the current dating system is a mess if you're a man you probably get little to no dating opportunities you get flaked on when trying to arrange meetups and you probably find texting an absolute nightmare for keeping a woman interested meanwhile if you're a woman chances are you don't have these issues but instead face a barrage of lackluster quality guys quantity isn't a problem but quality is and for the small percentage you do consider date worthy you find they are preoccupied with other aspects of life or they aren't serious and just want to date casually based
on these points it should be clear that the current dating system isn't benefiting most people both for men and women well in this video as i'm going to explain it may surprise you that all of these problems are in fact predictable and ingrained in the modern dating system the dating market just like any market is guided by market forces these forces should in theory lead to a system that is fair and balanced however i've identified three points of failure fixed into the system that are causing problems to take place let me introduce you to the
economic principle of market failure which for a really quick explanation if you've not heard of this before it is exactly what it says in its name this is when the market in this case the dating market leads to sub-optimal outcomes that do not benefit some or all of the people it is supposed to serve there are seven types and usually just one of these can lead to the system being broken well as stated three apply to the dating market which in other words means there are three unavoidable points of failure that are causing all sorts
of problems in dating anyway let's break down these three points one by one starting with inequality it's no surprise the dating market is unequal using the lorenz curve which is the most common way to measure inequality in any given system we'll be able to see just how big the gap is between the men at the top middle and bottom it works like this population is on the x-axis and the share of a particular thing is on the y-axis and in a perfectly equal system we'd have a completely straight lorenz curve this means fifty percent of
the population get fifty percent of the cumulative share seventy percent get seventy percent ninety get ninety and so on so no matter where you are in the system you will be on equal terms compared with your neighbor this chart is most often used in an economic sense to measure levels of income inequality in countries for example the lorenz curve for america looks like this where the top 20 percent takes home a little over 50 percent of the country's income this is expected as we all know the people at the top in a country like america
are faring way better than those at the bottom now let's take a look at how things are in the dating market to make this work instead of measuring wealth we'll substitute in tinder likes now i know a lot of people might roll their eyes about using tinder to provide data but at the same time this will be able to give us a rough idea and besides tinder is the world's largest dating app with over 75 million users so sample size is not an issue additionally studies show dating apps are now the number one way couples
meet so as i say using tinder likes definitely not a perfect measure but this will be able to give us a rough idea of dating market inequality anyway the lorenz curve for men on tinder looks like this shockingly it's actually more unequal than america is in terms of income noticeably more on tinder the top 10 of men get 58 of the likes meanwhile for the bottom 50 percent of men they get just 4.3 percent and the reason i find this so glaring is because we hear on the news all the time about income inequality how
terrible it is and what should be done about it but when the exact same thing is happening in the dating market it seems no one even cares about it now some of you might point out that i've only spoken about the inequality for men when really this should also apply for women as well because men are no different in their dating choices and for those that think this you're right it does apply to women the top 10 percent of women get 45 percent of likes from men which again shows a big inequality but the reason
i'm focusing mainly on men is because notice how the share of likes is less equal for men than for women the bottom 50 percent of women has nearly twice the share than the bottom 50 of men this suggests that women have their eyes focused on the top guys more than men have theirs focused on the top women on top of this when you factor in the ratio of these apps and that men swipe way more than women in general you'll find even below average women can accumulate a sizable number of matches in a short period
of time so the bottom line is on dating apps there is only one group of people who will indefinitely have a matches screen that looks like this and that group is below average men now moving on to the second point of market failure this is known as asymmetric information let's say you're looking to buy a second-hand car you go online and find almost immediately what appears to be a very alluring deal the car is only a few years old has low miles and is well under the market price so you do the obvious thing and
arrange to meet the seller and buy it thinking you've got an amazing deal anyway for the next six months everything is smooth that is until suddenly loads of problems start rising with the car the gearbox had to be replaced as did the clutch you got them both repaired straight away and at this point since you've been frustrated twice you made the wise decision to get an inspection from a car mechanic in order to prevent any more unforeseen damages and unfortunately the mechanic leaves you shocking news he says the mileage of the car is actually three
times higher than what it reads on the odometer you also find out it's five years older than what it says on the reg you now become very angry and get rid of the car swearing you'll never drive again anyway the purpose of this story is to highlight the problem of asymmetric information in a marketplace the car seller knew information about the car that undermines your ability to make rational decisions as a buyer how does this principle also apply to the dating market well just like there's information someone can hide about a car there is also
information people can hide about themselves that makes them look like a better option than they truly are a woman may have been a notorious cheater in her past she may have cheated on every single one of her previous partners similarly she may have an extremely high partner count but the thing is unless you actually know this information her past has zero effect on your perceptions of her date ability for all you know you're dating a perfectly sweet and normal girl then it's only a matter of months or god forbid years further down the line problems
