> This would cut to the chase amazingly fast, which isn’t what people want.
I think you just reinvented sex work, but somehow made it more icky?
The main and big problem with this if anyone would consider it for dating for real, which probably they wouldn’t so no big worry, is what is in the price? So A just paid 20 dollars for the pleasure of having a date with B. What did A buy? Does B have to stay at the date for a set time? Is B obligued to listen enthusiastically to A? Does B have to laugh at A’s jokes? Even if they are lame? And then of course what happens when A thinks they paid for sex and B thinks not?
Yeah. I think the problem is with an underlying assumption in GP's post: that because dating as a system sometimes behaves game-theoretically it is therefore equivalent to a system of economic transactions.
I think that is only sometimes true, usually in situations where relationships are mainly economic decisions. As prosperity increases and pay/power differences between genders shrink, it is becoming less frequently true, and less true on a per-relationship basis, over time.
> I think you just reinvented sex work, but somehow made it more icky?
Or possibly expensive engagement/wedding rings in non-jewellery form.
On a separate point, some of my socialist (and in a few cases literally communist) friends assert that the issues at the intersection of sex work with consent also apply to all other work under capitalism; I don't have a strong counter-argument to this.
Money is fundamentally unnatural, so it's not surprising that it feels wrong and icky in a lot of situations.
I think you just reinvented sex work, but somehow made it more icky?
The main and big problem with this if anyone would consider it for dating for real, which probably they wouldn’t so no big worry, is what is in the price? So A just paid 20 dollars for the pleasure of having a date with B. What did A buy? Does B have to stay at the date for a set time? Is B obligued to listen enthusiastically to A? Does B have to laugh at A’s jokes? Even if they are lame? And then of course what happens when A thinks they paid for sex and B thinks not?