Advice to Lonely People: Buy Company

Just friends but not like before

It is widely acknowledged keeping plenty of company is an essential part of the good life, and, thus, loneliness is a serious impediment to its true realisation. Unfortunately, 7.1% of Britons are chronically lonely. Making more friends is one way out of this, but there is a quicker fix for the lonely too: Buy more company off your friends by taking them out for dinner and drinks at your expense. The lonely should not think they are being taken advantage of, because, the equality of friendship which allegedly forms the baseline against which they are being taken advantage of is a fiction, contrary to Aristotle.

The problem many lonely people face today is their company is only valued at £5 an hour on the margin by their friends while all of said friends value their time at the margin at a rate in excess of £5 an hour, so, no company comes their way. (No company is engaged because the friends value their solitude at above £5 which is what the lonely person is implicitly offering below). Their friends’ time may be more valuable because they are simply better at entertaining themselves, or, due to their good story telling and charm they can find better company which makes their marginal hour much more valuable.

Let’s say the friends of the lonely value their marginal hour of social time at £8 as a result, i.e., they’d only give up other socialising or solitude for an experience of £8’s value or more. Now, very lonely people value the marginal hour of company at £12 with a cost of £3 an hour. The problem of loneliness looks easy to solve here. The lonely pay their friends £5 an hour for their company, ensuring a consumer surplus for them of £4 an hour (£12 overall value minus opportunity cost of £3 and £5 of money) and a producer surplus for their friend of £2 an hour is brought about. £2 of producer surplus coming from £10 of overall value from the company of the lonely; constituted by £5 an hour supplied by the company of the lonely itself and £5 an hour by the £5 note, minus, the £8 opportunity cost. More company could be bought from the friend until the marginal benefit of company exactly equalled its marginal cost. Loneliness would be largely solved.

Why doesn’t this occur today? The obvious answer is the psychic cost to the lonely man of making the payment to his friend is in excess of the benefit to be gained, or, the very act of making the payment destroys the gain to be made. If we were to follow the likes of Gary Becker and rational choice economists and not moralise our conception of rationality then we could simply stop our analysis here and say little can be done by the individual. Most of us though don’t think whatever preferences people happen to have are unquestionable, rather, implicitly adopting a hedonistic or objective list theory of the good, we judge the preferences which constitute costs and benefits to themselves be warranted or not.

When asking out a girl we’ll say its irrational to let fear play a part in deliberation because it is not properly considered a cost. Similarly, we admit it is irrational to not go to an important job interview because a spur of the moment urge made you want a burger instead, or, eating another doughnut knowing you’ll regret it after doing so and being on a diet. Granting this truth, i.e., psychic costs and benefits as embodied in revealed preference are not unquestionable, indeed, can’t really be called that, we need to determine whether the mentioned psychic cost, so to speak, in paying a friend for their company is warranted, i.e., should be in the cost benefit analysis. Only warranted costs and benefits determine rational action. We’ll deal with whether the offer destroys the social surplus itself later. Before this though, I need to address an objection to my broad conception of rationality.

Peter Grey has disputed this conception of rationality. According to him the fear which would arise from asking out the girl and its psychic cost should be counted, meaning, should you be overcome by fear and not ask her out you still act rationally. Consider this counter example: A young politician really wants to make a speech on stage at conference but is overcome by fear, doesn’t, and, predictably regrets it afterwards. It looks to me as if he acts irrationally, i.e., against his interests, but Grey’s idea of counting all psychic costs and psychic benefits equally would suggest he doesn’t. This psychological egoism was espoused by Thomas Hobbes and Bernand Manderville and strikes me as deeply implausible. Why just count the satisfaction of current preferences? If preference satisfaction is valuable then future preferences would seem to warrant satisfaction too, but, should this be admitted, what is to adjudicate between present preferences and future preferences? Idealised preferences at least, i.e., those made after thoughtful reflection, or, those which are noncontradictory: However, once this is admitted then there exists the prospect of only counting some costs and benefits, e.g., not counting unwarranted fear, embarrassment or shame, as I have outlined in the previous paragraph. It also helps us to avoid Becker’s contention drug addiction is rational. I digress.

Many people such as Micheal Sandel say you cannot pay for friendship because ‘the money that buys the friendship dissolves it’. Maybe. Yet buying friendship and buying company are different things as company is simply an important part of friendship. Perhaps it is thought your company should exclusively make up the value of the interaction with your friend; no money or other goods should come into it. This is very implausible. Imagine between leaving work and going to the airport I have to fit in dinner and a friend offers to see me. I will take the offer should he come to dinner with me, which I need to get, but not if he only wants to go for drinks. Obviously, it’s fine to make the company conditional on a meal, but that is to concede that company need not exclusively make up the value of the interaction to make it worthwhile, or, morally fine, so, money could help my friend spend more time with me too.

