Stashed away in a secret location known only to a handful of people sits hundreds of barrels of pure Canadian maple syrup, valued at $185 million dollars. This bounty of syrup is jointly owned by Canadian maple syrup producers, and exists to, “compensate for variations in the maple syrup supply chain.”
Seems a bit over the top for a thing people put on pancakes. I mean, I get why countries have strategic oil reserves, because gasoline is such a central pillar of the world’s economy, but does Canada really need a Maple Syrup Fort Knox?
I dunno, is the answer. I’m not a business guy. A buddy of mine who went to business school told me it was basically four years of professors pointing at X-shaped graphs of supply and demand.
Since I didn’t spend four years staring at supply and demand graphs, I can’t claim to be an expert or anything, but I can tell you for sure that “surge pricing” for parking spots is a terrible idea that will tick everyone off.
For those not familiar with the concept of surge pricing, it’s basically price gouging but controlled by computer algorithms that adjust the cost of a product in real time, re-adjusting it every few seconds based on how many people are trying to purchase the product.
It was started by Uber, which introduced surge pricing that kicked in during peak times. So while grabbing an Uber for a ride home might cost $10 on a regular night, it would surge up to $40 if you were trying to grab a ride home immediately at the end of a Buffalo Bills game or a similar big event.
Surge pricing is now everywhere. A few months ago I was buying a ticket to the Penn & Teller magic show that was in town, and in the 10 minutes between clicking on the tickets, and calling my wife to see if she wanted to go, the price went up by $20.
In real time, behind-the-scenes algorithms track how many people are considering purchasing a product (a concert ticket, a cab ride home, etc.) and the price rises as more people seek out that product. In a way, it’s the perfect capitalist machine.
In a way, it’s the perfect capitalist machine
In another way, it’s anti-consumer to an absurd degree. As someone looking to purchase a thing, the most important factor in the decision to purchase the thing is often, obviously, how much does that thing cost. But when the answer is, “Well, what’s the mathematical absolute upper limit of how much the average person might be willing to spend,” then something is wrong. With a few exceptions, the price of a thing should be a set amount.
But with surge pricing, that all goes out the window and the price is now an ever-shifting amorphous blob designed to extract the largest possible amount from your wallet. It’s hecka annoying.
Now imagine that incredibly annoying system was taken and grafted onto an already annoying thing: paid parking.
It already sucks trying to pay for parking. You go to the little booth and are inevitably confronted by an inscrutable set of instructions and a machine that won’t take your card no matter how many times you swipe it.
It’s a terrible system and now politicians want to make it even worse by making you get a little app that is going to switch around the price every 60 seconds in order to maximize revenue.
Niagara Falls is the first to head in this direction. And they’ll be quick to point out that right now they are simply “exploring” the idea of surge pricing for their parking lots. Nothing is set in stone, they’ll say.
But, c’mon. We know it’s coming because they’ve ordered the report to look into it and have staff doing the legwork to put the system in place. If local politicians are so determined to keep making boneheaded decisions like this, I think we need to start looking at them from the same supply and demand perspective.
If it all comes down to supply and demand, then Niagara, with its 126 elected municipal politicians, is the most over-supplied government in Canada. Our cup runneth over. Our supply of politicians is bountiful.
Which I guess means it’s time to lower their salaries in order to, “compensate for variations in the politician supply chain.”
James Culic is honour-bound as a marketing flack to point out that parking at Fort Erie Race Track is always free. Find out how to yell at him at the bottom of this page, or tell us in a letter to the editor the theoretical maximum you’d be willing to pay to park on Clifton Hill.