arise and you start to realize you've been duped and obviously if you knew about her past before getting into the relationship you'd have never invested your time resources and money in the first place no different from the example of a man buying a terrible car and i know i'm going to get some angry people in the comments telling me how dare you how dare you compare dating a woman to buying a car like they're both objects well on the surface the car analogy might sound condescending but whether you like it or not the dating market
is a market just like any other it is guided by the principles of supply and demand and every single man and woman is seen as a buyer and seller and one of the key problems in today's dating market is there's an incentive to sell yourself at a higher value than you actually are there's become a very fine line between putting your best foot forward and flat out pretending to be someone you're not this is a market failure at its core as it encourages people to deceive the person they're dating if they want to increase their
chances of it working out honest people are the losers and liars are the winners and this problem has been made even worse since online dating due to its high levels of anonymity nowadays a person you met from a dating app can make up whatever lies about themselves they want and as long as you believe them it will hugely increase their perceived value now of course vetting for red flags is important and may be the only solution however it is not guaranteed if a woman tweaks her history slightly how would you be able to tell also
remember everything i'm saying right now applies to men too not just women here's an example i recently saw in this video how to tell a girl you just want to hook up the first thing you don't want to do is while you're on the day teller hey just so you're aware i'm not looking for a relationship that's a huge red flag from the girl's perspective so instead when she asks you so what are you looking for you want to say lately i've just been casually dating trying to take things slow i have no expectations and
let's see where things go that's what you say the next time she asks you that question once again from this clip we have the same problem if you take a second to wrap your head around this chart you can see it is in the interest of the guy to beat around the bush about his intentions as he will have a better chance of hooking up with the girl who is only interested in a relationship you can see the relationship-seeking woman would have rejected the man if he was up front but by him being ambiguous like
this dating coach is advising then he is able to entice her i believe this is incredibly immoral and a massive problem and actually affects everyone including you the more this happens the more women seeking relationships will become jaded and bitter of men which in turn makes it harder for the next guy who wants to shoot his shot and is serious about finding a relationship make no mistake guys the use of this advice is immoral i believe this for three main reasons it is misleading selfish and always at the expense of other people's happiness expanding on
this last one first it leaves the woman upset because she thought she'd be getting a relationship but instead got ghosted and it leaves other men upset as they now have less of a chance and the woman has less of an ability to pair bond if a relationship does form so basically it only benefits the man who uses the advice which makes it selfish however i don't even see how he could get fulfillment from doing it because the only reason he got what he wanted was by being misleading there should be no internal validation to gain
from this experience because she was only willing to hook up with him because she was anticipating something long term the man must know deep down if he was up front and honest the girl wouldn't have gone through with it how he can live with a sense of pride given this i have no idea anyway that's it for this point on asymmetric information and as you've seen it can be exploited by it and damaging to both men and women now moving on to the final market failure which is this concept known as tragedy of the commons
again we'll look at an economic market first to understand the concept and then relate it to the dating market imagine you live in a medium-sized town and this town gets all of its water supply just a few miles away from this single lake the lake has no rivers that flow into it so it has to rely on rainfall to maintain its size everyone understands if the lake is exploited it may dry up one day so protecting it is extremely important however there is one big problem the people may understand the lake's importance as a collective
but as individuals unless you introduce laws or limits on how much water each person can use it means there is nothing that can stop anyone from taking more from the lake than they should anyway because of this problem what ends up happening is 10 percent of the people turn a completely blind eye to the lake's preservation they decide to grow extensive lawns wash their vehicles daily and install fountains which are all very water intensive and in the short term this 10 percent are very happy but unfortunately this was never sustainable and slowly but surely the
late dried up ruining it for everybody this is called the tragedy of the commons and the exact same issue happens in overfishing over deforestation and overmining all for the same reasons and as you probably guessed this also happens in the dating market think of the lake example again but swap out the lake for the dating pool of women and the town for the pool of men now think of the 10 who used up the water as the top 10 of men in the dating market remember at the very start of the video i explained how
the dating market is extremely unequal particularly for men so when the top 10 percent have abundance and can date multiple women at the same time it means other guys are left out it might be a tough pill to swallow for a lot of you but the dating market is a zero-sum game meaning if i date a woman and take her off the market that's one less woman you could now potentially date and this isn't necessarily a problem if there are equal numbers of men and women because eventually everyone will have a partner but the problem
arises when a small minority of guys date multiple women at the same time leaving the other men left out it's a matter of fact over 2 000 years ago the rulers realized how this setup was unsustainable so to counteract this they introduced laws of monogamy which created a one-to-one balance for men and women making sure people weren't left out but funnily enough in the last couple of decades we've seen a complete dismantling of these values and once again we're in a situation where a few men at the top are dominating the market while the people
at the bottom are being ostracized anyway that's it for the three ways market failure applies to the dating market and maybe i'll make a solutions video to these problems in future if you enjoyed make sure you press the like button now and leave any thoughts you have in the comments below as it helps the youtube algorithm
