Hostility to Money

What explains the hostility to money payments in what can loosely be described as social contexts? Consider for a particularly striking example, the number of men who would think it entirely proper to take a woman to an expensive restaurant in the hope of return benefits later in the evening but would never dream of offering her money for the same objective.

Adoption

For another example, consider adoption. Adoptive parents pay lawyers and adoption agencies to arrange the adoption and can pay for the medical costs of the mother — the current cost to adopt a domestic infant ranges from $20,000 to $45,000 (from one source). But it is illegal in the US for them buy the mother’s consent to their adopting her infant. Arguments for forbidding that are sometimes put in terms of the immorality of buying babies — without any explanation of why it is wrong to transfer parental rights and obligations in exchange for a money payment if the payment goes to the mother but not if the payment goes to an attorney for arranging the transfer or to an adoption agency, or why an adoption agency can be expected to be more concerned with a child’s welfare than either its natural mother or adoptive parents.¹

Host Mothers

A similar issue is raised by extensive restrictions on surrogacy, the practice of having one woman bear another woman’s child and transfer it at birth to her and, usually, her partner. That includes both surrogacy using an egg donated by the intended mother, often fertilized by her partner, and surrogacy using an egg donated by someone else.² Commercial surrogacy, surrogacy in exchange for a payment, is illegal in the EU, the UK, Canada, China, Brazil and many other countries and some but not all US states.³

In Australia, all jurisdictions allow altruistic surrogacy; with commercial surrogacy being a criminal offense. In New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory it is an offence to enter into international commercial surrogacy arrangements with potential penalties extending to imprisonment for up to one year in Australian Capital Territory, up to two years imprisonment in New South Wales and up to three years imprisonment in Queensland. (Wikipedia)

In some countries, such as France, Germany, Finland and China, all surrogacy, altruistic or commercial, is illegal. In some of them it is also common.

While many countries ban commercial surrogacy, there are some where it is legal, sometimes only for citizens. There are often restrictions on who is allowed have a child produced by surrogacy, typically targeted at either ability to parent a child (age, marital status), inability to bear a child, or both. Ukraine was at one time a major European surrogacy hub, a role that passed to Georgia after the Russian invasion. Other countries where surrogacy is legal include Russia, Iran and Greece.

Why bans on surrogacy are common is an interesting question but the part of it relevant for this post is the common pattern of a ban on commercial but not altruistic surrogacy.

Hospitality

My wife and I invite another couple over for dinner several times. They feel obligated to reciprocate, either by inviting us over or taking us out. It would never occur to them to instead reciprocate by offering us $40 in lieu of a dinner invitation.

Part of what I find interesting about this social norm is that I have internalized it. I see nothing wrong with a payment for adoption or surrogacy — one of my grandchildren only exists due to the latter — but would not consider offering a cash payment in that situation, would be uncomfortable accepting one. Why?

An Explanation?

In one of my Substack posts I raised the possibility of introducing a paid subscription option and my concern that, even if the free option was still available, the existence of the other would repel some potential readers. A commenter on the post offered an explanation of why that might happen relevant to the issue of this post.

Speaking only for myself, but for me even that changes the experience. Right now you and I are having a casual conversation, similar to if you and I had met in an elevator, a smoke pit, a plane, a bar, a crack house, or any other place where people have random, sometimes deep and meaningful, conversations with no obligations or expectation of either party outside good faith participation, it's a social relationship of equals and we are both getting the same thing out of it, joy; it's not prostitution.

Once you introduce money though, even if it's donation only, you disrupt that on both sides as it creates expectations as well as evaluation of monetary value even if unintentional. I'm the sort of person that pays if asked (or suggested) as you wouldn't be asking if you didn't want it and as a free rider, I should respect your wishes given I value you but that's the problem as then I start doing math if I actually value you and if so, how much. And I'd feel bad if I knew others were paying and I didn't even if it was "optional" hence rather than pay, I'd just go somewhere else where I'm respected and not devalued.

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Also people tend to not like perceived regular charity by their subjective peers and that is the feel you would be creating, i.e. "Everyone has to pay but you because your poor hence inferior to us but we are magnanimous so don't worry about it as we will cover you. But we know you know" and it just grates on you over time. Also imagine if you went to lunch with whomever your regular friend group is and then all of a sudden Bob (making that name up) is like "Hey David, we have been friends for years but I tend to be the leader of this group / coordinator so from now on, how about you and Frank buy lunch for me for the honor of me sitting with you. You don't have to of course, Frank said he will just pay more if you don't, but you are inferior to me so why wouldn't you? After all my words are like mana from God to your ears". You probably thought Bob was just there as your peer and friend, a relationship of equals you both enjoyed passing the time jawjacking, not a (effectively) sex worker building his brand to suck you in and then charge you for the pleasure of his time once you were hooked. It's dishonest and ends relationships.

The argument is that payment affects the perceived status of the relationship, that if people pay me to read my posts they are recognizing me as their superior. That does not fit my feelings about most people I pay such as house cleaners, cab drivers, or waiters, but perhaps it holds for some subset of relationships. I do not think it is a complete explanation of the puzzle but it might be part of one.

Talking about status suggests an example that goes the other way. Derogeance, in medieval Europe, was the offense of a noble engaging in base activities, which included commerce and trade. That suggests that accepting payment for your activities, working for pay, lowers your status.

For another possible example of that pattern, consider tipping. It is common in the US, in many contexts socially required, less so in Europe. I have long suspected that part of the reason is many Europeans seeing tipping as signaling the class superiority of the tipper, of accepting a tip as conceding the class inferiority of the recipient. European societies have more recent experience of and more concern with class divisions than the US.⁴

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1. I discussed this issue at greater length in an earlier post.

2. The older, low tech, version is for a woman to deliberately get pregnant by an infertile woman’s husband in order to produce a child for the married couple. I have not come across any references online but expect that in many countries the commercial version of that too would be illegal.

3. My source for information on the legal situation in different countries.

4. I first came to that conclusion reading Orwell’s essays and fiction from the UK but believe it is true of many European countries as well.