Have I found a Giffen Good?
**It is true that I am building an impossible scenario**
Jeremiah
Jeremiah Dyke:Let us assume that as the supply of men decrease, the demand for sex (from women) increases
could you explain this a little more please?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
this seems bound by some pretty off-the-wall assumptions, so yes you are building an impossible scenario which IMO doesn't really help anyone understand the concept.
In any event, I still think it's probably not a Giffen good. A Giffen good (I'll do my best to give what I remember as the textbook definition) is really:
Take any particular good, "X". The rest of the goods & services will be non-"X" or for the sake of exposition, "Y". X is a Giffen good if it meets the following criteria:
Generally the following conditions also hold:
The textbook example is usually potatoes during the Famine. Even as the prices increased, people still needed to eat them, so they spent less and less on other food like meat, etc., and they spent increasingly more on potatoes.
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David Z
"The issue is always the same, the government or the market. There is no third solution."
I think the original poster's example is very contrived, but I understand it. He's saying that a dedicated rapist would not want any sex if it were freely offered. I guess this is a valid economics topic since one could consider being shot or imprisoned as a cost.
Are certain medical services a good example of a Giffen good? Even if the cost of getting a heart bypass were to double, I'd bet most patients would still want it.
Of course, a Giffen good implies something about people's subjective preferences, rather than some intrinsic property of the good itself.
Jeremiah Dyke: Have I found a Giffen Good? **It is true that I am building an impossible scenario** Let us imagine a world on one man, a rapist. Let us imagine that our said individual has no desire for mutually desired sex but instead only rape. Let us assume that as the supply of men decrease, the demand for sex (from women) increases Therefore, if the supply of men decrease to one, sex will have increased exponentially or thus the costs of sex will have decreased exponentially Thus, while the costs of sex decrease our rapist will have demand less sex.
Aren't you conflating two different goods? Rape could be seen as an entirely different "good" than sex. In which case they both are normal goods. Let us say that music and silence are different goods, but that the supply of each diminishes the supply of the other. We could call both of these goods "noise levels" and then make the case that it is a Giffen good. What do you think?
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
One problem with your scenario is that rape isn't necessarily based on sex. More often than not rape is based on power, or the desire to have control over another person. While the demand for mutual sex may go up or down, the incidents of rape would have no relation.
Also, your rapist has no desire for mutually desired sex, so the amount of women who are willing to provide sex doesn't matter to him.
If the last man on Earth is a rapist, and isn't an absolute troll in which case the species dies off, then women will change their behavior to fool the rapist into having sex with them. The rapist will be quite busy believing he's raping women who are actually acting in their own self interest.
My point is that the trade is mutual if there is indeed a trade. Rape would be the equivalent of theft, and women would react to that much differently than a trade for sex. As far as I know there is no supply or demand for rape.
Being a rapist in a land of women could be one man's definition of pure hell. To survive, his behaviour would probably have to change, and he would no longer be a rapist. He might in fact become a victim of unwanted sex from the masses of women who suddenly have no other options - other than abstinence or homosexuality (neither of which produce babies). He could find himself being considered a state resource, and imprisoned except for the purposes of breeding. Since he may be ugly, his sperm may be seized - this would be the most efficient way to distribute his seed. Toilet seats would be permanently affixed, and his to do list would be ungodly...
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