The Free Trade Economist, The Tariff Free Trade of Relational Expectations

kazikon
Mar 23
17 min read

Updated: Apr 14

PROLOGUE

The Free Trade Economist, The Tariff Free Trade of Relational Expectations is a free-style, stream of conscious, diary-like entry of my thoughts in response to an insightful Instagram reel. The male instagram reel speaker said women are always afraid that they will be too much and men are always afraid that they are never enough. The speaker continued on to explain that love is the harmonious agreement of women dumping their excesses and men storing our surplus. I chewed on that all day and this is what I concluded:

Abstract

Men and women operate like actors in an employment market. Women supply resources and men control the demand of those resources. Both are seeking the perfect marketplace trade negotiations to reach and maintain marketplace equilibrium. Tariff free trades of emotional goods and ideas allow the most efficient market exchange for both actors involved.

This essay dives deeper into the facets of a tariff free trade relationship by analyzing:

What men and women exchange at the marketplace (sex v. commitment)

How men and women exchange at the market place (how consumer confidence affects attachment style)

When men and women decline and pause trade (financial crisis and economic depression)

Why men and women trade at the marketplace (financial and emotional stability)

How men and women protect trade markets (economic policies to stimulate growth)

*This diary-like essay is not intended to pre-suppose binary gender norms but reflects my personal views as a heterosexual woman

This post is organized as follows

Table of Contents

Prologue - raw unedited inspiration on why I wrote this post
Part I explores two topics: the supply and demand of fears that undergird the Instagram reel and a brief discussion of some differences between the sexual marketplace and the emotional marketplace.
Part II is a brief introduction to consumer confidence and explains the three results of spending cuts: slower economic growth, unemployment and deflation
Part III has four subheadings:
- 1). Financial Crisis - How Failed Caregiving Results in Neglected Relationships
- 2). Economic Meltdown - Breakdown in Market Mechanism due to Trade Embargoes
- 3). Economic Depression - Decline in Production, Significant Drops in Consumer Spending and Investment, often Lasting for Years.
- 4). Full Economic Collapse - Hyperinflation, High Unemployment, Breakdown of Normal Commerce and Social Uproar
Part IV Too Big to Fail, Congressional Bail Out via Quantitative Easing
Part V The Resonant Relationship - Free Tariff Trade Union
Part VI Marketplace Equilibrium, Supply and Demand between Men and Women
Part VII Y = MX + B, Perfectly Sloped for Permanent Employment
Part VIII Sidestepping Market In-equilibrium
Part VIIII Beyond Equilibrium, Beneficiaries and Devisees
Epilogue

What began as a short sub-stack note unexpectedly unraveled into a deeper Kazikon web post documenting my internal conversation with my subconscious.

After watching this profound reel, I began to assess the difference between transactional relationships and tariff free trade unions. I thought about America, our nation’s current tariff war with Canada, China and Mexico. I reflected on the Age of Protectionism, how during the late 19th century and the mid-20th century, America restricted imports from other countries through tariffs as a means to protect domestic industries from foreign competition.

I compared that to President Trump’s contemporary promotion on tariffs. According to Whitehouse.gov and the Wall Street Journal, the purpose of these tariffs are to increase border security, resolve trade imbalances with China and renegotiate more favorable trade terms for America.

So long winded, where am I going? Tariffs are a blunt expression of the transactional nature of two nation’s relationships. They are a broad, definitive statement of I am securing my interests over your interests. I thought about the progression of modern day relationships, more transactional and less mutually beneficial. I thought about how there was once a sophisticated finesse to America’s standing as the world hegemony. How like the state of adult relationships we have likewise devolved to blatant disregard and disrespect of another person's needs that don’t reflect our own needs.

Back to the Instagram reel, I thought about the concept of supply and demand. The Ig reel author expresses that men and women have two fears that undermine relational rapport. He states that women are always afraid that we are demanding too much and that men are always afraid that they cannot supply enough.

I thought about how deeply and true those fears resonated with me and I wondered how deeply those fears resonated with my beloved.

As a self proclaimed lawyer-economist, my mind is always reducing ideas into economic analysis. When I hear supply and demand, I immediately visualize the economic mathematical equation for unemployment and how unemployment is the chief indicator of economic success.

I thought about how families are the first units of economic production and I again reduced that to the economic production of individuals. I kept mathematically deducing to examine to psychoanalyze the root of my own fear.

I examined how two individuals conduct collective trade summits, negotiating our vulnerabilities to become lovers. That truth is the raw material that we bring into a relationship.

Like an economic quadratic equation for profit maximization, I kept reducing the parts of the total sum to examine the cost of truth in an unconditional relationship.

