Cheap Sex is not the first exercise in applying economic principles to the radically changed marketplace of sex, as its author notes . . . . Drawing on surveys and other sources—particularly a data collection project headed by the author called Relationships in America, which interviewed just under 15,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 60 in 2014—and written with empathy and verve, this is a book that even its most ardent detractors should find hard to dismiss. It’s often said—or was often said by President Bill Clinton’s defenders, anyway—that everyone lies about sex. Not here. Cheap Sex delivers the empirical truth about life after the contraceptive revolution.
And, what is the key finding? That:
Sex is now less expensive than ever before, because its highest “costs”—pregnancy, childbearing, childrearing, and the rest of the procreative bundle—have been reduced by technological revolution(s). As Regnerus puts it, “Cheaper sex has been facilitated by three distinctive technological developments: (1) the wide uptake of the Pill as well as a mentality stemming from it that sex is ‘naturally’ infertile; (2) mass-produced high-quality pornography; and (3) the advent and evolution of online dating/meeting services.”A case in point in the book pulls from a Vanity Fair article, regarding:
So just how cheap is sex today?
Cheap enough to explain, for starters, two commonly dissected and lamented phenomena—the failure of many men to launch, and to commit. The rising numbers of men procrastinating or opting out of the marriage market aren’t due to the commonly held belief that these men are “afraid” to settle down. It’s rather that cheap sex, whether via pornography or the real thing, has demolished for many the incentive system of mating for life. Tinder and related apps, meanwhile, make finding a partner for sex cheaper and sometimes easier than mailing a letter. In another interesting measure of the declining price of sex, prostitution is apparently diminishing—just as the book’s economic analysis would have suggested, given the inundated marketplace.
one male subject, who reports having “‘hooked up with three girls,’ thanks to the Internet and to Tinder, and…over the course of four nights…spent a total of $80 between them. And he got what he came for with all three.” How’s that for the arithmetic of cheap sex?In short, he had three presumably attractive women sexually for less than $30 each, which is likely to be cheaper than going after openly admitted prostitutes. No wonder, outright prostitution is apparently on the decline. (Or is it in key part becoming part of the "porn star" -- a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one -- phenomenon, thus absorbed into the "porn industry"? Nowadays, a sufficiently attractive 18 yo girl can sell her virginity online for a tidy sum to appear as a star in her deflowering on video; launching her porn star career. This will then carry on for several months to years and can make a tidy sum. Of course, the tales of abuses, drink, drugs and more seep out around the edges.)
Such, of course undermines commitment, marriage, fidelity and general ethics through the coarsening of moral fibre. It also undermines family, the civilising effect of marriage on men and points to the suicide of our civilisation. A process that is long since demographically in progress as our reproduction levels fall far below replacement levels. Including, increasingly, here in the Caribbean.
What I find glaring is what is not mentioned. The tie to the ongoing abortion holocaust, which for cause I consider the central evil of our time. For, a simple growth model since the early 1970's applied to Guttmacher-UN figures of about 50 million abortions per year indicates that in 40+ years we have had 800+ million abortions, mounting up as an ongoing slaughter of living posterity in the womb at a rate of a million more per week. (NB: I have seen claims that suggest 1.4 billions, but I can readily warrant the lower figure, let's just note that it is likely a considerable UNDER-estimate. In any case this indicts our generation as among the worst in human history, we are utterly soaked in the most corrupting influence of all: mass blood guilt.)
This is of course met with by media silence, even as any number of other "issues" are trumpeted in pursuit of questionable agendas.
The associated deterioration of moral thought and praxis readily explains all sorts of onward perversities in our civilisation.
This is a wake-up call. END
