As a geek, I love the economics of affection, dating and relationships, and foun

As a geek, I love the economics of affection, dating and relationships, and found this quote today in line with what I’ve written. It’s from a posting about Laura Sessions Stepp’s book “hooking up”, where the writer poses an obvious economic actor’s solution to Stepp’s questions:

“Why do young women make themselves so available, unmarried, to young men in hopes of making themselves happy? (This clearly makes the young men happy, but that’s beside the point).”

“This downward spiral that women have been caught in — the dwindling supply of available men — induces women to make themselves even more sexually available than the next women in order to compete, thereby further dampening the supply of potential mates—seems impossible to break out of. At the heart of the problem is a classic, Olsonian collective action failure. All women would benefit if, collectively, women were to require more of men they had sex with. But every woman knows that her behavior, by itself, will not cause market prices to change, so she cheats—and by “cheats” I mean she cheats the female collective. The problem with this free riding behavior is that everyone faces the same incentives and there is not an effective punishment for cheating. The result: men get more sex and women can’t find mates.”