What is going on in the market
This is an extension of a drunken argument with a few mongering friends. So bear with me a bit.
We all agree prices have gone up a lot (at least asking prices) for the same or sometimes much lamer service. So why exactly is that happening?
The simplest answer comes down to supply and demand.
On the demand end, for a lot of messed up reasons the civilian dating market in 2026 is seriously dysfunctional. Especially in a city like Seattle where it is hard to make new friends in the best of times. And there are a lot more people here than there were in the past.
On the supply end, we have a number of things that have happened in the past ten years:
1. TRB being shut down.
2. FOSTA-SESTA being passed.
3. The other board essentially become a corrupt scam.
4. Covid.
No single item in the above list made a substantial difference, but all of them together combined basically made it much more difficult and much less appealing for new providers (especially new younger providers) to break into the market here.
So you have more mongers and fewer providers in that pool. So it is hardly surprising that prices have gone up and providers are skating by giving shit service.
What really nails it is that while prices for indy providers has gone through the roof, the prices you pay at AMPs are only slightly more than you'd expect to pay 20 years ago. At the same time, the number of AMPs has exploded in the Puget Sound area. And there are many more apartment incalls with a couple of Asian women of varying and often questionable vintage offering basic services than are obvious from the ads on STG and Bedpage. So there is a lot more supply on that end of the market.
So what I'm trying to say is that there are only two ways to bring rates for providers down:
1. Get more girls in the business.
2. Get fewer guys mongering.
Classic Inflationary Climate
[QUOTE=MarkoRamius;7555363]This is an extension of a drunken argument with a few mongering friends. So bear with me a bit.
We all agree prices have gone up a lot (at least asking prices) for the same or sometimes much lamer service. So why exactly is that happening?
The simplest answer comes down to supply and demand.
On the demand end, for a lot of messed up reasons the civilian dating market in 2026 is seriously dysfunctional. Especially in a city like Seattle where it is hard to make new friends in the best of times. And there are a lot more people here than there were in the past.
On the supply end, we have a number of things that have happened in the past ten years:
1. TRB being shut down.
2. FOSTA-SESTA being passed.
3. The other board essentially become a corrupt scam.
4. Covid.
No single item in the above list made a substantial difference, but all of them together combined basically made it much more difficult and much less appealing for new providers (especially new younger providers) to break into the market here.
So you have more mongers and fewer providers in that pool. So it is hardly surprising that prices have gone up and providers are skating by giving shit service.
What really nails it is that while prices for indy providers has gone through the roof, the prices you pay at AMPs are only slightly more than you'd expect to pay 20 years ago. At the same time, the number of AMPs has exploded in the Puget Sound area. And there are many more apartment incalls with a couple of Asian women of varying and often questionable vintage offering basic services than are obvious from the ads on STG and Bedpage. So there is a lot more supply on that end of the market.
So what I'm trying to say is that there are only two ways to bring rates for providers down:
1. Get more girls in the business.
2. Get fewer guys mongering.[/QUOTE]All of above is true. But prices of these sorts of services is highly dependent on local climate. And Seattle climate SUCKS because we have far too much dumb money here. Guys that make a lot, but lack the experience or ability to properly assign value to benefits. So they just throw more money at it, as that's what they've got.
Inflation is directly related to the money supply, generally following the principle that when the money supply grows faster than the economy's output, the value of money falls and prices rise, often described as "too much money chasing too few goods". We've got wayyyyy too much dumb money doing the chasing here, driving prices up and quality down.
