made out of base metals more freely.

What Gresham’s Law boils down to is that if something has an intrinsic value (silver) which is different from its mandated value (denomination), the lesser value will dominate the marketplace – the bad will drive out the good.

So far we’re only talking about legal intervention in economic matters (not even a King can declare what a coin is worth – that’s a power reserved for the Gods), but its implications don’t end there.  While the silver quarter and the base-metal quarter are obviously the same (25¢ of denomination) and obviously different (inherent values of the metals), what happens if you have two goods where the differing inherent values are obfustscated?

2. The Market for Lemons: this is where we mix Substitute Goods with Gresham’s Law.  On the one hand, a car is a car – its listing price is a matter of what features it has, mileage, et cetera.  But in the used car market many obfuscated factors go into the value of a particular vehicle – how it was driven, unreported accidents, maintenance – resulting in two types of “identical” vehicles: Cherries – those that were driven gently and well maintained – and Lemons – those that were abused, or which just happened to be poorly manufactured in the first place.  The problem which arises from this is that Cherries and Lemons can’t be reliably distinguished from one another.

So as a used car purchaser, every vehicle you look at is a potential Lemon; as a result your offering price will go down.  Responding to this rational response of the market, potential sellers who own Cherries become less willing to sell them at the debased prices, and – just like with the currencies – the bad drives out the good.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

So what does all this mean when it comes to sex, dating, and marriage?

Let’s say you’re a man who wants to find a Wife (yes, yes, we all know how dangerous this is nowadays with the rise of the Family Courts, but bear with me – this is about social economics, not advice for living).  Of all the women you meet, some are going to be Ladies, and others are going to be Bitches: the Ladies will be relatively chaste, will require wooing, and will make good wives.  The Bitches, on the other hand, will let you spend money on them and shower them with attention, but they’re doing so disingenuously – thanks to the omnipresence of Feminism, women have no obligations or expectations put on them by society.  They can stab you in the back, and nobody will think crosswise of it – not all of them will, but many of them will.

So after getting burned a few times, you realize that you’ve been paying Cherry prices, and getting nothing but Lemons: time for a new strategy.

Now, instead of looking for a Wife who provides sex and love, you decide to look for a Slut, who’ll at least provides sex.  You no longer buy them dinner, and you generally go for one-night-lays.  Now Game is Game, and Women are Women, and the Ladies will be just as charmed as the Bitches by your Rakish ways, but they’re also less likely to sleep with you – you’ve effectively shut out the marriageable segment of the female population, but at least you’re not over-paying for junkers anymore.

Now let’s look at Stage 2.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

Let’s now look at the Wife trying to find a Dad (instead of a Cad).

Thanks to all the Bitches masquerading as Ladies, there are fewer and fewer Dads left in the market.  Even worse, some of the men with the greatest potential to be Dads, have the same attributes which make them the greatest Cads (masculinity, dominance, charisma).  The market is now shifting towards the Sluts, and if you go on a date with a man – and refuse to put out – you risk being labelled a Bitch.

And yet, the Slut’s not good Wife material, either – so you strike a middle ground.  You avoid the most committed to-Cad-dom by not putting out on the first date, but you relent by the third.  Let’s call this a 70% effective strategy.  You miss out on some of the most Manly Men – Men who want to be Dads, but are such great Cads that they don’t give you a second date – but you also avoid the worst of the degenerate Cads, the one who’ll make promises of love while they’re boffing your best friend on the side.

The result of the interplay between Cad/Dad and Lady/Slut-Bitch is a mating market that’s slightly more focused on meaningless sex, and slightly less focused on emotional bonding.

That was the first iteration: now repeat ad nauseum.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

The long-term trend – the new Nash Equilibrium – results in higher and higher payoffs for meaningless sex, and higher and higher risks for pursuing a serious relationship.  Eventually it degenerates to empty encounters in alleys and dingy club bathrooms, and nobody even remembers how to pair-bond with another human being.

The bad sex pushes out the good.

When the Quality Assurance Regulations were removed from the Sexual Marketplace during the Sexual Revulotuion, we were thrust along this path.  Both parties are working with asymmetrical information – IE we don’t know what the true quality of the man, woman, or car actually is, and we have no way to see through this obfuscation.  Once Upon a Time parents and the community provided this Quality Assurance, but that’s no longer the case – heck, with rampant Feminism most parents don’t even expect their daughters to behave with propriety (with sons it’s an odd mix of “be yourself” Forever Alone nonsense, and the promotion of mercenary selfishness).

The same thing also applies to our Social Milieu – our culture, consumption habits, and working life.  But twelve-hundred words is enough for today, I think – we’ll follow up on this next time.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

My novel, As I Walk These Broken Roads