Equal Value In Relationships

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That's partly what's so good about it. But you also can't forget that people have inherent value, too. If my wife became disabled, I'd be devastated. Not because of the change that would mean for me, but because I value her and would hate for anything to happen to her. But I wouldn't leave her. Her presence in my life IS the reward, whatever form that may take, and she's the kind of person who deserves the best care I could make available.


Men's time IS value. It makes no difference which side you're on. The idea of men asking women out and paying for the date is a matter of western tradition. My opinion is whoever asks for a date pays. Women traditionally don't do the asking. The tradition is silly. But as long as women expect to be asked and men are expected to do the asking, this isn't going to change.

The non-transactional approach would say that, at best, men and women split the bill. I don't really have a problem with that. It runs the risk of enabling individuals to hoard value. It says, "Yeah, I'll hang out with you for an hour, but I'm depriving you the pleasure of rewarding me." Nothing is ever good enough, and I'd be concerned about the character of the person refusing a reward she has earned. I understand that's not necessarily going to be the case, but I do see it as a possible concern. Asserting one's independence is good, admirable, and respectable.

The main problem of non-transactionals, though, is giving-taking is a one-way street. A woman might accept a date for the free meal, not for a man's value. She accepts because she has a "right" to all a man has to offer. A man might pay for food and entertainment not because he values her company, but because he expects sex when he doesn't deserve it.

I only don't like welfare because I see it as depriving the poor of their right to express their own value through productive effort. Imposing welfare on the poor is really just another evolutionary step from slavery. It's cruel. Politicians and "community organizers" have a way of making obnoxious sums of money off the backs of the poor. They are greedy people. They use welfare as a tool to convince poor people to stay poor in exchange for power. Meanwhile, the loot hardworking producers, take a substantial cut, and throw a few pennies at the poor.

Disabled people, those who are genuinely unable to live productive lives in the same sense, lose out because the money they SHOULD get and DESERVE to get goes to people who ARE capable but are either lazy or being manipulated by looters. If you want to be greedy, use the needy.

The looters are especially slick because they impose all sorts of laws and regulations that favor those who bribe them and kill the ones who are honest. And when these companies get exposed for being corrupt, the looters all scream "See? SEE??? THIS is what you get with capitalism!" The looters take the problems THEY created and shift the blame to the producers.

Capitalism works best when it's left alone.

Welfare is perfectly ok with me as long as it's doing what it should be doing. If I'm paying taxes because the disabled are valuable and deserve quality of life, then that's what I should expect to see. I would take no qualms myself receiving social security benefits because I paid my taxes and I'm simply taking back what the government owes me. There's nothing immoral in that. But I do find it immoral that the welfare system is abusive to hard workers and recipients alike.


Time isn't money. Time is VALUE. Money is a physical representation of value used as a tool of exchange. When I go to work, I have two classes to teach, plus I play piano and sing during mass, plus I run sound for school functions or at least make sure the system is functional for the next guy, plus I play piano for my own church for choir practice and Sunday services, plus I prep music for other instrumentalists on Sunday morning, plus I prep stem mixes for special church occasions, plus I volunteer with an orchestra of other church musicians, plus I attend conferences--all of which takes time when I could be, I dunno, farming or something. I can make a cool $300 just for playing a wedding ceremony, which ordinarily won't take more than an hour. It's the preparation and the stress of a demanding environment of a wedding in which everything is expected to go flawlessly that commands such high value. I make enough money that I can afford to play assisted living facilities and volunteer with the orchestra, all because I get results and people trust me and support the work I do--even the extra stuff I don't technically get paid for, the stuff I do for my own enjoyment and what I do for people I love.

The whole money-is-evil crowd completely miss this. They either have been sold on all the misconceptions of money or they're just jealous because they don't have any and don't want to work to get it.

If you are disabled and unable to do anything, I have nothing at all against you. You're the one the system was made for and the one it's failing the most next to those being forced to pay into it only to see it support people who don't deserve it. Nobody wants to see you lose. But the very people claiming to support you are the very ones choking the system that keeps you alive.

Back to topic...

