Why do high-end prostitutes make so much money?
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
The single biggest risk on sleeping with a prostitute is getting a (or multiple) STDs, or even HIV.
If you sleep with a street hooker, your risk of getting something is relatively high (even if you use condoms, and all that). That street hooker that cost a hundred buck for couple of hours, probably sleeps with 20-30 people a week. Talking about used good. This is actually really risky.
A high end prostitue, could get away with sleeping with only few people a week, and still make good money. She probably is sleeping with only rich people, so the risk factor is different. The chance of her getting something from her are a lot lower.
Plus I heard that the high end ones, look really good, compare to the regular ones.
The really high end ones, are the ones that act as a gf. They don't get paid directly, but basically splurge on everything they can using your credit card. If you have seen the move "Priceless", it is a good one to watch: http://www.pricelessthemovie.com/ (mostly a comedy). But the "gf" for the month, phenomena is real in Europe, and some countries in South America.
Blatant libel aside, I would guess that the majority of it is quality of service + price targeting. i.e. The kind of people that would go to an event where a fancy escort would be necessary are those with the means to pay a high premium.
Of course all this is with a grain of salt - my expertise lies more in the realm of economics than paid companionship. After skimming the study, it seems like they've fallen in the classic academic trap of too much analysis, not enough data. All the regressions in the world don't make up for a little bit of investigation.
Specifically regarding this field, of course, the major red flag is the inability to gather data on the consumers. They tend to keep their precious data to themselves, giving no thought to the poor grad students.
1. Remember from statistics class what the problem with conducting polls via random telephone calls to thousands of different homes? Not everybody has a phone, and the reasons are nonrandom. Well, not every prostitute has the internet...or advertises on the internet...etc.
2. Just "a" website? Only one? Well, this isn't _necessarily_ a problem-- so long as the conductors of the study can provide reason to believe the population of prostitutes advertised on this particular website is demographically no different than the total population of (be it "high-end" or "all") prostitutes into whom they attempt to gain insight. Yeah, good luck with that.
3. Are we assuming that the listed hourly rates of the prostitutes on the website exactly correspond with what ends up being charged? This can swing results in several different directions: perhaps some bartering occurs on occasion, maybe special deals can be had ("Two-for-one, ehh? Oh, but only for the 26- to 30-year-olds? Well damn."), maybe they round off the time spent "on the job". In addition, the _averaged_ 'hourly rate' a prostitute charges often decreases as the total time billed for the evening increases ($50 for 15 minutes vs. $100 for 45 minutes, for example), which would make it difficult to guess at true wages from one number alone ($/hr), given that the math will inevitably be done differently from prostitute to prostitute (as well as from pimp to pimp, if one is involved). And let's not even start down the road of analyzing the "a la carte menu"...just know that each girl could have a different menu with different prices, or even no menu at all. Again, good luck to the study conductors in dealing with all these confounding variables.
4. Etc.
Point: Though I haven't read anything more than the abstract, I nonetheless highly doubt that this study was done in the proper statistical manner. "Good enough" never really is. If there are confounding variables, they need to be eliminated. Otherwise, no conclusions can be reliably drawn.
I posted a Hulu link to the CNBC episode of "Dirty Money" where they talked about the high-end of the prostitution business. It's pretty eye-opening if you take the time to watch it.
I remember reading one prostitute telling him directly that if wives had sex with their husbands regularly, they would be out of a job.
It might be true to some degree but the reason you pay a hooker isn't for the sex, it's for the discretion. Think about it for a second, if she's hot and educated and can be with him in public, why doesn't he just marry her? He's rich, she wants money, it's almost perfect. Why do they maintain the prostitute and john relationship?
Financial diversification for the prostitute, and selection diversification for the john (and maybe the prostitute as well).
