I recently had some time to catch up on my reading and read a couple of articles by Rollo Tomassi over at therationalmale.com, two of them in particular struck me as being related by a common thread that can be explained in economic terms (articles linked at the end of this essay). The two articles deal with the blue pill frame and late life hypergamy, two concepts that not only relate in economic terms, but also in the terms that the blue pill frame ensures the results Rollo outlines in Late life Hypergamy. These can be imagined on a feedback loop, where the blue pill man senses his wife’s hypergamic reaction, increases his blue pill behavior further which leads to her hypergamic reaction becoming more pronounced.
This is similar to how many have observed that blue pill men will often double-down on their blue pill strategy, regardless of it being unsuccessful in the past, and view any conquest as a a validation of the mindset, without consideration for their overall success to failure ratio. As I’ve written before, the blue pill sexual strategy is also such in nature that it is easy to rationalize away rejection as the strategy seeks to minimize it by acting in a covert manner.
On opportunity and replacement costs
Opportunity costs is a microeconomic concept that views the cost of a choice of an alternative as the difference between the realized benefit from that alternative minus the cost of the best alternative foregone. For instance, if you have a ton of steel, that you can either make into a finished product using your machinery, your opportunity cost is the revenue you would have obtained by selling the steel and renting out the machinery. A person who elects to start his own company likewise, will face an opportunity cost if he quits his day job to do so, as this cost will be the cost of accepting the opportunity of starting his own business.
In terms of opportunity costs, relationships have varying degrees of them. For instance, if you enter into a monogamous relationship, that means the opportunity cost are the other relationships you could be having that are incompatible choices with the monogamous one you elected to enter. If we were to calculate this down to a more accurate cost, it would have to account for differences in cost, differences in time expenditures, foregone relationships, and it would have to account for benefits, such as obtaining sex at what should be a declining cost rate. From this we can gleam that while all relationships share a similar cost structure, consisting of investment and foregone choice, their proportion to each other, and their volume differs. A one night stand would naturally have a cost structure that is very low, as it means few foregone choices, low time and low monetary investment, whereas a marriage would carry the highest opportunity cost.
We can view a one night stand as a relationship that has maximum flexibility and minimum investment for a given level of utility. Whereas a marriage has minimum flexibility and a maximum investment for another level of utility. The major difference between the two being the end-goal state. For a one night stand it is obviously a case of the end goal being sex. Whereas for a marriage, while sex is of some importance, there are other factors that also influence the overall utility, such as the desire to have partner and have children. The two also differ drastically in risk profiles, something which make the two very difficult to compare.
This also influences the replacement costs in both cases, as the replacement cost of a one-night stand is very low, whereas the replacement cost of a spouse can be much higher as a result of much higher investment. Where the one night stand is merely a case of finding another party to engage with, the marriage may include things like emotional investment, joint property, children, and long-term joining of two lives. This is further compounded by sexual market value, as the female facing a declining SMV, will find herself locked out of more and more of the sexual market, while the male will find himself with a steadily increasing market, and demand.
On the law of unintended consequences
The law of unintended consequences reflect the outcomes that are not foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. They are usually held to come in three types, unexpected benefit, unexpected drawback and perverse result. The first is just an unexpected benefit that is often put down to luck. The second is a negative unexpected consequences occurring in addition to the desired effect. The final, an effect contrary to what was originally intended. To give examples, you start to date a woman and discover that she happens to be a great cook, but you also discover that she is a huge slob, finally that her family is expecting to move in with with the two of you.
Robert Merton outlined 5 possible causes of unanticipated consequences:
- Ignorance, leading to incomplete analysis
- Error in analysis or following habits
- Short-term interests overriding long-term interests
- Basic values that may require or prohibit certain actions even if the long term result may be unfavorable.
- Self-defeating prophecy or the fear of some consequence that drives people to find solution before a problem occurs, thus the non-occurrence is not anticipated.
A case of the first is how many blue-pill men enter relationships without knowledge of women’s inherent nature leading them to engage in limit analysis,
An example of the second is how men will often be blinded by bias, errors of logic or lack of experience leading to a severe case of oneitis
The third occurs when a man, focused on solving his shorter term needs such as sex, will elect to enter a relationship that is doomed on a longer term basis, and remain in it due to a lack of other options.
The fourth, may take place when the blue piller who has already proceeded through steps 1 – 3, find that as he will not permit himself to dump the unsuitable mate, the long term consequences is that his basic values and requirements for a relationship is altered to better fit his present reality.
The fifth takes place when the man plans for either the success or failure of the relationship, without taking into account both. If he plans for the former, he will not guard himself well enough should the latter happen. If he only plans for the latter, he will act in a way that makes him the bluest of blue pillers, which will drive the woman away.
Summary and conclusions
We can see now that what Rollo describes in these two articles are the result of two systems operating in the opposite direction. The wife is not attracted to her blue pill beta, so the beta doubles down on his blue pill behavior, which makes the wife feel less attracted to him. From her perspective, the opportunity cost of marrying him has been too steep, as her memories of her past become increasingly clouded by the nostalgic memories of her party years, forgetting that the major cause of her marriage was the harsh reality of her epiphany phase. It follows that her internal valuation of her opportunity costs change, from their initial state, where the choice to get married in her perception had a low to non-existent opportunity cost, to where she views the opportunity cost as being massive. Her valuation is a result of point three of the law of unintended consequences, wherein her short-term interest (or in this case disinterest) overrides her long-term interest which is to maintain her marriage to a man who at this point will be at a sexual market value, which eclipses her. Meaning that the replacement cost for her doting blue pill husband is now too rich for her blood.
The blue pill beta on the other hand notices that his wife is no longer attracted to him. However, due to his blue pill conditioning resulting from points 1, 2, 3 and possibly 4 of the law of unintended consequences prevents him from acting. Point 1 means that he is ignorant of woman’s inherent nature, which leads to an error of analysis in point 2, this leads to him engaging in the behaviors that landed him in her bed in the first place, which were attractive to her from a hypergamic optimization perspective during her epiphany phase. However, these are ineffective during her nostalgia phase. This leads to him doubling down on the blue pill approach, resulting in driving her further away from him as her reaction to this behavior now mimics that of her peak SMV years. However, point 3, and possibly point 4 prevents him from taking the actions he should, avoidance of short term pain and possibly basic values prevents him from either changing his values to align with what is attractive to her now, or replacing her with a younger model, something that assuming he has kept in shape and put his time wisely to use, will be easier as his SMV will be higher. However, he most likely remembers his strike-out years in the past, which share a timeline with her peak SMV years, leading to him over-estimating her replacement cost.
Thus it follows that the situation described by Rollo is a result of two feedback systems that both suffer from the law of unintended consequences, opportunity costs and replacement costs. However, much as a female always estimate their SMV upward, and men downward, this carries over into older ages, where a woman will view the cost she will have to pay to replace her husband as too low and vice versa for the male. Likewise, they both make errors of reasoning, while the female bases her reasoning on nostalgia of her glory days, and short term hypergamic interest, the male bases his on his fear of the past and short-term future consequences.
A note:
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