Stripper Auctions Pole on Ebay to Fund Msse Degree
We now have the ultimate evidence of the disruptive and transformative power of technology. Buckle your seat belts, even strippers are being “displaced” by the lure of the virtual over the physical.
A UPI wire story reported that Madeline, let’s assume that’s her real name, blamed the Internet for putting her out of work at a Toronto gentleman’s club. The 23-year-old dancer told the Toronto Star she was forced to give up her $1,000 a night pole position and take up bartending.
The UPI reported Madeline’s lament, “Why would a guy go to a club and pay to sit there if he could get it all for free on his computer at home?” There’s something seriously wrong with the ambiance of the Toronto strip clubs when a grainy video in a 3”x3” square can compete and defeat 5’ 6” of pulsating pulchritude with a free tin of peanuts on every table.
Has the Wal-Mart philosophy of cheaper equals better so overwhelmed common sense and aesthetic acumen that people prefer their prurience in private as long as the beer is cheaper and the PC doesn’t demand any bills tucked in its g-string.
Surely this signals the end of live theater, opera, and comedy clubs as well. Why hire the babysitter and schlep downtown to see Rigoletto in person when you can just flip another DVD on the barbie and quaff a cold one while you savor the high notes and hit the bathroom without waiting for intermission.
This is not just a hysterical plea from one uninformed Luddite blaming the free market because her own grip on reality, and the pole, slipped. She’s backed up by real data. The UPI reported that 10 Toronto strip clubs have closed in the last five years, and the number of licensed “burlesque dancers” has also tumbled — to 1,254 in 2007 from 2,834 in 1998.
Similar displacements of highly skilled, but uni-functional workers were seen when CD-ROM’s wiped out the market for paper encyclopedias.
Factory workers and middle-class blue collar laborers across the developed economies are feeling the same pinch as global labor arbitrage makes it cheaper to hire an engineer in India than a janitor in Sheboygan. At least the janitor might get to keep his job a little longer, sweeping up all the tears as the unemployed take one last walk through the factory.
But Madeline has a strategy. She’s selling her pole on eBay to purchase an online course in software engineering. She’s developing her own website, Strip This, dot com and she’s hiring exotic dancers from the satellite states surrounding the former Soviet Union. It’s the one place in the world where labor is still cheaper per minute than Bangalore and the Internet cafes have plenty of space in back for cameras because the locals are all at the opera.
The pace at which technology will transform jobs is only beginning. What were once local effects are now magnified one-hundred fold by the global labor arbitrage between developed and developing countries. As the middle-class gets wiped out over the next twenty to fifty years, while wage rates reach equilibrium—-a state most university economists refer to as “penury for you, another publication for me”–-remember Madeline.
She was highly skilled, undoubtedly nimble, and pulling in over $300,000 a year. Now she’s running her own business and expects to be purchased by Google at a 50x multiple of EBITDA sometime in the next 18 months. Isn’t technology wonderful?
About the Author
Mr. Grant is a consultant at the Customer Research Center. He works on process optimization and customer experience enhancement projects. Additional information can be reviewed at www.CustomerResearchCenter.com or by emailing Mr. Grant at scgrant@customerresearchcenter.com.
