✧ mechanism design, but make it pink ✧
the economics of a working girl ♡
everything on this site that looks like attitude is actually incentive engineering. here's the seminar version — bring wine.
prices are information
my rates are public, in NOK, on a page. "dm for rates" isn't discretion — it's price discrimination plus wasted hours of everyone's time, the exact noise hayek said prices exist to eliminate. a posted price answers the question before it's asked and lets both of us spend our attention on better things. transparency isn't vulnerability. it's throughput.
prepayment as screening
akerlof taught that markets drown in lemons when you can't tell the serious from the not. my inbox knows. full prepayment is a separating equilibrium: the timewaster won't pay upfront for an appointment he never meant to keep, and the genuine client happily will — because it buys him a guarantee. no-shows aren't punished; they're priced out of existing. a deposit says "i'll probably come". a prepayment says "it's mine". property rights, babe.
the XMR discount is mechanism design
the 10% off for paying in monero isn't charity — it's an alignment payment. direct XMR costs me no swap spread, settles into the asset i actually hold, and adds one more private transaction to the herd everyone hides in. i price the externality and pass it back. adam smith would understand; the compliance department never will.
guaranteed slots are property rights
when your payment settles, you own a claim on my afternoon — and the database enforces it like a land registry: it is physically incapable of double-booking your slot (there's a constraint; it has no feelings and takes no bribes). secure property rights are why people invest. same reason you can book a flight without phoning the pilot to make sure the seat is real.
the whatsapp market failure
the industry default — text, ask, wait, "come in 15 minutes" — is allocation by persistence: the slot goes to whoever nags best, not who values it most, and everyone burns hours queueing. a live calendar with binding prices is just… market clearing. schelling would call the open slot grid a coordination device. i call it not having 40 unread chats ♡
the reading room ✧
- friedrich hayek, "the use of knowledge in society" (1945) — why posted prices beat asking around, in 15 pages.
- george akerlof, "the market for lemons" (1970) — why screening exists; why my inbox needed it.
- thomas schelling, micromotives and macrobehavior (1978) — how tiny incentive tweaks reorganise everything.
read one, then experience applied microeconomics in person ♡