ECONOMIC THEORY OF LOVE

By A Rising Rechearser

Basic economic problems (Basic love problems)
Anyone who would endeavour to learn economics would definitely come across this Opportunity Cost theory. This is the cost in terms of the best alternative forgone.

Production Possibility Curve (Love possibility curve-LPC):
The diagram shows that life consists of two very important things- dating and studies. Time is limited, hence, the love birds has to allocate their precious time both for their relations and books. If dating unit is 1, then 2 unit of studying has to be sacrificed. If dating curve is almost at the top, then unit of studying is somewhere near zero. Since anything of too much is not good, it has an adverse effect on the lives of loved ones.

It is then the other factors come in which leads to the inward shift in LPC. Both parents and teachers, who gets the chance to exercise their sense of importance, plays a vital role to make the absent minded lovers study more. That is the theory. In practical, though dating time declines, the studying time actually remains the same.

The dire consequence is illustrated below:
Another factor which leads to an inward shift is Ganjam. 'Parai dhukle Thaj Khora Kore Debo, boleche parar dadara….' This song of Anjan Dutt explains it all. For my own life security, I prefer to stop in here.

Externality:
This is defined as the social costs or benefits borne by the third party.
Positive Externality:
-The profit of entertainment centres, like Thunderbolt and Sports Zone booms up. Love is an encouragement for businessmen to invest more on restaurants, and fast food shops. This is also the reason why gift shops like Hallmark and Archies exists at the first place. These acts as 'complementary goods'.
-More 'Kaji Offices' are set up, since there is more probability of elopement.
-The girls gives an ultimatum to the boy that if he does not stop in being involved in Ganjams, then she will leave him. Society is relieved from hassles since less people are beaten up (systemized).
Negative Externality:
-When there is a tension going on between the "Romeos and Juliet's" then, the frustration and anger is poured on the younger siblings. Poor brothers and sisters.
-With the 'falling' in the, there is a 'rising' in phone bills. Poor parents have to pay for their children's love affairs. Analysis shows that this has an advantage too. Government revenue shoots up; hence there is more money for the country's improvement. Since the phone is always busy, others who try to call never get the line. If there are two lover boys in the same house, one pair cannot get to talk because of the other one. Since they are the thieves of the same mango tree, all they can do is 'curse'(Resemblance to anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental)

POPULATION:
According to the Bangladesh bureau of statistics, the male-female ratio is 6:1.The supply of wanna- be brides are more than is demanded. Hence, in marriage market, a well established, handsome, attractive groom is a rare fish in the pond. Let alone, handsome ones, the not so good looking ones get to choose among at least 6-7 beauty pageants. One way to solve this is marriage between inter nations should not be taken as something unsocial to do. Government might intervene in the love/marriage market to solve this social problem. The government might provide facilities to those female beings who will marry males from other nations. This will act as an encouragement, and will help to decrease the supply of females in Bangladeshi marriage market.
The figure of marriage market then would be like this:

MARGINAL RATE OF RETURN:
The law states that initially love turns the 'Lailys and Mojnus' blind. They try to spend as much time as possible with their sweetheart. Hence, the utility increases. No matter, wherever they are, whatever they do, they are just for each other.
The figure is illustrated below:
The lovers are deeply in love. You will get sick and tired of hearing their love's name. They will try to convince their friends and family as to how nice, intelligent and fantastic their lover boy or girl is.

At one point, they think that their love is made in heaven. That is the peak point. After sometime, 'Time, not the mind, put an end to love'. Either they accept each other as a part of their life, and realizes that there is more in life like friends, family and own interests. Hence utility goes down.

Or, they get bored, which is a normal scenario now-a- days, and 'dumps' their ex-love. This also leads to the decline in curve. As the saying goes-"love is sweet in the beginning, but sour in the ending".

Though there is a wide availability of the commodity-love, there is an acute scarcity of the 'pure essence' of it. This is why it became possible to relate love with business. It is a pity that now true love can only be found in history books and romantic novels.

(Note: no offence intended in the above article to all the true lovers in the world. I still appreciate their philosophical outlook. I wish them all the best.)

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