What exactly does it mean to fear that we are too much? Where does that original fear stem from? What exactly does it mean for men to fear that they will not be enough? Where does that original fear stem from?

How do our boundaries act like tariffs to safeguard our egos from our darkest fears? How do these fears act like tariffs to prevent the free flow of activity in a relationship?

How does opening our national borders and boundaries incentivize the increased free flow of emotional goods, ideas, supportive love and relational rapport?

Is it ever possible for women to demand too much? For men to supply too little?

Like the concerns that President Trump has that China’s trade agreement with the U.S. is imbalanced… What does relational balance in a relationship look like?

How do men and women survey the total sum of all the emotional goods in a relationship and ensure equal distribution to ensure each partner’s needs are equally being met at all time?

How often does the survey happen? Per fiscal year? Per fiscal quarter? When one or more partners request a trade restructuring meeting?

What about during times of financial crisis? How do partners step up to provide a surplus of resources during times of economic depression?

Keep reading to discover my diary responses to all these inquiries.

PART ONE - SUPPLY AND DEMAND FEARS, BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE SEXUAL AND EMOTIONAL MARKETPLACE

Acknowledging and Conquering our Deepest Fear

As women we are always afraid that we are too much and men are always afraid that they are not enough. They both are afraid that they are each incapable of reaching and maintaining a synergistic relationship. A synergistic relationship is where two people are working together to produce a result that is greater than the sum of what they can produce independently.

In economics, we call this market equilibrium. Market equilibrium is the point where supply and demand curves intersect on a graph. Market equilibrium is what producers are willing to supply and what consumers are willing to buy. Market clearing price is the equilibrium price where demand matches supply perfectly enough to transact an exchange.

Life Span - The Sexual Marketplace Is Always Open for Business

On one extreme of the spectrum, women and men may self-commodify, exchanging sex for money. On the other end of the spectrum men and women may exert commodification unto others, a.k.a. human trafficking for profit

When I was a little girl, I had a curfew. My Grandma would say there is no reason for a self-respecting lady to be out at night. There is nothing open after dark but legs and waffles. (That’s a reference to the 24 hour Waffle House for all my Northern Yankees). As an adult, I stopped accepting first dates after 8pm. Post dusk proclivities are the garbage receptacle for the day after thoughts.

Adolescence - The Emotional Marketplace Is Occasionally Open For Business

Upon birth we instantly cry out for love and affection. Hold me, feed me, protect me. During childhood the quality of caregiver response for love and affection dictates the total sum of emotional currency we have available to transact upon puberty. During puberty, we replicate the caregiving we learned in childhood. In the absence of a stable caregiver, we destabilize care and substitute peer caregiving with non-committal sex, short spurts of cheap transactions for temporary pleasure.

Our innate levels of security or insecurity levels derive from our attachment style. Attachment styles are our ability to give and receive love in relationships. 85% of children inherit their attachment style from their initial caregiver.

For a deeper dive on attachment style, visit my previous publication, Discovering the Treasure in Relationship - Identifying and Responding to Attachment Styles.

Adulthood - The Emotional Marketplace Is Rarely Open For Business.

According to the National Institute on Health, roughly 50 to 60 percent of adults self-assess as securely attached. This means that only one of two people that most adults will date are fully able to give and receive love.

For Black and Hispanic populations, the availability of emotional healthy love decreases to around 10 to 25% due to structural racism that creates in-access to the economic market. This means that based on their economic region, Black and Hispanic adults have anywhere from a one in ten or a one in four survival rate of permanent emotional safety.

Unless an intercession of proper caregiving is directly made, the quality or lack thereof of our childhood experience become a self-fulfilling prophecy that generationally impacts our personal lives despite the success of our professional lives. To recycle an idiom, hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people.

PART TWO - BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO CONSUMER CONFIDENCE AND THE THREE RESULTS OF SPENDING CUTS: SLOWER ECONOMIC GROWTH, UNEMPLOYMENT AND DEFLATION

Consumer Confidence - Perceived Ability to be Loved Impacts our Expenditure of Love

50 to 90% of non-secure attached persons are transacting for their sexual needs (one night stands and serial dating). Non-secure attached persons are not confident consumers and are thus not transacting for their emotional needs.

In economics, the term consumer confidence is an economic indicator measuring how optimistic or pessimistic consumers are about the economy and their personal finances, influencing spending and saving habits. In short, consumer confidence refers to willingness of consumers to spend money.

