Dear Captain Capitalism, Men Don't Demand Female Beauty

Aaron Clarey, aka, Captain Capitalism, is one of the smarter men out there. But he has a blind spot. Here it is again:

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, and the reason I'll do so is because it's true, but the most valuable commodity in the world is not oil or gold, silver or diamonds, copper or plutonium. The most valuable commodity in the world is female youth and beauty. And the reason why is very simple. Because it's true. No other commodity in the world is in as high of demand as female youth and beauty. And the reason why is that half the world's population (they would be men) demand it. And not only do they demand it, they demand it highly. They demand it so much that they built civilization to afford it win it over, so much so to the point we could say nearly all of human civilization and global historical GDP was created to get it.

Ummm. Nope.

Female beauty isn’t a commodity. We can use a commodity to create something of value: as wheat is used to create flour is used to create bread. Female beauty cannot be used to create anything. It has value to the woman insofar as she can use it to manipulate and gain advantages from others, but for anyone who is not having sex with her, her beauty has value in the way that art has value. People who say that art is a commodity are trolling you, not making a serious point.

Even for pimps, madams and hookers, female beauty is not a commodity. The commodity is sex. Beauty is a competitive advantage, a unique selling point.

For another thing, men do not demand female beauty. Don’t listen to what men say, look at what men do. They settle for… well, by definition, in a country where over half the women (and men) are overweight, most of them have to settle for Four and below. Sixes may be sexy and attractive, but they are not beautiful. Beautiful is above the Pretty Line, and that's a very small proportion of the 18-40 population. Three per cent or less, and in some places, it's zero per cent. And yet the guys line up to court and marry overweight, unattractive women. Lenny Bruce got it right: "You put guys on a desert island, they’ll do it to mud!"


Men don't demand youthful beauty. They fantasise about it. They have the same fantasy about Ferraris, holidays on some Pacific archipelago, getting a Knighthood, seven-figure bonuses, or any other form of fame, fortune and recognition. All these are unavailable to them, and any idea they could have any of it is a fantasy.

As the regular man grows older, the fantasy fades and he accepts what he can get. Until she divorces him, the boss sacks him, and the cost of everything goes through the roof while his salary stays the same. At that point he discovers that what he thought he was getting was as much a fantasy as dating Gigi Hadid.

What about the men who don't accept what they can get? They don't get into long-term relationships, and they sure as heck don't get married. We bachelors enjoy women's company from time to time, but she needs to meet our minimum standards for the time period involved in the interaction. (This is proportional to her hotness, logarithmically proportional to her ability to maintain a reasonable conversation, and inversely proportional to the sum of the work required to entertain and / or to to seduce her. This means that unavailable smart hotties don’t get lots of time, which makes sense, as it’s all wasted, since she’s not going to have sex with us. But I digress.)

The good Captain doesn't understand what motivates men. Neither does Rollo, who makes the same mistake. For the majority of men, women are not a reward, a status symbol, a source of validation, or a goal. They are an activity with costs and benefits, a resource with uses and hinderances. This is not an explicit calculation, by the way, it's instinctive, it's the immediate sensation of "Nah" or "Yea" when someone suggests something: we can invent reasons afterwards, but none have anything to do with that immediate reaction. It's probably a simple algorithm: we avoid the stuff that was tedious last time, and we do the stuff that was rewarding last time. Hence that overwhelming feeling that in all human affairs, you're only as good as your last (enter activity here).

The women I see, day in and out, on and in the trains, pavements, offices and shops of London don't inspire me to do anything. And I'm sure they feel the same way about my grey-haired ass. There's a brief moment in our lives when men and women matter to each other, for reasons that make no sense ten years after, and then it sinks into indifference, so we can get on with inventing gadgets, discovering medicines, building bridges and castles and sewers, solving mathematical problems, creating art, and all that other good stuff that life is really about. Babies are a by-product. Boeing 747's are the real product. Life is about business.