
The Couple That Pays Each Other to Put Kids to Bed - dreeves
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/couple-pays-each-other-put-kids-bed-n13021
======
MrZongle2
Call me crazy, but in my house we just _get shit done_ because it _needs_ to
be done and we, as adults, chose to have children. We don't have time to
barter or turn the discussion of who does what into an episode of Antiques
Roadshow.

For all the smiley faces and show of "oh, isn't this just _great_ ", I can't
help but think there are some serious issues lurking below the surface.

But hey, what do I know? I've only been married for 17 years and have two
kids.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I don't begrudge this couple their 'solution' to whatever 'problem' with chore
distributions exist in their life.

What I find amusing is this sort of money-as-substitute-for-all-valuations
thing going on. No matter how "cute" or "novel" this idea is, underlying it
all is the implicit assertion that every single thing a person does has a
monetary value. I understand the appeal, and the rather strong strain of
libertarianism/Jon Galt-ism that runs rampant in computer science makes this
couple an unsurprising place to find such a viewpoint in practice (even if
they personally don't adhere to such a view).

It also absolutely does not work well with children. Children, as even these
two no doubt can attest, don't value things in terms of money or opportunity
cost or any other such abstraction until and unless they have been _taught_ to
do so. They have basic needs that _must_ be met, and generally in a way that
isn't compatible with the incentivised behavior models that this couple
present.

On a personal note, I find it a bit too "nerd cutesy." It's like they're
trying too hard to be hardcore nerds about their everyday life. My first
thought wasn't, "wow, that's a novel way to bring levity into the daily chore
drudge." It was more like, "this reminds me of people parodied in Portlandia
scenes where the main characters are having a back-and-forth about who knows
who or what trendy indie publications/books they've each read." More power to
them if it works, but it's not for me.

~~~
mst
I think it's more 'money as a readily available proxy for fungible utility'.
It's not so much a substitute as a handy scale to quantify things with.

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dreeves
See also this super nerdy discussion of these nutjobs [1] on LessWrong:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/jje/decision_auctions_aka_how_to_fai...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jje/decision_auctions_aka_how_to_fairly_assign_chores/)

[1] Yes, that's actually me and my spouse (also cofounder of
[http://beeminder.com](http://beeminder.com) and if you think our auction-
based lifestyle is crazy, wait till you see Beeminder! :)).

~~~
patmcc
Hey, thanks for Beeminder. It's cost me a bunch of money (~75 bucks), but it's
also helped me make some really positive changes. One small note - I'd really
like it if I could pledge in CAD, so I don't see the annoying conversion from
USD and wonder "what the hell did I spend $5.42 on"...but that's a very tiny
nitpick.

~~~
dreeves
So good to hear testimonials like that; thank you! As for supporting non-USD
currencies, I see Stripe just made that super easy, so we'll probably do it at
some point. Thanks for the feedback; nitpickery very much solicited!

------
hemancuso
I, personally, have a hard time imagining a successful marriage without a
shared pool of income. Paying one another to do chores or evaluating each
other's fiscal contribution to nearly every decision seems insane.

Who pays for college? Who pays for food? Maternity leave? Career switching.
This list goes on.

Good luck.

~~~
diminoten
The money aspect of this seems more of an honesty check than anything else.

It's not like a... wait. I just had an idea. Could a roommate of theirs _live_
off of yootling? Bidding well, a person could more or less do their busy work
for them, get "paid" for it, and use those payments to subsidize their costs
of living!

Anyway, what I was _going_ to say was that the money aspect of this seems
mostly as a way to keep the bets honest. You don't really want wild bets of,
say, $1,000,000 or whatever, because then fair market value for the activity
becomes impossible to assess.

Or something like that. The person with the PhD should probably explain it.

~~~
sliverstorm
_Could a roommate of theirs live off of yootling?_

You mean, could a roommate of theirs work as a live-in maid?

~~~
ericae
I'm their roommate/ employee. I get paid an extremely generous hourly wage. I
don't yootle with them too often, but when I do it's usually a chance to make
extra money for a particularly unfun task (like waking up early to drive them
to the airport). I usually appreciate the opportunity.