Time with a person IS valued. Money is a method of exchange, but it isn't the ONLY means of exchange. Yes, people CAN "just want to be together." They are exchanging time for time, and the reward is being in the company of those who bring them pleasure in whatever form that happens to take. If someone doesn't give you pleasure, you don't hang out with them. If supporting disabled people brings you pleasure, you hang out with disabled people. You haven't lost anything spending money or time on a disabled person because you've already gotten what you wanted. Or with a poor person. Or with...whoever, rich, poor, abled, disabled. We ALL have value as long as we're alive. When someone dies, we mourn the wealth that has gone out of the world. That person is no longer here for us to enjoy. So either we mourn and heal from the loss, or we celebrate what we HAD with that person, remembering the world is a richer place for him or her having been here.

Ah yes, "Truuuuuuuuuust meeeeeeeeee."

Riiiiiiiight.

"Trust me" is something you frequently hear with tyrants, Ponzi schemes, and televangelists.

I believe in results. I "trust" objectivity.

I can put faith in someone with a history of consistent results. I trust my wife because she has a history of being rock solid. I have faith in God because He's never failed me. I trust people with good reputations because they have good reputations for good reasons. I trust people who fail when they don't accept excuses from themselves and make good on their failures, either compensating for failure or correcting their mistakes in future efforts. Everyone else? Sorry, not sorry. I need evidence. Everything else is the stuff of greed and mystical fantasyland.

Well, if time is value and money is a representation of value, then clearly, you must agree that time is money too. I follow and agree with your argument completely in relation to work and any other exchange between people. My time is valuable and I won't give it to just anybody. I invest lots of my time in my work in exchange for money, and I see nothing wrong with that. In a friendship, I wouldn't give up my time without expecting things in return. I think we are in agreement here. Our disagreement is with relationships, and if they should be governed by similar principles or not.

Trust is built, not verbally claimed. It's up to everybody if they trust somebody or not. If people are behaving badly they wouldn't be trusted.

You claim you trust your wife completely, yet that you need your relationship to be value-for-value, which sounds a bit inconsistent to me. Although, a lot of what you write about your relationship really isn't value-for-value.

Why disagree on relationships? Why hold some people to one standard and others to another? I want the best of everything in all aspects of life. I want the best for everyone connected in support of me. Why sell myself short by giving anything less? Why give someone, or anyone, who might potentially mean me harm a free pass? If anything, you ought to expect MORE from those closest to you while keeping the looters at arms length. You keep those people closest to you for a reason, right?

I think the answer is that I expect a relationship to be something completely different from socializing in our society. It's not about gaining value or prestige. It's not about goods or trade. It's not a show-off or a simple and cheap way to get sex. I want a soul mate that brings me meaning and happiness. I don't want it to be like work.I don't want to have to keep records. I want a simple and easy communicate style that works without effort. Overall, it should be a large source of energy and inspiration.

Trust is EARNED. I KNOW I can trust my wife because I've seen how she behaves when she doesn't know anybody is looking. She doesn't hide her comings and goings from me. She doesn't hide conversations she has with other people from me. She doesn't hide her spending habits from me. I trust her because I can SEE that she is trustworthy. I know if she takes risks she's aware of what's at stake and won't do anything rash. I know because every effort she's made at things has been productive and positive.

People will often say that isn't trust or faith. They teach that blind faith and trust is the ideal. And I think that is just stupid. "Just trust me" is a guilt mechanism for getting what you want at someone else's expense without having to expend any effort, without having to demonstrate your own worth. If you believe that trust must be built, or as I like to say it, "earned," then that means you have a transactional attitude towards trust. Faith and trust are substantiated in objective reality any time someone delivers on his word. Consistent, reliable results over time encourages others to allow one in a position of trust to act with increasing agency. It takes a long time to earn trust, and only a single action to utterly destroy it.

As far as my relationship goes, she values me and I value her. It goes beyond that, actually, but our regard for each other is enough. That is an ongoing exchange--I'm not leaving her, and she's not leaving me. We're not cheating on each other. We often help each other. It is transactional and I derive selfish pleasure from seeing her happy.

