... makes the world go round

I recently popped by New York and one thing was blatantly obvious: the correlation between the size of cities and the affluence of the top tier is quite clear. New York's club scene is a case in point of how money talks and the rules of the game are clear: the clubs are there to maximize their profits. Which isn't really that big a surprise, I guess.

Another interesting aspect related to that was the dynamic with which clubs in the big world operate. To maximize money, you need to maximize the amount of affluent customers who are willing to shell out money. And that typically still means men. So as a man, you can essentially bring two things to the club: money or women. If you bring money, you better bring a hefty pile of it. If you bring women, they better be quite the lookers. The women are actually quite obvious, since naturally the wealthy men will like to be surrounded by beautiful women. And to get things going, men will have to show their colors by shelling out as much cash as possible to get the most expensive bottles. This then naturally attracts the women, who will tend to flock towards these tables either because they are gold diggers, or because they were already paid to do that.

Naturally this dynamic can be ruined if the average material in the club makes the club less desirable. So groups of men need not bother unless they are prepared to drop a thick wad of cash. Interestingly enough this dynamic isn't as present in Finland as it is in London, New York, and other big cities. The conclusion to draw from here is that Helsinki obviously isn't a big city or there aren't that many young and affluent people in Finland. Or both, which is very likely the case. This is, I guess, supported by a recent statistic that an average customer in the night will drop about 20 euros of cash per night, which is two or three orders of magnitude different than the wealthiest customers in the more exclusive clubs of the biggest cities in the world.

Another interesting thing is that despite the whole discourse on gender equality seems to have left the dynamics of the night very much untouched. Sure, some will argue that women on average have the upper hand when it comes to power, but in the more exclusive settings it is still the dollar that has the last say. Which is best illustrated by a question on Craigslist a fair while back in which a girl from NYC was asking about how he might go about bagging an affluent hedge fund manager. The response was that the setting should be looked at as a deal: the girl has nothing to give but her looks, which are melting away, while the guy has status, wealth, and power, which will keep on growing unless he fumbles. So ultimately the girl will want to bag the manager while the manager will want to only lease the girl for a certain while, until he can upgraded to next year's model. Which I guess is precisely how the world works in some circles.

Then, what is left at the end of the day in terms of lessons? Well, for me the very positive realization is that I'm in fact very happy with my life. I can enjoy myself by observing these types of dynamics at play while at the same time being satisfied by knowing that I don't need to partake in these games. And that's a really comforting thing to know.