It also helps me figure out how much I value things, because my default is to
be pretty noncommittal with my preferences, and this forces me to recognize
them and make them explicit.

------
rqebmm
My girlfriend and I have tried multiple variations of "relationship currency"
as I like to call it, but since I'm a shrewd bargainer and she has a tendency
to be short sighted (i.e. "I'm tired and don't feel like cooking, I'll give
you 500 chore-dollars to go pick up dinner") she eventually ends up with a
massive debt and is forced to declare "relationship bankruptcy".

That said, I'm fully intent on doing something like this with my children.
Instead of an allowance of some kind, I think kids would learn a lot about the
real world if you paid them for doing chores and performing well at school,
then docked them accordingly for food, board, rent and expenses.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
We do something like that for our kids. Each has a set of age appropriate
chores they must perform each week to get their "allowance." If they don't do
all those chores they get a prorated amount that week. We also deduct from it
if they do stuff to get into trouble. Then on payday, each is required to put
a certain amount into each of three bins: Spend, Save & Share. The remainder
they can divide between those bins how ever they see fit. Spend is for all the
random crap they want to buy (stuffed animals, candy, Jamba Juice, etc). Save
is for larger, future items and we must approve it. Share is used for charity
type stuff (like buying Christmas presents for strangers, etc.) We do make
them pay for a portion of their school clothes and stuff like toothpaste to
let them see what it is like to not have any spending money after they buy
things they need. It has really helped them understand that maybe they don't
need _another_ stuff animal if that means they can't buy something else. I
think kids lack the perspective of what it takes to earn money. A lot of times
(for more expensive requests) we break it down for them by how many weeks of
doing ALL their chores would it take to get enough money for it. Suddenly
things don't seem as important to them if they realize that it might take 3 or
4 months of not buying anything before they could get it.

~~~
mtsmithhn
How does that work when you want to buy them an expensive item like a bicycle,
segway, computer etc. that would take them too long to save up for?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
We don't buy them stuff like that just because they ask for it. Bikes, Kindle,
DS, iPod, etc are birthday and Christmas presents. We don't charge them for
presents. For the most part, if there is something we think they _need_ , you
provide it. It is a loose system. It has been pretty effective in shutting
down the classic "child begging endlessly to get something at the store"
problem. There is usually one of two responses: "Save up for it" or "Did you
bring your money?"

------
acslater00
"Danny paid Bethany about $30,000 in various costs to have their first child
while he worked a full-time tech job"

I wonder what her bid was for him to have the baby.

~~~
Aloisius
_I wonder what her bid was for him to have the baby._

It would have to have been considerably more than $30,000. Surrogacy alone
runs upwards of $60K. She was clearly lowballed.

The inefficiency was probably due to a lack of market transparency or external
bidding. Clearly next time they should invite third parties in.

~~~
LaughingWithAtU
Assuming $60k for a surrogate then the "winning bid" for not having the baby
herself would be around $30k.

Also, what is the value to her to experience the process of having a baby?
Ubber-rich women still have their own babies, so there would appear to be a
value in the experience.

------
fishtoaster
I wonder how they deal with differences in income levels. The article only
touches on that briefly: "He's also earned more in his life, giving him a
bigger pot to bet with. "

For example, my long-term girlfriend has an art degree, and I'm a professional
developer. It's likely that I will make more than her for the foreseeable
future; maybe as much as 1.5x to 2x. Should I do half the housework? It seems
like that leads inexorably to the 1950s logic of "I bring home the bacon so
you should keep the house."

(That said, it seems to be working for these two, so more power to them. :) )

~~~
sliverstorm
Was the 1950's logic fundamentally wrong? If one partner is not working,
should they _not_ contribute more to the house?