My friend, Mr Grey, again, writes: ‘If they were truly your friend they would not take your money’. I imagine he’s getting at the idea a friend should have concern for the wellbeing of his own friends’; therefore, he shouldn’t take money off him because it’s against his friend’s wellbeing. If your lonely friend wants more company from you, you should give it to him for free. This produces a contradiction. If you should give up more of your company to your friend because it’s in their interest which you should promote, then, similarly, your lonely friend should reject the offer because they know you’d be giving up £8 worth of your company in exchange for just £5’s worth of their company, which is against your interest. Taking Aristotle’s definition of friendship as to ‘wish each other’s good’ and ‘be aware of each other’s goodwill’ would suggest Grey’s objection is the very antithesis of friendship because everyone is worse off should you not accept payment. Why reject the Pareto improvement!

Bryan Caplan discusses the issue of payment concerning dating, writing that one of the reasons why men don’t pay women to date them is: ‘[O]ffering or accepting side payments feels so degrading neither side can accept.’ Let’s ignore the offering part which we have been considering whether to properly considered as a cost. Undoubtedly offering to pay your friends would put them off from being your friends, and, thus, my scheme is unlikely to work until people see the light. (Christopher isn’t going to pay Ava money for her company). The offer does seem to destroy the social surplus itself. No, actually, I speak too quick. There is a way you can buy more company on the margin and that is buying things for your friends, e.g., offering to buy them another pint, dinner, or, dessert. No one is going to think of you as a weirdo for doing that, indeed, they’ll want to spend more time with you instead.

Here are three examples today of where company is already bundled up with a money payment or reduction in money payment. WhatsYourPrice is a dating site where men pay women for dates thus contracting the demand of men and expanding the supply of women ensuring an equilibrium. On their site, which has 35,000 members, you can secure a date for about $25 to $50. A better example is Share My Home, ‘a national provider that matches older people with compatible companions for mutual benefits of shared living’. The arrangement is crystal clear in that: ‘The Companion pledges 10 to 15 hours of weekly home help and company, and in return, the older person provides them with a room and a place to call home.’ Seeking.com is another example of a dating site where money changes hands. And I am sure genuine friendship comes out of some of these arrangements, despite their origin solely being in the young person wanting cheap housing; why then can’t genuine friendship continue on the margin via goods in kind with the origin being a genuine friendship to begin with.

Nevertheless, I sense an objection raising its head at a great speed. People don’t like being taken advantage of and I imagine always paying for lunch or additional drinks will really irk some lonely people resulting in them ceasing to subsidise their friend’s company because of it, meaning, a beneficial exchange stops. We need to establish whether the lonely guy here is being taken advantage of such that the resultant cost is a genuine one which should be counted in his calculations, or, should simply be a constraint on his behaviour. According to Aristotle ‘equality is felt to be an essential element of friendship’, and, ‘this principle therefore should also regulate the intercourse of friends who are unequal: the one who is benefited in purse or character must repay what he can, namely honour’. Constantly buying meals for people has the buyer being taken advantage of, because, the proper state of friendship is of equality.

Again, very strange would be a morality which required an equality which made every party worse off, and, it should be noted, if the social surplus is split equally then an equality of friendship is maintained anyway. Disregarding this, however, it is implausible true friendship should require equality between the parties anyway. We all know that in some of our friendships the social surplus is often split highly in favour of one side of the parties. Only consider that you’ll be the one who often drives further to see them than they would contemplate to drive to see you. And should this be accepted as morally fine, then, analogously, there can be no objection to constantly buying dinner for friends who would otherwise not want to see you. Certainly, getting people’s company by buying them a drink is not thought to be bad per se, only see men asking out women by offering them drinks as a counter point.

The conclusion to this is simple: The sense of being taken advantage of by disproportionately buying drinks for your friends should not be taken as a proper cost, or, constraint, in considering whether to buy them drinks or dinner to acquire more of their company. Equality between friends, contrary Aristotle, is not required. To respond to it is like responding to a feeling of loyalty to a person when you know no such loyalty is warranted at all when it comes to helping them. Lonely people then should start buying company by taking people out to dinner more often; ignoring their feelings. Should they not want to pay for company they should work on themselves so as to make themselves more desirable to others, or, seek out new friends whose company is cheaper on the margin. Unfortunately for them, there is usually good reason their company is less valuable on the margin, which is all the more reason to buy the expensive stuff via dinner and drinks.

I suspect many people will dislike buying dinner and drinks in this way because it makes it all too clear that the other side is the party which is producing the greater value in the relationship. There is a sense of inferiority which infests them. In all sorts of relationships though we take no issue with being the party which supplies the smaller proportion of benefits, indeed, when I buy a Coca Cola and get a huge consumer surplus and Coca Cola a smaller producer surplus, I am the big winner and I welcome that. Nevertheless, I imagine the paying party will be all too aware of the higher status of the paid party and resent this. They should not – it’s a silly emotion which is only making their experience worse and does not alter the simple reality that some people’s company is in greater demand than their own.