A relationship can be whatever you want. Why couldn't it be different from socializing? And to be honest, I don't care in the least what society thinks about me. I'm going to do what I enjoy doing. Either get on board or get out of the way.


Right. It can't be. It is immoral to live for other people.


Um...yes, it is. If you value someone enough to reward them with your presence, that is trade. You are both the currency of exchange and the object being traded for.


Who said it was?


Ah, so you DO want something...


Yes, THERE it is!! !

To bring you meaning...well, I find that immoral. You already have meaning. You don't need someone else for that. Depending on someone to give me meaning seems...parasitic. But happiness? Sure. The main takeaway here is you WANT someone for a SPECIFIC perceived need or purpose.


That is a problem. You want a good thing. You don't want to expend time or effort in order to earn or deserve it. That's immoral. At some point, effort must be made. If you aren't making the effort, then that means SHE is. You don't want a partner. You want an emotional slave.


Who said you had to keep records?


Don't we all? But then there's no sense of worth, no sense of earning or deserving the product of our labor. To put forth little effort is to assign the object of desire low value. Internet access is fairly cheap, for example. It's worth little in real value. But possessing little value overall and high accessibility to all allows the quick and easy movement of data that DOES have high value at high volume. Nobody actually pays for the internet itself. They pay for a service to access it. The real money is in what's ON the internet once you get there.

I dunno about communicating with someone. That's fine, I guess. But it's not about communicating. It's about what benefit someone stands to get from offering that person time in her presence. You get more out of a relationship primarily by expecting more, but you also must offer something of value even if that something is yourself. If someone cannot or will not meet your expectations, you move on. I don't date a girl expecting to be insulted or mistreated. But if insults and mistreatment are what I get, she is not entitled to being asked for another date. She possesses infinite value as a human being, of course. But she has demonstrated she does not value me and that our values have no common overlap. So I will not continue offering her value. I won't be seeing her again.


One would hope, at least. That's what should be expected from any relationship.

But you are, based on what you've said here, only seeing this as one-sided. You haven't demonstrated how this is supposed to benefit her. If you are taking pleasure from someone or getting some benefit without offering some benefit--which can be anything of value--then you don't deserve it.

If someone doesn’t dona transactional relationships then their just a parisite

Non transactional doesn’t equal parasite.

Yes, I agree that it is earned and that it takes time. I also agree that it can very quickly be destroyed.

Still, I don't agree that trust has anything to do with transactions. I don't believe that trust is simply not to cheat with tit for tat (or value-for-value). It takes a lot more than that to build trust. Trust also has nothing to do with worth.

Trust is built with actions, but those actions don't need to be related to exchange. Persistence and consistency play an important part in trust. I trust that my love will not suddenly stop her online "correspondence" because she has consistently maintained it for a long time. I think she trusts that I will continue to post for her on Facebook regularly. I also think we both trust we will continue to play our real-life games several hours per day, as this has been going on for nine months or so now. And as most of our real-life activities now are when it is dark, a major reason we can keep it up is that we trust we will help each other out if something bad happens.



I know a couple where wife got Parkinson many years ago. She died this year, but her husband kept her at home all the time and had to do a lot of work for her. I think that is an amazing example of a non-transactional relationship. If we assume their relationship was initially balanced, and perhaps even transactional with a balance, it over time became more and more unbalanced. At the end, the wife didn't provide any (measurable) value to him, and he had to be on the giving side most of the time. Yet, I would not call this a parasitic relationship (I think few people would). With a transactional mindset, the husband would have placed her in some institution as things deteriorated, and perhaps even searched for a new wife.

You have yourself claimed that you would do the same for your wife, which essentially means that you are not in a (pure) transactional relationship.

You might argue that your wife is priceless, but priceless essentially means infinite value, and you cannot trade with things that have infinite value. When you add or subtract from infinite value you still get infinite value, and so your transactional economic model doesn't work with infinite values or priceless "goods".

No, it doesn’t equal parasite. It could also mean you’re the victim of one.