Secure attached people have the highest grade of emotional consumer confidence. They are equipped with full interpersonal and relational tools and trust in their emotional marketplace transact-ability to properly love and be loved. Disorganized attached people have the lowest grade of consumer confidence - their spending style is instead characterized as emotional consumer pessimism. Persons with detached disorders are not well versed in practicing their interpersonal and relational tools and thus mistrust their emotional marketplace transact-ability to properly love and be loved.

During times of economic recession, people tend to save money whereas in times of economic boom, people tend to spend money. Likewise during times of heartbreak, we are less likely to love but in times of personal and professional prosperity we are most likely to marry.

Spending Cuts Results: Slower Economic Growth, Unemployment and Deflation

1). Reduced Demand (Acceptance of Love) Results to Loss of Economic Growth (Relationship Growth).

In economic terms, when people and businesses cut back on spending, demand for goods and services drops. Businesses make less revenue, leading to slower economic growth and eventual recession. The clinical translation for this is when singles and couples reduce the availability for love by dismissed behavior or executive decree to stop spending. Women who are natural givers are confronted with their deepest fear, they are too much and thus need to shift to more amenable business suppliers in pursuit of new market equilibrium.

2). Job Losses and Unemployment

In economic terms, lower consumer demand leads companies to cut costs, often through layoffs or reduced hiring. This results in reduced demand and less money in the market which ultimately results in less spending. In clinical terms, monogamous relationships are not large corporations with multiple shareholders. Monogamous relationships are dual investor driven small businesses where affection is the only currency. When one investor is unavailable, the other investor will keep the business afloat as long as possible with just one income. However, once the investor becomes emotionally bankrupt, forced layoffs result in demerger or spin-offs.

3). Deflation

If spending slows for multiple business quarters, the price to transact drops due to decreased demand. Decreased prices discourages suppliers from investing thus worsening economic stagnation. Clinical translation, if one partner stonewalls and stops accepting love, the other partner stops giving their love. For confident single consumers seeking luxury grade love, they will refuse to transact if the alternative is inferior grade lust. For confident consumers in a relationship, if the quality of previously produced goods deteriorates they will lose confidence in future profits and cease future investment.

PART THREE FINANCIAL CRISIS… ECONOMIC MELTDOWN…ECONOMIC DEPRESSION… AND FULL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Financial Crisis - Failed Caregiving Results to Neglected Relationships

Failure to safeguard your investment will always result in a financial crisis. If you love something you care for it. No. matter. what.

I still remember my first Tamagotchi, an electronic virtual pet. As a little girl, I never gravitated towards fake baby and barbie dolls but boy did I love my Tamagotchi pet. I still remember my first time being a mother, my child was a yellow handheld screen and my virtual pet was a dinosaur. I carried that little gadget with me everywhere. Like all mothers, my maternal instinct was activated by the cries of my beloved. The fake dolls didn’t cry but my Tamagotchi would emit loud vibrational beeps alerting me that he needed me. Those regular notifications for support became my life purpose. Whenever I heard from him, my existence would spring into action! Ready to hold, feed, protect my little baby.

I always ensured that my dino baby had proper food, recreation and bonding time. I remember smuggling my Tamagotchi to elementary school and sneaking him to my cubby to check on his welfare throughout the day. My teacher caught me, scolded me and snitched me out to my grandmother.

Economic Meltdown - Breakdown in Market Mechanisms due to Trade Embargoes

Later that afternoon, my grandmother confiscated my Tamagotchi and I felt like Halle Berry in “Losing Isaiah.” Lmao, I was BIG mad. I’m still triggered by the forced separation. I vividly remember the temper tantrum I threw when it died while I was at school the next day.

My grandparents who are now Silent Generation, had no context for technology and the emotional trauma of daily giving then seizing my virtual child away from me. Unable to regularly meet its needs, everyday my Tamagotchi would either suffer incredible sickness and or die. Unable to make a successful appeal to my grandparents for permanent unification, one day I completely abandoned my Tamagotchi. For me, the price for market equilibrium, regular death caused by my parental neglect was too great of a price for my tiny heart to pay.

Economic Depression - Decline in Production, Significant Drops in Consumer Spending and Investment, often Lasting for Years

Emotionally depressed humans are still sexual beings. Due to decline in emotional production, an investor may not have the emotional currency to fully hire a full-time employee but an investor may retain an independent contract for short term labor.

Full Economic Collapse - Hyperinflation, High Unemployment, Breakdown of Normal Commerce and Social Uproar

When one or more partners ban communication this results in an immediate full economic collapse. Trade embargoes cause a breakdown in normal commerce. For regional economies this results in immediate unemployment, civil unrest and social uproar. Laid off employees are now forced to reorient to new supply chains. During this period of divestment, new speculative shareholders bombard the unemployed with unsolicited interviews and hiring offer letters. Spectators eagerly wait for the member-managed company’s transition from a private to publicly traded stock via its IPO date and angrily interrogate the CFO for its continued brand loyalty following termination.

