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How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

41–50 of 200 posts

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#41

I'm not sure if what they are saying applies to the first girl they speak about. A street hooker cannot easily transition to a highly paid escort. You need to be pretty and young at least, to earn that much. And the street hookers, if they increased their prices, would have no customers.

I'd bet it's a lot harder than simply looking good. The article stated that the incidents became longer and more complex the higher the price rose. The customer expected to have a conversation. Given that she's now charging something only affordable by the upper/upper-middle class, one can expect her population to be highly educated. I doubt that if she were not already highly educated (and probably well-read, as well) she wouldn't be nearly as competitive. Of course, isn't that the market acting? How common is a highly educated prostitute who could choose between dozens of alternative, legal, well-paying professions. A lifetime of education is one hell of a marketable asset (and competitive advantage).

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#42
I found the second article (hidden beneath the credits and the book ads) about monkeys adopting currency much more interesting. I know people who do primate research and it doesn't surprise me in the least, but it's much more interesting than the first, which can be summarized as "high-end prostitutes have a good life and make a lot of money, low-end prostitutes have a shitty life and make no money" with the rest being a mix of stereotypes and overconvoluted explanations of the demand curve.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#43
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days. The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. And if you don't have children and your spouse is out working you might as well go to work yourself, rather than t…

Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had time. So she quit. My dad calls it the pay-your-neighbor-so-he-can-pay-his-neighbor phenomenon. Uncle Sam makes the most money in that relationship. He makes nothing when you babysit your own kid; he makes plenty when you hire someone to do the same thing(and…

Yes, that also happens quite a lot, the cost of having someone look after your children is substantial. I've heard school be referred to as the cheapest child minders that could be found.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#44
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one is on-demand by phone, and the other is on-demand at the street corner. In both cases you don't know how they got there (whether by choice or force) and most johns don't care to ask.

Totally different clientele. Ask this lady http://www.realprincessdiaries.com/

If you're at work you probably don't want to click that link.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#46

The best part is at the end when the monkey pays another monkey for sex.

I think that's part of the origin of human evolution (this started happening after women started having hidden estrus).

or seeing the same thing the other way around: hidden estrus was evolved in order to get more for less

Schroder, Inge. "Concealed Ovulation and Clandestine Copulation: a Female Contribution to Human Evolution." Ethology and Sociobiology 14.6 (1993): 381-89.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better to go to law school and specialize. I once worked with a big time tech lawyer. For three hours work, we paid him what I made pre-tax in two weeks, and I wasn't doing terribly for that point in my life. Pretty sure he's not getting beat up by any pimps when he strolls into work each day, either. He worked really hard, too. I mean, I wasn't paying the bills, but he definitely seemed worth the cash. Filed some aw…

There is a difference between 'charge-out hourly rate' and 'hourly rate of pay'. Even high end lawyers are unlikely to be paid more than one-third of their charge out rate, unless they're partners (ie, business 'owners'). You probably took that into consideration with your response - I'm not disagreeing with you, just making it clearer. And yes, there are many jobs where the pay rate exceeds $300 / hour. In my field…

I find this true for just about every professional services field. Hiring a lawyer, an accountant, a doctor, or a consultant often comes at a rate multiple times their own salaries.

But the difference is that the lawyer was probably working 50-60 billable hours a week, whereas an escort (or a business coach, presumably) will work significantly less than that.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#48
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. Is this true? Surely the cost of living has decreased over the last 100 years, so it must be easier for a single breadwinner to feed a family than it was back then.

This is what people somehow don't get. If cost of living goes down, so do the salaries. How do you think those decreases are paid for? For most any business you can name the biggest item in the budget will be human resources. If you want to cut prices this is where you have to cut to have any real effect.

How do you think those decreases are paid for?

I would have thought they would have been paid for by increases in efficiency (largely due to new technology).

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#49
Allie is not "earning far more by actually working far less." That implies that working less causes her to make more money. Rather, she's earning more by charging more, and she was able to do that because she had complementary skills that she didn't know to market until price experimentation attracted a different kind of customer. As a side effect, her higher hourly rate gives her the freedom of working less.

Perhaps there could be a market for prostitutes who don't have sex very often, if there were a way for prospective clients to verify this. But that's not Allie's business strategy.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#50

Problems with the article: > Throughout history, it has invariably been easier to be male than female. Yes, this is an overgeneralisation and yes, there are exceptions, but by any important measure, women have had it rougher than men. This one is a PC-friendly thing to say, the opposite point of view is not. If you haven't read it, I must urge you to check out the excellent "Is There Anything Good About Men?" essay b…

>>>but I'm hoping society will adjust to a point where traditional femininity can peacefully coexist as a respected choice for women on how to live their lives, because I think it can be a suitable, powerful, happy, and meaningful for choice for many womenThat's the linchpin you see. The truth is that femininity and masculinity are a continuous spectrum of variation and almost all such statements tend to prescribe something or the other. To tell you the truth I fulfill the stereotype you are proposing in quite a few ways, but most women don't. Just as most males aren't the fist beating cavemen they are made out to be. Why can't we let people just be?

Why do we need to box them into little boxes, so that they conveniently fit into our tiny little realities? Why do we need to make statements like, it's tough to be a man/woman/american/indian/african american/whatever category you can come up with?

It is shocking just how ingrained this is into our consciousness and even though I can articulate it I still can't get it out of my head. I still box people in.

Look earlier women who had it in them to become scientists were told explicitly that they should become housewives. Take a look at Joan Feynman; her thesis adviser told her the only geometry she needed to learn was the geometry of the cobwebs she should be cleaning at home. Imagine what would have happened if she would have given up. We would have lost a great mind to something as abhorrent as prejudice.

The same lesson still exists. Let the kid be. Let her grow up into who she wants to be. Not who society thinks she ought to be. She will be depressed if you take the fight out of her so that you can squeeze her into a housewife. She will be depressed if you force her onto a stage against her wish. She will be depressed in all the cases where you push her into becoming something she isn't. I think that this is what you were trying to say.

On the other hand, what boggles my mind is why aren't more males taught to exit their boxes and give a hand in raising their kids. Raising a human being isn't a full time job if it's a shared responsibility and I think expecting anything other than that is just another small box.

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