Or it could be neither and just be a happy healthy relationship

Well aware yo think I’m a parisite who should be in a relationship

It was about five years since I got a crush on her now, and I have used several thousand hours on her by now, so I think it is pretty offensive to claim I have not put any effort into it. And she has put a lot of effort into it too, so it is not exactly one-sided. However, we have not put effort into it based on some transactional model. We initially did that because of curiosity, and later because of love. There is absolutely nothing transactional about it. And nothing parasitic.

Initially, I didn't expect anything from it, rather it was mostly a crush and curiosity. As things have developed we have become sort of soul mates, and based on that, she has brought a lot of meaning into my life. That's not an entitlement or expectation. It sort of just happened. The communication style we developed required a lot of effort, but also will be very effective in a relationship.

“And she has put a lot of effort into it too, so it is not exactly one-sided.”

Your effort is value, as is hers. What you described is an exchange. That is a transaction.

Rdos, how many time are you going to resurrect the same dead argument just to watch it commit suicide? Let it go.

If it’s neither, then nobody stands to gain from the relationship. That’s just two people who happen to be awkwardly sitting in the same room not even making eye contact much less a meaningful conversation. You take value out of a relationship, you strip the relationship of its meaning.

And nobody is calling you a parasite, sly. If you have some guilt you’re dealing with, that’s on you. Otherwise, you’re making unnecessary assumptions.

If you’re worried that I’m calling you a parasite, first consider what I mean by that. In this context, a parasite is someone who undeservingly, knowingly takes something of value from one who has created it or earned it without any attempt or intention to return something of equal
value in return. For example, imagine a cheater who demands loyalty of his partner without consideration to loyalty himself. He doesn’t deserve fidelity because he’s unwilling to give it—not to mention that it’s immoral to sleep with a woman you don’t love. And I don’t care if you ARE married, but that’s a whole other topic. That guy is a leech, a parasite. He takes what he wants with no regard to rewarding those he steals from.

I’ve never argued against the welfare system. I’ve argued against looters who steal from producers, take a substantial cut for themselves, and redistribute paltry leftovers to those who neither need nor deserve it. Are you disabled? Are you capable of living independently? Do you not have someone who can take care of you? I’m not asking you to answer those questions, it’s just something to think about. If you struggle due to disability, as ONE example, you’re entitled to assistance to meet your basic needs. I see absolutely no shame whatsoever in that. I’m not interested in taking that away from you. But I’d also like to add if you live in poverty as a disabled person having to support other disabled family members, you need to find out who these looters are who are exploiting you and taking money you ought to be entitled to. I’d be pissed if I were you, because the money is there to improve your quality of life, and you’ll never see it.

Anyway...

Also, there’s more to value than money. Money is a tool for exchanging value-for-value. There are people out there who prefer the barter system to money. Barter IMO is trade at its finest because it’s easier to see the OBJECTIVE value of an item.

Relationships are like that. I have plenty of ME to go around. I’m not even really THAT picky. I just love women. All I really care about is not spending an entire weekend alone. That is a value. There are any number of women who share the same value. When we go out on Friday or Saturday, we both get what we want. I get the value of her company, she gets the benefit of mine. Ok, obviously I’m married and that’s not real-world for me. I value never having to sleep alone. She doesn’t want to sleep alone. It works. Value-for-value. We both want a partner who will listen. We both also like to listen. Value-for-value.

You don’t need money for that. You just need YOU. You get to set your own worth, so set it high and live consistently with high value.

I won’t lie. Money brings freedom and autonomy. That’s an attractive feature. You can do more with a lot of money. You have more flexibility in matching value-for-value if you are able to work hard and accumulate wealth. But do understand that money isn’t EVERYTHING. Money doesn’t matter. VALUE does. People who are tremendously concerned with value often will make a lot of money. But I’m virtually penniless. Expressing your value of others in ways besides spending money has very interesting effects. I used to make a point of making eye contact with random women at the park and smiling. More often than not, I’d get smiles back. Eventually I worked up the courage to start conversations. I gave them value; they wanted to give me value in return. It’s crazy-effective.

I'll just disagree that it is a transaction or a value-for-value exchange.