On occasion, I frequent strips clubs. It is never a sober decision to go, but as any number of drinks carry me towards the end of the night, to myself and several friends and coworkers it becomes a reasonable and economical place to go. A not bad seven dollars will gain you admission and a free drink ticket (domestics and wells only) at most of the finer establishments in Hawaii.
Once you are through the door, you also get one of the best lessons in money management you could possibly receive.
Strip clubs, and their limber and acrobatic workers, offer premium examples of the economic concepts of incentives and the human response to them and bartering. Like a soda or gumball machine, you stick your money in, a prize or reward comes out. In theory, the more money you put in, the more of a reward you receive. Incentives.
What makes it tricky, though, is that, unlike a soda or gumball machine, the exchange of goods is not one to one, nor consistently priced at strip clubs.
This is where the old world bartering comes in.
You have something the dancer wants: money, and the dancer has something that you want: punani. Through initial and on-going negotiations you have to work to make both sides happy about the equivalent value they are receiving for their goods.
In any good negotiation, though, you must appear more interested in what you already possess than what you are about to receive. At least if you don’t want to end up with the short end of the stick.
Intoxicated and confronted with full body nakedness at 1:30 in the morning, this, obviously, can be rather difficult.
That’s where you learn the lessons. Ten, Twenty, Fifty dollars, will teach you the hard way when it is gone in a second. Properly managed, though, the three dollars change you had from your admission can last you the rest of the night and still afford you that double cheeseburger at McDonalds after you leave.