Will gas prices raise the price of dances?

AN, the problem is that in most clubs there's an adversarial relationship between the club and the dancers, not a cooperative one. One would think that by cooperating both club and dancer could make more money, but that rarely seems to be the way clubs are managed. The clubs view the dancers as a source of income, and the more they can hire the more the club thinks they make. They also don't trust their dancers and install a bunch of annoying controls to keep them in line. But that attitude is self defeating because in order to hire more dancers they usually have to lower their standards. So they're offering a lower quality product. And that reduces demand for both the club and the dancers.

FONDL, Actually for me, for the most part, the dancer is the product since I usually go to lame no lapdance DC clubs. I was trying to generalize. I admit that when I go to clubs where they do lapdances I usually look for the dancer most attractive to me, but she gets paid on the basis of dances in those clubs. Actually even in the DC clubs tips are usually linked to the stage persona or presence. You also raised an interesting point I hadn't really thought about. With a fixed price on a substandard product the demand will decline, unless value can be added to the product, like "extras". Isn't economics interesting? I think a smart manager will some day understand that he is better off keeping 4 good dancers working on a slow night, letting them make money, than filling the club with a dozen dancers, guaranteeing none of them will make any money, and making that job waiting tables for nearly the same money look just a bit better to the ones with some personality and hustle.

If I am so obviously wrong, just tell me where. It should be simple. If you aren't willing to bring anything other than insults and wild statements like the last one just don't bother trying to answer me. The insults are old and the "arguments" are merely assertions we're not supposed to challenge.

AN, you hit on exactly the point I was trying to imply, that fixing prices in strip clubs at an abnormally high level is leading to a decline in demand that is mainly benefitting the competition. I think that is exactly what is happening in many places. You also correctly point out that when price is fixed, demand will swing to the highest quality product, which in this case means extras for many customers. I do disagree slightly with your contention that the product is the dance rather than the dancer - that may be true for you but it isn't for me. I'd rather get an average dance from a girl I really like than the other way around, but I realize not everyone feels the same. Someday somewhere an intelligent manager, assuming that isn't an oxymoron, is going to start a price war and put his competitors out of business. He might also end up wearing a pair of cement boots underwater, depending on where he is, but risk is a part of running a business. But wouldn't a price war be fun?

AN: to see why I won't elaborate consider the following very rough analogy to our discussion:

me: 2+2=4
AN: What do you mean all jews should be exterminated in death camps? that's crazy! How can you support such a position? (five page triad on how Nazism is bad.)
me: I didn't say I supported nazism. I said 2+2=4.
AN: (five page rant on how saying 2+2=4 makes me support nazism)
me: You're an idiot and attacking a strawman.
AN: Would you care to elaborate, I've clearly explained how saying 2+2=4 makes you support Nazism?
me: no.
AN: Ok, I clearly am right. Looks you're scared to debate me.

FONDL, you are right, strip clubs don't follow rational pricing. I'd have some argument with your assumptions however. Depending on the club, the product is not the dancers, but the dances, because that is what we buy. If the dances are of lower or declining quality, or if there is competition to supply them, then you would expect the price to drop. In the clubs however the dances are not treated as a comodity, they are sold at a fixed price for the most part, and most guys won't negotiate. What will happen in that case is that as long as the quality is sufficient customers will pay for the fixed price dance, but if the quality drops it is not the price that will drop, but the demand, as in the number of dances purchased. I'd contend that this is what is happening (with me at least). I have to be at a high contact club or with a known dancer to be willing to spend the money for a dance or drink anymore, because the quality of the girls has dropped in this area. Like the Soviets, you can declare a price and try to enforce it, but if it isn't a "natural" price there will either be a surplus or shortage of the comodity in question. I think there are more dancers chasing less money than there used to be, and that results in a lower quality product.

