Listen to the first fifteen seconds or so of this, as Bryan Caplan discusses an argument over waxed floors. Here’s the pathway from Caplan’s efficiency argument to his distributional argument:

Person A. “Please help me do this thing I value.”

Person B. “No. I do not value this thing and consider it a waste of time, therefore I will not do it.”

Person A. “I am not going to cease valuing this thing just because you don’t. Will you accept that I value this and help me by doing the thing?”

Person B. “Nope I do not value the thing and therefore I will leave you to do it alone.”

The efficiency argument is about the intrinsic value of the task, which people can agree on, or disagree on.

The distribution argument is about the value of the people in the conversation—does B care enough about A to split the workload anyway? If they don’t, A is left to enact their values alone after B has treated them with contempt by dismissing their values and walking away.

I’m not saying that’s exactly what happened in Caplan’s waxed floors example, but it’s worth pointing out that two people’s valuing of a task (i.e. the “efficiency argument”) and their sharing of a task (i.e. the “distribution argument”) go together in practice so often that the confusion of efficiency and distribution is not just natural but reasonable.

And really that’s the core of the whole cleaning debate. Women have been conditioned to value waxed floors because cleanliness is not just about function, it’s about communication. Houses are meant to be shared, not just used, and small tasks like waxed floors send a message to guests and family that you’re considering them, that you care about them, and that you are willing to show them by making things aesthetically pleasing. If you’ve experienced good hospitality then you know: when someone goes the extra step to think about your experience and make it a little nicer, it feels like a hug.

Conversely guys are conditioned to treat houses like spaces to occupy—places that exist to take care of a spartan set of needs as they focus on what they’re conditioned to value, which is creating economically productive results for other people. Guys therefore often wind up doubly insulting women, first by denigrating their values (i.e. dismissing things like waxed floors or meticulously cleaned counters by calling them inefficient) and then leaving women to do the work alone.

The reverse problem exists as well: it sucks when someone comes along and imposes a value on you that you don’t give a shit about and don’t want to—and they disingenuously make you comply by turning it into a “don’t you value me, though?” type of thing. Cleaning is a primary battleground for both of these problems. But the first step to any sort of solution is clearly articulating why it happens. It’s not just that people confuse efficiency arguments and distribution arguments. There’s an underlying dynamic that ties the two of them together, and it matters a lot.