Human Economics

I was at dinner (or breakfast, depending on how you look at it) with a close personal friend, and during the course of conversation, the concept of why nice guys finish seemingly dead last came up. We went through all the scenarios and pondered all the angles. We came up with the same answer that we’ve come to countless times before. However, just as I was about to start flirting with the waitress (who by the way did cut me some slack on the tab), he said something that set off a flurry of original thought.

He said “Jonathan, cats like us are on top of the food chain, or at least we are making strides to get there. We shouldn’t feel like we are last.” That made me think. What if we were both looking at this all wrong? I realized in fact that we had been looking at this whole thing completely incorrectly. So gentlemen (and ladies) I invite you to take a look at the line of reasoning that I came up with and see if you don’t agree to some extent…

The dating/relating/mating world is governed by a set of laws, not unlike those present in economic theory. Supply and demand, scarcity of resources, division of labor, etc. all have a place in it. More accurately, they all have a role in the way things work out. Lets presume for a moment that there are no external factors, like fate or past love or anything like that, just simple market functions. Now depending on who you are, this will take on different meaning, so I write from the most easily defended position-I write as who I am, a male, seeking a female. Now that the set up is done, lets continue.

There are more females than males. Without going into statistic bifurcations, there are more African-American Females than there are African-American Males, assuming the former statement to be accurate. The strength of those two statements forms the crux of my argument. Any male going after a female has a not only a better chance of partial success (ie, just getting any girl) but a better chance of total success (ie getting the girl of his dreams) when compared to a female’s chances at the inverted goals.

Clearly we excuse semantics at this point, as they cloud the objectivity of the statements. This point is further punctuated when one considers the various degrees of stratification present in any community, not just the Afro-American. Certain segments of the population are “undesirable” for whatever reason, be it legal woes, personality flaws, or any other defect. This layer is subjective though, the old adage of “one’s man’s trash…another’s treasure..” aptly governs this region. The gauntlet runs from the undesirable up through the “most desirable”. It is here that our focus needs to shift.