Strip club pricing doesn't seem to follow economic theory very well. For example, I think that the number of strippers (supply) is increasing much faster than the number of customers (demand) which may not be increasing at all. Wouldn't economic theory predict that prices should fall? It seems to me that the opposite is happening. Although you could probably argue that in many places prices have not increased so the real price has declined.

Well, I'd say your assertions that I am an idiot and that I use strawmen to feed some sort of egotism are unsupported then, and you shouldn't make them if you aren't willing to back it up. I thought I made a pretty detailed explanation of my argument for your benifit, stating my logic and assumptions pretty clearly. If the substance of your retort is "you are an idiot and it's obvious you are wrong" (I paraphrase) that's an opinion, not an argument. I can't understand why you are so upset. I said you had a logical flaw in your premise, not that you were stupid or that you were a bad person, or that you eat puppies.

AN: no.

AN: you're such an idiot and can never admit you are wrong even a case as totally obvious as this. You really need to work on the strawman thing and the sense of humor thing if you are ever going to get it.

Would you care to respond specifically to anything I outlined above? I'd love to have the benefit of your insight.

DavidS, Speaking of a straw man your entire argument is unlinked to my post. You seem to be claiming that since you say "IF" you are dealing with a hypothetical (true) and that that somehow makes your thesis unassailable (false). Forgive me, but I don't think I said you were claiming the economy was or would decline anywhere in my post. The hypothetical is irrelevant to your argument and my criticism. I would thus contend that it is your reading comprehension that is suspect, and you who is setting up straw men. My criticism was that you seemed to be equating high gas prices with a declining economy and unemployment, not that you had predicted the economy would go bad. The topic being the effects of gas prices on dances, and your speculation on the effects of a bad economy on dance prices, seems to me to equate the two, or at the very least strongly link them. True your first post was a hypothetical, but only as to wether the economy would go bad, your conclusion was that a bad economy( i.e. tanking) would lower dance prices. Your second post was not hypothetical, it was illustrating the pressures on price a bad economy would generate. Logically, when discussing gas prices economic effects if one brings up a declinining economy it would be rather illogical to assume that the declining economy has nothing to do with gas prices since the conclusion you reached (a bad economy would lower dance prices) would then be unlinked from the topic (the effect of high gas prices on dances). If you now want to say your posts had nothing to do with gas prices and you were only speculating on a bad economy without reference to the topic, fine, I apologize for singling you out, but I hardly think it was a great leap to assume you had linked high gas prices with a declining economy, thus I would contend my reading comprehension is sufficient for our purposes and would contend that it is your writing that is flawed. You should have been more specific that the price pressures you predicted for a declining economy were not in linked to the topic of gas prices the rest of us were discussing.

DavidS have a habit of backing off your previous statements by claiming they were ironic or a joke. For one who claims such a highly developed sense of humor and who criticizes others so frequently you seem to have a pretty thin skin for criticism (in the academic sense).

To the others, sorry for prolonging this.

I never feel like calling a stripper greedy. When they work, they work as hard as anyone I know. I have this perverse admiration for door-to-door salemen who can get 99 doors slammed in their face for the sake of making one sale, and dancers are in very much the same situation. If anything, my criticism of dancers is that they are too timid or disinterested in selling themselves, and sometimes just hang out in the club. But I can understand that they would sometimes get discouraged, especially if the crowd is small and composed of people who seem to have a hard time getting their hands to reach their wallets. And, if a girl does get a hot hand early in her shift, I can see how she would be tempted to take it easy, or just hang out in the locker room and run down the clock.

It costs me about $7 more to fill my tank then it did a couple of years ago. I go through about a tank or so a week. The price of gas is a pain in the neck but it hasn't drecreased my clubbing activities. However, 2 or 3 of the clubs I go to have raised the HOUSE portion of lap dances over the past two years in order to replace revenue lost after the last recesion hit and business droped off. This means that dances I used to pay $20 or $25 for are now $25 or $30. The DANCER portion of that price has not changed. The girl still makes $20 on a dance. Remember that the next time you feel like calling a stripper greedy.

