Filed under: NYTimes
In the wake of Freakonomics and Moneyball everyone seems to want to economize everything, that is treat everything as an economic transaction of some sort, attributing rational motivations to every human or nonhuman decision. Which is why we will always need narrative journalism. This is an article in the NYTimes magazine discussing the economics of love, or partnership, or money. It begins with the modern currency, or maybe a timeless one, youth and beauty on one side and money on the other. It fractures out from there, from the rational decision-making through the flaws and jealousies, to the irrational emotional side of things. Nothing, as it shows, is ever quite as simple as we would believe it to be. It is interesting to see how things complicate themselves for men looking for “ego balm” and for women looking for “money.” It looks like it rarely ever stays that rational.
I have my doubts and reservations about the article, but it doesn’t attempt to lead you by the hand to any conclusion save that you simply never know enough. This was the problem, if you remember, with Crash. No short-form journalism, no hand-holding, no finger-pointing. This is the sort of thing I think we need to foster more, quick facts and hand-holding seem to be in no danger of extinction.
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