Dear Khaki Economist,
I'm a bit of a dating disaster and thought when the world of philosophy has failed to answer the question of why I'm still single, I should go back to my true roots and seek the mechanical (and logical) answers of economics.
I feel that I am essentially a "good" in the wrong market. Therefore this means that there is no demand for my dear self. The current market I am in there is an abundance of idiots, so finding a partner in here is more scarce than crude oil.
As mentioned earlier, the main attribute I seek in another is one with equal intellect to myself in order to have real and deep conversations. I feel like a 25 year old amongst a bunch of teenagers who will be waiting a while for everyone to catch up to her.
What should I do?
Jess
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Dear Jess,
There are several ways of tackling this problem.
First, ignoring the golden rule of entrepreneurship in capitalism (do not open a business in a competitive market with low barriers to entry), you have chosen to join an essentially homogeneous market. In development, micro-business homogeneity is a real problem; poor countries tend to have lots of petty entrepreneurs (for there is no welfare system, and little large-scale investment), but these entrepreneurs all sell the same thing. I have some great videos of kilometres of streets in Indonesia, lined with hundreds of the same store--all selling the same collection of soft drinks, chewing gum, and biscuits. Prices are driven down, and economic profits tend towards zero. In your model, the easiest girl with the best makeup job and largest breasts gets the cake.
You could also think about this along the lines of trade theory. Generally, a country will specialise in an industry that uses inputs that country is most endowed with. So, Australia specialises in industries like minerals (which it has a lot of), agriculture (which uses land, which it has a lot of), and education (it has many English-speaking academics). The problem is, when a certain endowment increases, the rents to that endowment reduce; an increase in China's population would lower their wages, all else equal.
In your model, you are a micro-business selling chips in a street of micro-businesses selling chips; another tech worker in Bangalore's job market. Unless you can reduce your price, or increase your quality, this market is unfavourable to you.
I recommend then changing markets.
What you want to find is a market with many smart guys, and very few females--be the scarce commodity. The glaringly obvious example is the Dungeons and Dragons community. Gamers and comic-fans are starved of such pretty female company as yourself (whether rightly or wrongly), and so would be able to lavish you with steep economic rents. There may be drawbacks--poor personal hygiene, for one--but given your opinions of most young men, these drawbacks would be mere collateral.
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2 comments:
Khaki economist, you have confirmed my suspicions that I truly am a commodity in the wrong market.
I now have an even more complex question on behalf of my friend. My friend has recently moved from Sydney to Melbourne. Unsure of where to go to find like-minded individuals he is a specialised good in that his sexual orientation is gay. This adds a further constraint to finding a partner in a new town. He needs to find this type of specialised good in a new market, and agrees with the points you raised in your response regarding my dilemma. The "meat market" is the wrong to search for quality or brains. So which market should he pursue his quest in?
Jess,
His problem is a classic case of the plumb in the lemon's market (Akerlof, 1970).
You see, Sydney has a larger gay proportion of the population. This means there are more options available to people of that persuasion there--from musical theatre to B&D to European techno clubs--all of which draw gays to Sydney.
This giant magnet has the unintended side-effect of lowering the economically efficient number of gay-aimed facilities in Melbourne. I suppose this means more high-quality gays move to Sydney, while the 'price' offered to them in Melbourne decreases.
If this is the case, the low price in Melbourne--the smaller number of gay clubs (and smaller number of high-quality gay stock)--decreases the returns to high-quality gays in Melbourne from offering themselves in the market, while increasing the relative price offered to them in Melbourne. This reminds me of a case in Lake Victoria, southern Africa, where it was more profitable for fishermen to export their fish than to sell it on the local markets, even during famine (Abila, 2003, 2006).
The lesson for your friend would be to overcome the information assymetry here, by going out of his way to offer a high-quality guarantee (inducing other high-quality gays into the market), or to move back to Sydney. Alternatively, he could lobby Melbourne to adopt the failed policy of Uganda (based on dependency theory), and limit gay migration from Melbourne to Sydney, as Uganda did export of fish.
Yes! That's it! We need district passports.
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