The economics of sex robots

In my ECONS101 class, we cover search models of the labour market. Unlike the supply and demand model, search models do not rely on a concept of market equilibrium. Instead, it is the relative bargaining power of the parties (employers and workers) that determine the wage.

The simple explanation works like this. Each matching of a worker to a job creates a surplus that is shared between the worker and the employer. Because job matching creates a surplus, this provides the worker with a small amount of market power (or bargaining power). That is because if the worker rejects the job offer, the employer has to start looking for someone else to fill the vacancy. The employer is somewhat reluctant to start their search over, so the worker can use that to their advantage. The division of the surplus created by the match, and therefore the wage, will depend on the relative bargaining power of the worker and employer. If the worker has relatively more bargaining power, the wage will be higher. And if the employer has relatively more bargaining power, the wage will be lower.

This search model doesn't just apply to the labour market. You can also apply it to many situations that involve matching two or more parties. Which brings me to this post on sex robots by Diana Fleischman. Sex involves matching (unless you go it alone). The agreement on the what-where-how of sex will depend on the relative bargaining power of the sexual partners. The increasing availability of increasingly realistic sex robots looks likely to shake things up, because sex robots and women are substitutes (see also this earlier post on pornography and marriage as substitutes). As Fleischman explains:

What does this mean for women? When the sex ratio changes, so too do sexual norms; sex robots are going to emulate an increase in the ratio of women to men. Contrary to a prediction based on the idea that men would wield greater patriachal [sic] control if they were in higher numbers, a larger percentage of women relative to men on University campuses is associated with women who are more likely to have casual sex and less likely to be virgins. When there are more men than women, women are much less likely to have casual sex. The majority sex (in this case men) competes for the minority sex (in this case women) and the minority sex calls the shots. When there is a female majority in the population, women compete for access to mates with casual sex. Whereas a male majority competing for access to scarce women compete with long-term commitment.

Sex robots will emulate a majority women ratio, shifting women to compete for men’s attention by requiring less courtship and commitment in exchange for sex.

Taking a heteronormative perspective, the availability of sex robots reduces the relative bargaining power of women, and therefore increases the relative bargaining power of men. That means that men may be able to extract more of the surplus from potential sexual liaisons. That is, men may be able to get more of what they want. Fleischman notes that:

The long-term ramifications are unclear, especially the way long-term technologies and cultural norms will interact. Perhaps women will discover they have to make the costs of courtship both low and transparent to compete with sex robots.

Women, having to compete with sex robots, may have to offer men more. But not so fast:

Or, perhaps, new technology could enable women to recombine their genes with one another, making men enamored with sex robots (or men generally) totally redundant.

New technology for recombining genes and completely excluding men won't rebalance bargaining power back towards women. The technology necessary to reproduce without involving sex has existed for some time. Fleischman is conflating the reproductive goal of sex, with the pleasure goal of sex. To rebalance bargaining power back towards women, women need their own sex robots. Sex robots for all!

[HT: Marginal Revolution]