If he wants to keep enjoying a certain quality of experience, marriage may not be the best means to get that. Wives usually stop dressing as well as they did when they were dating. Housework takes more of her time and energy. There are endless jokes about women having no energy for sex after doing housework and raising kids all day. A woman who is expected to look good 24/7 and "perform" for him at the drop of a hat...well, it's not very realistic. A prostitute only has to meet that standard during work hours and can then go home, take off her high heels and make-up, and not care what he would think about it because he isn't there anymore to judge her.
Or rather, how about high dollar matchmaking services instead?
According to the book "More work for mother", homemakers today work about 60 hours a week -- the same as homemakers did 300 years ago. The book is the history of technology in the home -- ie of "labor saving devices" like vacuum cleaners. Such inventions apparently saved male labor, not female labor. Vacuum cleaners meant men stopped having to beat the rugs and women took over the task of cleaning rugs. Women who work full time jobs still do 40 hours of housework a week. Men have endeavored to pick up some of the slack. It amounts to them doing, on average, about 10 minutes more a day or an hour and ten minutes a week -- which doesn't begin to make up for the 20 hours of labor she is no longer doing.
With a 50% divorce rate (in the US), I don't think your typical marriage involves Wuv, Twu Wuv (a la Princess Bride). But all the statistics and anecdotes I am familiar with indicate that it does typically involve a great deal of domestic labor on the part of the woman. And, statistically, men with a full-time wife/homemaker climb the corporate ladder faster and make more money on average. I don't think you can replicate that outcome by removing a wife's domestic duties and replacing her with someone who looks good on your arm and is great in bed. This is likely why we have a historical tradition of wealthy men having both a wife and a mistress: The two women play very different roles in his life. And the two women likely want very different things from the relationship. (Perhaps both would ideally like the same thing. But most people are unable to arrange some ideal relationship. When faced with compromising, different people have different priorities.)
In short, I think it is a mistake to think that the same woman in different circumstances would have the same thing to offer. The act of marrying her changes her (or at least changes her relationship to him, for good or for ill). If a man likes what he is getting from an escort service, marrying his favorite escort does not mean he will get more of the same. As for social taboos: People still talk when a wealthy man marries a much younger, very beautiful woman. It is generally assumed to be "an arrangement", not love, and still gets frowned upon.
1. She couldn't have been forced into it (e.g., brought into the country by some organized criminals)
2. I had to trust as best as possible that she'd be discreet
3. She had to have the capacity to do other things with her life. In other words, she wasn't doing this to survive and pay rent.
I ended up doing some research and finding an independent escort. She'd put together her own website. She arranged her own services and she preferred to organize everything by email, but required a phone call from a residential or cell account in order to confirm everything. The independent escorts here have their own database to help protect them from predators (e.g., one was recently stabbed in the neck by a customer). So they do collect this information. As I mentioned, this stuff is not illegal up here in Canada, so the cops don't care about seizing that database.
It turns out that up here, it's a lot cheaper to find a higher end escort than it is in the U.S.. I imagine the fact that it's legal means there's a bigger market. But down south, you're kind of paying for the "I'm risking going to prison" fee.
My escort is college-educated, models, occasionally does porn, and is well travelled. I'm generally a curious guy, so we did chat for a bit. Funny enough, I wanted to know what tools she used to build her website. As I was doing my research, I noticed that there appeared to be a standard toolset for these independent escorts. So she told me a bit about the tools, what she liked about them, etc.. In turn, she wanted to know how I found her, what keywords I searched for in Google to find her, etc.. I asked about the stereotype of guys just wanting to talk and she said for the most part it is not true. What is true she said is that a lot of her encounters are very short. The guys turn out to be so nervous that it's over quickly, and they're too embarrassed to wait with her so they leave. Most of her clientele are responsible guys according to her. She wouldn't get any more specific than that, which was nice (e.g., she's discreet).
