Amanda Hess of The Sexist jointly posted with Sady Doyle, who blogs at TigerBeatdown on the Levitt and Dubner’s dumb Superfreakonomics chapter on prostitution, wherein they ask, among other things, why all women aren’t prostitutes given that some of them can earn a lot. Particularly this one they dwell on a lot (“Allie”) who makes $350-$500/hour.
Even accounting for actual hours worked per year $350-$500/hour is still more than even a very highly-paid economics professor is likely to earn per year. Which leads to the second-most obvious question (I’ll get to the first in a minute):
AMANDA: haha right. now, i dont’ know if Levitt and Dubner are heterosexual males, but let’s assume they are.
SADY: assumed!
AMANDA: the only appropriate response to the ridiculous question posed in the article would be, “I don’t know, why don’t you suck cock for a living?” Why don’t you suck cock, out of your fancy house, instead of being a famous economist? I’m sure that will be the pertinent question in “SuperDuperFreakonomics: The Freakiestonomics Yet”
SADY: yes, at some point. WHY AREN’T LEVITT AND DUBNER JOINTLY FELLATING YOU RIGHT NOW: A FREAKONOMIC ANALYSIS.
AMANDA: probably because they don’t like sex?
That last little bit is significant. Because the one other prostitute they mention in their story, a subsistence/street prostitute they name “LaSheena,” says she doesn’t like her job and doesn’t even much like men. So in “pure” economic terms it not liking prostitution or men shouldn’t be an obstacle.
Hess and Doyle speculate that Levitt and Dubner don’t like men either, and so that might make them “failed” prostitutes they call “LaSheena.” But hey, at $28/hr even as a failure her average hourly earnings are still better than a lot of associate professors, which only shifts the question to why it wasn’t rational for the Steves to suck dicks for a living when they first left grad school.
This is not, incidentally, a completely out of line question to post to economists, by the way. A “philosophical” question that comes up in beginning economics seminars is why you wouldn’t mow a neighbor’s lawn for $25 if you won’t agree to pay a neighbor’s kid $25 to mow yours.
#%
Oh wait, remember I was going to mention the first-most obvious question? Maybe it’s because I’m not a super economist but it seems to me that even if I lived in the purest Total Asperger Blinders economist framing of prostitution I’d still want to hear how economics professors imagine the hourly rate would remain $350-500/hr, or even the $28/hr that “LaSheena” earns, if all women (let alone men) “enthusiastically” embraced prostitution.
Quick note: I keep returning to these almost-absurd cases because there’s already been so much excellent, thoughtful, and well-reasoned refutation of the author’s seriously bone-headedly convention-bound set of assumptions.
Submitted by 3259 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-10-25 18:42.
Everyone isn't a high-class prostitute for the same reason everyone isn't an accountant--the pay may be good, but the demand is limited and not everyone is good at it. Even within the Asperger-world of "parents don't eat their children because chicken meat is cheaper", it's optimal for people to do what they're best at, not what has the highest potential pay.
If Levitt and Dubner aren't gorgeous men with charming manners and enthusiastic sexual skills, then they aren't going to get $500/hr no matter how much effort they put into prostitution--so it's more efficient for them in the long run to get into pop-econ even if the starting pay is lower.
The fact that this also applies to women who don't have great talent and motivation in the prostitutional arts seems to sort of pass them by, though.
So does, as Sady and Amanda point out, the fact that prostitution isn't just sex that you buy. It's sex where the prostitute accepts money in lieu of getting his/her own desires met. You only have to go down on a prostitute if you like going down.
So I don't give away "free" sex because I'm a sucker, but because I already have a day job and when it comes to sex I'd rather have gratification (and partner selection, and social respect, and legality, and lack of threats to my day job, and the ability to tell Mom what I do for a living...) than money.
["The fact that this also applies to women who don't have great talent and motivation in the prostitutional arts seems to sort of pass them by, though" Hey, bingo! It's sort of like them saying "hey, we make a ton of money writing half-baked gonzo pop-econ books so there's no reason why *all* economists couldn't make money doing that. I think non-gonzo economists learn about those sorts of fallacies in, like, their first-year classes. Doh, and one last thing: you said "prostitutional arts" and I think one of the big things they're overlooking in their data is that the big middle of the formerly bell-shaped curve has vanished in the last century, leaving a lot of demand for "prostitutional artists" like "Allie" or Belle de Jour and "day labor" prostitutes like "LaSheena" on either end, but not so much in between. Thanks, Holly. --fl]
Submitted by 3259 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-10-26 08:39.
i've sent you emails and commented on another post, will you see this and reply to me??
laura border thinking
Submitted by 3259 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-10-27 07:58.
Thanks much for the linky love, Figleaf. An honor as always...
Well, first of all, I suspect
Submitted by Thaddeus Blanchette (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-13 15:36.Well, first of all, I suspect that a lot of academics have indeed sold sex in one form or another at some point in their climb up the academic ladder.
Secondly, again, the opportunity to make 300 bucks a trick isn’t available to everyone.
But thirdly, prostitution is stigmatized. My wife and I make less as university professors than some of the women we interview, but we’d rather have a safe and high-status job paying 5x than a dangerous low-status job paying 7x.
As an anthropologist, I could probably make more money working as a “consultant” in Afganistan than I do teacvhing undergrads. I don’t do that, either.