PART FOUR - TOO BIG TO FAIL CONGRESSIONAL BAILOUT VIA QUANTITATIVE EASING

In 2008, Congress intervened to prevent the collapse of banks, insurance companies and the automobile industry. Despite the reckless behavior of major financial industries, legislators decided that the financial industry was too big to fail.

Its facilitation of capital flow, too vital to our economy. Its ability to multiply economic growth, too essential to our sustainability. Its capacity for risk management, too critical for investment analysis. Finally, its chief power to teach financial literacy too indispensable to our culture

Undeterred by public criticism and backlash, Congress remained committed to the stabilization of Wall Street investors. Loyal above all odds, Congress authorized $700 billion dollars to help the financial industry recover from economic depression.

Over a period of six years, the Federal Reserve policy implemented Quantitative Easing to stimulate the economy. By absorbing the shortcomings of the financial industry and dumping a colossal amount of support into the financial industry, Congress ushered in a new wave of grace and forgiveness providing national healing for the nation.

From first puppy love to extant wedding vows, free trade lovers are forever executing marketplace equilibrium. Always demanding and always supplying. Constantly buying trauma bonds and constantly selling our debt securities to increase our money supply. Shuffling savings accounts to increase our interest rates and to encourage ongoing lending and investment.

In the same manner Congress implemented stimulus checks to encourage spending and avoid economic collapse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Loving couples also do not abandon each other during times of financial crisis.

Loving couples don’t run, they invest, doubling down in emotional support to offer counsel, companionship, encouragement and validation during times of economic panic and crisis.

Love is a recurring investment with the promise for the most income producing instrument. Every haphazard heartbreak further depletes our emotional currency making us more indigent whereas every intentionally pursued relationship of pure unconditional love fully replenishes our emotional savings account making us more wealthy.

PART FIVE THE RESONANT RELATIONSHIP - FREE TARIFF TRADE UNION

In most scenarios, both men and women are seeking a resonant relationship. A resonant relationship describes the profound connection that we feel when an idea or concept synchronizes and aligns harmoniously with our experiences and beliefs. A resonant relationship creates strong emotions because a resonant relationship affirms our deepest truths.

The term “resonant relationship” roots from the Latin re, meaning, again, and sonare, meaning to sound. So to resonant means to sound and echo again. When a sound is produced at an appropriate frequency, it can cause a nearby material to vibrate and produce secondary sound where before there was none.

A loving relationship is a healthy economy. It thrives on investment, trust and balanced honest exchange. In the same manner economies grow with wise allocation, relationships flourish with invested time, energy and emotional capital.

In the free trade tariff relationship, trust is their currency and communication is the liquid cash flow. In the free trade relationship, compromise is the centerfold of negotiation. Loving couples are constantly restructuring trade agreements. Like two bilateral diplomats, trade partners work eternally to find equitable solutions to maintain stability.

Free trade capitalists know that recessions are inevitable for economic growth. They plan and anticipate the management of economic downturn by reinvesting in each other with patience and commitment for higher annual returns.

Free trade capitalists regularly make emotional deposits for long term returns. They consistently show each love and support compounding their shared strength fiscal year over fiscal year. Together, with regular planned investment and savings plans, they create a profit producing foundation of security and resilience.

PART SIX - MARKET PLACE EQUILIBRIUM

Supply and Demand Between Men and Women

So what exactly are men and women buying and selling to reach and maintain marketplace equilibrium?

Women bring love and men generate purpose

Woman bring thought and men yield action

Women bring worry and men provide comfort

Women bring emotion and men offer direction

Women bring dreams and men create foundation

Women bring beauty and men protect its essence

Women bring detail and men shape the bigger picture

Women bring softness and men reinforce strength

Women bring creativity and men execute vision

Women bring patience and men instill persistence

Women bring wisdom and men apply knowledge

Women bring vulnerability and men offer reassurance

Women bring grace and men uphold honor

Women bring hope and men sustain faith

Women bring nurture and men cultivate growth

Women bring connection and men establish security

PART SEVEN Y = MX + B - PERFECTLY SLOPED FOR PERMANENT EMPLOYMENT

Love is perfect when it is perfectly aligned. At marketplace stability, there are no inherent pressures for the price or quantity to change, as the market is in a state of perfect balance.