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
And is 1950's logic different than logic?

~~~
throwawayXYZ83
The second definition is being used here:

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/logic](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/logic)

------
andrewpbrett
Lest anyone think this is exaggerated or linkbait-y, I've personally seen them
do this, a lot. For example, a $100 gas purchase was immediately resolved
using a method similar to what's shown in the video - had the number come up,
$1000 would have changed hands (it didn't, much to my chagrin).

------
patja
This serves as good evidence for anyone who wonders if Portland is truly as
idiosyncratic, iconoclastic, or just plain insane as it is depicted in the
television series Portlandia.

------
Dramatize
My wife and I do something like this.

We both have a 'piggy bank' we can spend on anything without the others input.

Each week we get an allowance + bonuses for extra chores.

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mburney
Applying economic game theory to a relationship seems like a good way to take
all the fun and passion out of it

~~~
aaronpk
I think the idea is to reduce the amount of time and mental stress around day-
to-day tasks to allow for _more_ time for the relationship.

~~~
dreeves
Well... It's more like this: [https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

I might have to concede that the whole thing is untenable unless you actually
enjoy geeking out about the game theory and mechanism design and whatnot.

------
dreeves
Thanks so much for the awesome discussion here, everyone! Here's another
example as told by us to the reporter, that didn't make the cut: ("D" is me
and "B" is Bethany, my spouse/cofounder)

Another funny auction today, with discussion in our Beeminder developer
chatroom. We also conducted the auction via a chatbot that we wrote
[[https://github.com/aaronpk/zenircbot-
bid](https://github.com/aaronpk/zenircbot-bid)]. You'll see what I mean:
(there's actually another little auction that happens as well)

    
    
        D: /bid with @bee for skate in with keys
        Bot: Ok, collecting bids from: @bee, @dreev
        Bot: Bidding complete! Here are the bids: @bee: 8, @dreev: 45
        D: /roll 10 
        Bot: 1  [we upgraded the bot in the meantime so the dice rolling to determine 
             payment is built in]
        D: !!
        D: now i have to pay bee $80 [$8*10] to not skate her the keys
        D: done
        Aaron: so confused
        D: we can explain if you'd like!
        D: here's a hypothetical normal-person equivalent of what just happened: 
           "i forgot my keys, any chance you were going to skate in soon?" 
           "i wasn't going to but i could, because i love you!" 
           "that's ok, honey, i'm fine at this coffee shop till my next appointment, 
           when i was going to come home anyway" 
           "well, ok, i'll let you fend for yourself. i'll clean the bathroom to make 
           it up to you."
        D: so the bids replace the feeling each other out -- "i *could* skate in", 
           "that's ok", etc. -- and the payment replaces the "i'll make it up to you"
        Uluc: Ok, I committed the change. It might be best if you took a look at the 
              source in case I screwed something obvious up. app/models/goal.rb line 197
        D: /bid with @bee for deploying uluc's code
        Bot: Ok, collecting bids from: @bee, @dreev
        [nerd discussion about beeminder code redacted]
        Bot: Bidding complete! Here are the bids: @bee: 0, @dreev: 10
        [bethany deploys the code]
        Aaron: do those bids mean bee doesn't care, and dreev was more willing to 
               pay $10 than to deploy?
        B: yes
        D: right
        D: did my normal-person equivalent make sense?
        Aaron: sort of yes
        D: we think of it as mathematically equivalent to me *halfway* skating 
           bethany the keys. i could've just done it cuz i'm nice, or she could've 
           just refused the favor cuz she's nice. instead we made it a 50/50 joint 
           decision for which outcome would happen so it's like half a favor. and 
           more importantly, it ensures the favor only happens if it's socially 
           efficient for the favor to happen 
        B: also, the "hey, i forgot my keys. were you planning to skate in today?" 
           "Not really, maybe." "Oh, well I was planning to come home after this 
           appointment anyway..." all did happen behind the scenes. but instead of 
           continuing that back and forth for another few iterations we stopped 
           there and yootled.

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LaughingWithAtU
How does bidding on who pays the mortgage and other bills work? For example,
if one has to pay the mortgage then the other should have to pay them rent via
this bidding process. Same for gas, electric, etc.

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chrisBob
We do this, but have a shared account, and don't bother to move the money.

We are also both pretty cheap, and don't spend much money other than "I will
give you $100 to go start tea for me."

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andyl
Relationship dynamics transacted in dollars - wow. The next logical step would
be to bring this system to the sexual realm.