The price of gas has dropped over 10 cents recently where I live. It was as high as 2.49 at one station and a little bit higher still at some others but now that price at the same station is 2.39. While driving around last night in another city I saw prices as low as 2.29 but that was not a major national brand. I'm not quite as concerned about gas prices as I was a couple of weeks ago.

As usual, FONDL, you raise many good points. I'm afraid that my small government wing of the GOP may have bitten the dust somewhere around the time that Barry Goldwater died, and ROnald Reagan know longer knew who he was (or that he was). There are still a few, but there are thin on the ground, and mostly in the western states. I am certainly no fan of the current administration, with its expansion of Medicare, further federal forays into the state bailiwick of education, etc.

Some liberals, especially feminists, are also strongly opposed to sc's, but liberals have so little actual power any more that it's hard to hold them accountable for any actual governance, except in a few isolated places. I blame the feminists/liberals for the crappy club scene in Minn/St. Paul and Madison, WI. Maybe that is what is going on in MASS. As for Indiana, if you think of conservatism as involving moral control, it is a paradox. If you think of conservatism as involving maximal personal freedom, consistent with minimizing negative social externalities (i.e., not subjecting unwilling parties to the effects of the activities of willing parties), then the glorious strip club environment is entirely consistent with the longstanding Republican orientation of that state (A historical footnote: Indiana is the only state that voted the same way in the 1896 and 1996 presidential elections; every other state that was in the union at the time of both elections changed parties over the intervening century. Obviously, Indiana voted Republcan both years).

I think that this busybody aspect of government comes from the fact that local and state governments don't have any money anymore, but legislatures still want to have something to do. The cheapest legislation a deliberative body can pass is that which tells other people what to do.

Chitown, where is this libertarian wing of the Republican party? I thought they all disappeared about 20 years ago. Much to my chagrin. Seems to me that both parties today favor big government, excessive spending, and passing laws to tell everyone how to live.

And who is this "moral majority" that everyone seems to blame for the SC industry's problems? I know just as many liberal Democrats who complain about our supposedly declining morality as I do conservative Republicans. And just as many non-church-goers as church-goers. Seems to me the only thing the moralists all have most in common is being older parents and grandparents. Pollitics and religion don't seem to make any difference. And if you disagree, please explain to me why liberal places like Massachusetts have much stricter laws governing strip clubs than do some conservative areas like Indiana.

Remember, Mailman, it's not just $5.00, because to spend $5.00, they need to make $5.00 after taxes....oh, never mind.

Stripper: Blah, Blah...Gas Prices...Blah, Blah
Patron: How far do you drive to work?
Stripper: 50 miles.
Patron: So thats 100 miles round trip.
Stripper: Yes
Patron: I'll bet your car gets about 20 mpg, huh?
Stripper: Yeah, I guess.
Patron: How much more per gallon are you paying now?
Stripper: I dunno, maybe a dollar...
Patron: So you have to make $5 more a night to break even?
Stripper: Ummm, yeah, I guess...
Patron: Here's 5 bucks...Now shut the F**K up and Dance!

I'm with the libertarian, "Don't tread on me," "Get the government off our backs" wing of the GOP.

Doubtful that anything other than hard cold cash will lead to the desired results.

This thread turned into a useful discussion of economics and is informative. Wonder how Chitownlawyer will square his SC visits with the Moral Majority wing of the GOP, but that's not germane. What will happen when adancer starts whining about how gas is eating into her disposable income and I start to give one of the answers from this thread? Will this lead to free extras?

Several important considerations are missing from the discussion of gasoline prices. First, real gasoline prices, that is prices adjusted for inflation, are less than they were when Jimmy Carter tried price controls and caused shortages all over the country. Second, the cost of gasoline is a small part of the cost of owning and driving a car. Unless you're a very high milage driver, your insrance is significantly higher than your annual gasoline bill. And unless you are driving a cheap older car, your annual depreciation is several times your gasoline cost. Nothing is sillier than someone who drives a $40,000 car complaining about the cost of gasoline.

Bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline, in spite of the fact that the production and shipping costs are far lower, and nobody seems to care. Alcoholic beverages cost a lot more too, and I don't know about you but I bet my annual bar bill is a lot more than my gasoline tab. When you consider what it actually takes to get a gallon of gasoline to you, it's still pretty cheap compared to almost everything else that you buy.

I have no intention of stepping into a fight between AB and davids, so nothing I say here has any relation to their ongoing discussion.

With respect to the effect of high gas prices on the economy, I would merely point out that, as compared to the early 80s, when oil hit its inflation-adjusted high of about $100 a barrel, the U.S. economy was much more dependent on oil than it is now. I saw some source recently that claimed that, per unit of GNP, the US economy uses 1/2 the oil it did in the early 80s, due to increased automobile fuel efficiency, the decline in manufacturing (obviously, a mixed blessing, that), increased efficiency in fuel used for heating and cooling, electronic transmission of data that once could only be physically transported, etc.

I do think, however, that other economic trends should bring down the real cost of dances. It seems clear to me that the labor market is sorting itself out between low wage, relatively unskilled work, and people in the "knowledge workforce," with a transfer of wages from one to the other, and a gutting of the middle class. (Keep in mind that I am no ranting liberal...I am a hard-core Republican who was only prevented by term limits from voting three times for Ronald Reagan.). I read in a newspaper article today a quote from dancer who said that there was no other job she could work besides dancing in which she, as a single mother, could support her two children in a relatively comfortable lifestyle, working a reasonable number of hours. I don't think that it is a coincidence that over the last ten years, a number of strip clubs have sprung up in small towns that have seen a loss of the small manufacturing plants that used to provide relatively good wages for low- to medium-skilled workers. If my idea is correct, then you should see some young women who previously could get factory work going to work as dancers. The interesting dynamic is that the same forces that could cause more women to dance could also reduce the number of men who can afford the luxury good of spending time (and money) at strip clubs. Others who have posted on this board have commented on the decrease in customers with the decline of the expense account, the end of the internet bubble, and political correctness taking over business entertaining, with a possibly related increase in "extras" as the same (or a greater ) number of dancers compete for a declining number of customer dollars.

From a customer's point of view, the next ten years look bullish. The wild card is, of course, the moralist side of the Republican Party, who might drop a turd in the punchbowl with legislatiion that puts a barrier between otherwise willing buyers and willing sellers of dancers' services.

Or, I could be full of shit.

And, you, AN, have a serious reading comprehension flaw. Here, I will highlight to help you out:

"***If*** anything I predict a drop in dance prices if the economy tanks ***(I am not certain that it will, though***"

Always looking to attack the strawman to prove that you are smartest aren't you?

DavidS, You have a serious logical flaw in your analysis. High gas prices does not necessarily equal a bad economy and unemployment. Right now unemployment is about 5%, once thought impossible. Worries that high gas prices could spark inflation are valid, except that adjusted for inflation oil would need to be close to $100/barrel in today's dollars to be historically high. I don't expect to see dance prices change much basically because a single and a twenty are nice integer bills.

Supply and demand:

Bad economy => increased supply (as desperate unemployed people become strippers)
Bad economy => decreased demand (as customers have less disposable income and hence decide to just jerk off at home)

If anything I predict a drop in dance prices if the economy tanks (I am not certain that it will, though).

Clubs are making enough money without having to jack up the price of dances, so why would the rising cost of gas raise the price of dances? I have been getting private dances at this one club for 9 years, and they have always been $20. If the club was losing money, I could see it then, but most clubs make enough money to not have to resort to that.

In the decade I've been going to clubs the standard stage tip is still a single and the standard lapper $20. In the same time inflation has devalued the dollar by about 25-30%. If that hasn't raised the price of a dance I doubt an extra $20 a week for gas will.