Economics addresses the way external factors can disrupt equilibrium. External factors such as changes in types of goods, income, production and market place location can disrupt original equilibrium. Equilibrium disruptions cause shifts in supply and demand curves resulting in new equilibrium points. Love responds to the new equilibrium points by modifying its internal factors to withstand external factors. It matches the pulse and of its beloved, supplying more when requested and supplying less when requested in times of decreased demand.

PART EIGHT SIDE STEPPING MARKET IN -EQUILIBRIUM

Love and life only hurts when we try to force a contractual arrangement of giving love to men who don’t want to receive our love. That forced love always breeds contempt - not because men don’t want to love but because they need to choose who they love.

Likewise, men have to let unwilled love go. She cannot bestow what is not ordained. She couldn’t love you if she wanted to. Her love is divinely scheduled, stubborn and exclusive. It wants no rest stops and only wants to get back home.

That forced love dictates and falsely assumes one’s ability to give and the other’s ability to absorb. The entry fee for emotional negotiations are faith, sacrifice and active pursuit of God. Market actors are divinely barred from the capacity to exchange. One may rebelliously sell knife slices portions of their flesh on the black market but no one may legally barter the exchange of their soul without God. In the absence of properly sanctioned appetites, all forced feeding results in cursed repulsion.

PART NINE BEYOND EQUILIBRIUM - BENEFICIARIES AND DEVISEES

Men don’t create love, they manage the resource of love bestowed upon them. Women are depressed without anyone to love. Men are depressed without anyone to receive love from.

Maximum joy is reached not by monopolization but by free competition capitalism. By allowing one uninhibited access to roll the dice at their own happiness. This free market exchange is emotional marketplace equilibrium.

When a woman finds the one she wants to give her entire life to and a man finds the one he wants to take her entire life from - the two can embark on a lovely life of free trade society and swapping of shared DNA

Discreetly

Negotiated

Appeasements

At our core women are givers and men are takers. On a molecular level women are fulfilled by giving life (gathers) and men are fulfilled by taking life (hunters)

He is always at war and she is always at peace. Without her the innate desire to plunder and pillage overwhelms him, he kills everything in sight in lieu of gathering nothing that he wants.

Love is the only true white flag. The only circumstance where the ego will surrender. Every other human exchange a bloodied conquest or a deceitful transaction.

Love thus creates space to bargain our traumas like currency. With each declaration of honest affection - we buy and sell pieces of each other. The selling off of his pain increases her value as the buying of her pain increases his value. In moments of fear they hold dear to their collected stamps of vulnerability. When all else fails, they know they have each other.

Together, they inflate their shared stock. Bartering and bickering not just to inherit but to create their own marketplace value.

Co-signers on soul mortgages to buy the basements of our minds. Co-Marshalls to evict the ghosts that once haunt where the bodies are buried. Healing in sync to appraise our true assets not just in each other but in our own darkest selves.

All that is of him is now hers and hers is now his. She loves him and she protects him. She will not allow systemic racism to be an eminent domain on his human conscience. She has informed the NYPD that she is the only one that may stop him and frisk him.

This unconditional love is tariff free trade. Importing our joy and exporting our grief, we navigate through customs. He has agreed to be her drug if she will be his mule. She carries all the secret love he smuggled out from his depression. Introspects, we inspect, we investigate. Shining a bright light unto the shadows of our hearts, we allow ourselves to be strip searched so we may be cleared to see ourselves as beautiful as we see the beauty in each other.

TSA asks for her passport to board the plane. She pauses for a second and gives up her name. An archaic and patriarchal pastime for some, it is very serious for them. The marxist in her resolute. She forfeits all outside labor to increase his wages. Signifying the total sum equation of giving and taking. Her free market will and purchasing power to be consumed like food for the ultimate strengthening of him.

Her once “presumed too much” becomes his “never enough.” His “never enough” becomes her “limitless reserve.”

Woe is he. For he once thought his heart to be a gigantic dark void, the Heavens slowly reveal its true purpose, a gigantic nuclear power plant for processing and storing her excess energy.

Inadequate apart but extraordinary together.

Perfectly balanced for maximum marketplace equilibrium job creation.

Epilogue

All relationships are based on give and take, the balance between supplying and demanding, negotiating the flow of emotional, physical and spiritual goods. Relationships that are premised on unconditional love operate like tariff free trade agreements. These relationships facilitate, promote and protect the open exchange of ideas and goods for mutual benefit. Relationships that are truly invested in the status of each other's emotional economies, they go a step further. With customized economic policies that stabilize economically depressed markets, they supply critical resources, love, encouragement support, during times of economic crisis to ensure on going economic growth and employment stability.