In any event, the initial experience changed the way I look at a lot of things. She was very safe about the act. Condoms were mandatory no matter who her customer was. She regularly gets tested for sexually transmitted infections. First thing she did was offer up a shower. After, trying to be as sensual about it as possible, she "examined me" for signs of STIs before anything happened. Then she used a disinfectant wipe to clean the groin area for good measure. Most regular women I know are not nearly as thorough and now I really don't trust a lot of them. I'm not much into casual sex, but let's just say we shouldn't snub our noses at high-end escorts carrying STIs. I think a lot of "average" folk are truly irresponsible about their sexual health now and I'd be way more worried going to bed with a girl I'd met on an online dating site or a bar than I would my particular escort.
She has a blog, uses Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. She's also a bit of a musician. She's pretty much the kind of woman that you'd want to love. The one that chose that other path in life and is happy with it. Not the soccer mom. I suppose it's this fantasy that she's both selling and fostering. One thing that made me respect her was I didn't feel one iota of judgment on her part. She seemed very at ease with what she was doing, and dare I say she felt she should try to do a good job at it.
Here's why they get paid so much:
-As adatta02 said, they leave after. No crazies.
-You (generally) don't have to worry about them going to TMZ and blabbering about you.
-If you've selected correctly, they're exactly what you want.
-They fulfill a need precisely when demand is the highest. In other words, when you just want to get laid, they're a phone call away. For those of us not in relationships, and for some of us that are, that's worth a few hundred bucks.
-Mine was very good in bed. I knew up front what she was willing to do or not. But she was very good at what she did do.
Can I have relationships with women of similar calibre to the escort? Yes and I have. But I've noticed more and more that at this point in trying to run my business, most women just don't understand. I can't give them the kinds of reassurances they need in a relationship. Rather than put my heart through that grinder, I've decided to fulfill some basic desires when they get the best of me in a way that is as most ethical as possible. I could do the same thing by meeting women on dating sites and leading them on, but I've decided not to. I'm not sure I trust the ones on dating sites that are into casual sex enough.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/83070/cnbc-originals-dirty-money-t...
Edit: Found it on their website - http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1183761885&play=1
A friend of mine in China was the boyfriend of a massage salon madame (she started out as a prostitute, saved money and opened her own salon later on). In this salon, it was mostly handjobs, the price was 70RMB + tip (so usually around 120RMB -> 17$) ... out of this the salon took 40RMB and 30RMB if the girl was requested directly (in the case of a return customer). The best girls get about 4-5 customers/day. To compare, at the time I paid my cleaning lady 10RMB/hour and the official minimum wage in shanghai is 680RMB (but in practice a girl working as a waitress fulltime is paid 1000-1200RMB/month). Those are prices from 3 years ago. So a successful girl could earn at least 7000RMB/month and the most successful girls would move over to higher end salons where they could get more money (higher end salons would charge 2x/3x as much for the same service). That's higher than the starting salary of someone who graduated from a good university like jiatong daxue.
Another element of comparison, where I used to live in japan, there was a soapland next to my house that was hiring new girls and showed the salaries... The salaries were around 6000-8000$/month...
So outside of high end and street workers, I think there's quite a few number of not college educated girls who make a very decent living of the trade much better than if they did normal jobs (one chinese girl I met in japan was doing this kind of job to pay for her studies).
Veblen Good.
On the other hand, most of the people who see high-end prostitutes do want people to know that there's a charming, beautiful woman with them for a certain occasion or whatever (but obviously they fail to mention that she's being paid to be there).
Seems to be begging the question a bit, perhaps? (With evidence of bias towards proving his pet economic theory).
Further, the reference quoted only found a high hourly wage for prostitute through scanning records. That high hourly could be a matter of the particular "worker" only getting a few gigs and having to invest unpaid time in setting up the transactions as well as having to share earning with pimps/escort services. Considering this kind of thing happens on the edge of legality, the real income of an escort probably couldn't be found through merely looking at accounting records.
It simply shows that the demand overwhelms the supply of people who are both willing and capable of doing the job.