Resources

Why do men trade money for sex?

Because they have too much money and not enough sex. Or intimacy.

They have a surplus of one thing and a lack of another; an imbalance. They are using one resource to purchase another, because they haven’t acquired, or can’t acquire, the other. Or maybe they simply don’t want to.

Prostitution generally isn’t great, but trading one thing for another is a skill that we all use. And need. For instance, sometimes you want to have date night with your partner but you're short on time. You can purchase time with money by hiring a babysitter. Or you can purchase time and mental clarity with money by going on vacation.

Or you have too much time on your hands, and you purchase money with time by working some shifts at your uncle's bakery. You can trade ideas and wisdom for money by taking a consulting job. You can trade time for ideas and wisdom by reading.

What’s a relationship? Trading time and all of your other resources for intimacy, trust, and cooperative energy.

There are a lot of different resources at our disposal, not just money. You build a good life, for yourself and those around you, by getting good at collecting them. Our resources include:

• Love

• Knowledge

• Wisdom

• Time

• Generosity from others

• Trust

• Sexual play and intimacy

• Money

• Favors from friends

• Ideas

• Patience

• Cooperative energy

• Ethical people to interact with.

Being a human adult is hard, because it requires playing lots of different games to acquire lots of different resources, and then balancing them.

Unfortunately we’re not simple animals and we can’t just hunt, eat, and sleep. There’s too much other shit to worry about. Especially if you’re responsible for other people.

Nor can you just get a job and hope that money takes care of everything. That's what old lonely men find out the hard way. I have seen one too many fathers try to replace love and quality time, with money. To try to use money to build and love their families; to spend their way into a good life.

That’s a bad trade. It doesn’t work.

Those men who pay money for sex — sometimes they do it out of desperation or loneliness. Sometimes they do it just for fun. Sometimes they do it because they genuinely think that money can take the place of other resources. But it can’t.

Life is complicated and there’s an inherent urgency to gather, hold, and use the right resources. It’s absolutely essential to know when you can and can’t make good trades, and why. And if you keep finding that you can’t make good trades, it’s because you don’t have enough balance. You’re only good at one game and you’re forsaking all others. You’re trying to use one currency to pay for everything.

Many college graduates find it hard to understand and accept the workforce for what it is — you can’t just trade knowledge for everything either. You can’t just turn in your diploma for your dream job and a solid life. That’s a harsh reality that young people learn year after year.

You may be smart and educated, and that’s wonderful — but now you have to figure out how to accumulate all those other things. To play more games. To earn more from the world than just a job.

Or to earn that good job by having more than a diploma at your disposal. Other resources include having relationships with older people who can provide you unseen opportunities. Or a network of people you’ve done generous, honest favors for. Or the bravery to simply ask for opportunities you aren’t sure you deserve.

The sad reality is, most people have to earn the job they really want by spending 10 or more years after graduating playing other games and accumulating other useful forces in their lives.

And what do you do when you finally start accumulating all these useful things? What do you do with all the stuff that you earn?

You produce and accumulate many different resources so that you can draw on them when you need them. But you also accumulate resources so that you can share them.

The goal is:

• You produce a surplus of most of these resources, and share them freely; AND

• Ask for help with the ones you currently need but don't have.

It is a moral duty to become good with money, good with ideas, good with people. It is also a moral duty to become good at asking for help.

You do this so that you can take care of yourself, your family, and your community. Again, human life is more complicated than the life of a hunter. Especially if you want to be a leader. You produce, you balance, and you share. And in return, you seek the resources that you and those who depend on you need.

But what if you’re so good at producing a surplus of your own resources that you just don’t need to ask others for help?

First of all, none of us is that good. We think we are, but we aren’t.

Second, do it anyway.

One of the first things they teach you in trauma therapy is to let other people love you. To accept love and help and grace, and to do so gracefully. To learn how to have reciprocal relationships.

Reciprocal relationships are about giving the other person their half of the relationship. In order to have a real relationship with someone, you have to let them love you by giving to you when you need it. By letting them reciprocate with you.

It's not just for you, it's for them. It's so that they can have a network too. It’s so that they can give when they’re able. People feel useful when they give. If you never let those around you feel useful, then before long they won’t be.

Someone once told me they can't accept my money. They don't want charity. My response:

It's not charity. It's someone else having a need for money that I do not currently have. And someday I'll happen to need something that someone else doesn’t currently need. And that won't be charity either. It'll be sharing.

And the best part is, you get to be selfish while you do all of this.

As Naval Ravikant says, the selfish reason to be ethical is that it attracts the other ethical people in the network. Yes it’s the right thing to do, but it also just makes your life better and easier. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.

And the selfish reason to be good at being generous is so that you, your kids, your business, and the people you care about get to enjoy the benefits of it later. It gives you a better community to live in. It gives you more and better resources to have at your disposal.

The selfish reason to help Old Joe down at the corner store is so that maybe one day he’ll hide that last candy bar and give it to your son, or help you move your couch. And then maybe one day your son will do his son a favor, and it will go on and on.

Often the best leaders among the great apes are the ones who are excellent at getting their group to generate resources, and then letting everyone enjoy the spoils abundantly. They are generously productive and productively generous. And they’re good at playing lots of different games.

It’s the same thing with human beings.

Drink some water and chase something other than money.

JDR

“There are three faithful friends — an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” - Benjamin Franklin