The Price of Vigilance

I have a caffiene addiction. It's addiction just as surely as if I were laying in the gutter in a pool of vomit. Except that I'm a blithering, slurring drone who can't walk straight when I haven't had a coffee, rather than after I've had a few.

Being both an addict and a bit of a snob (which is to say, instant coffee makes me feel like my gut is rotting, so I only use it for emergencies), coffee forms an important part of my budget. To date I have managed to avoid the need to break into any houses or mug any little old ladies to feed the habit, but all of these articles in the Age suggests I might need to reconsider my position on that.

So, what's going on with coffee prices? Well, judging by the following graph of arabica prices (arabica is the standard cafe bean) prices are indeed heading north.

Check out that positive gradient! Looking at this chart, the price of beans has increased by over a third in the past two years. If I take a cursory look at this chart and combine it with the broad media coverage, I would be starting to think that I was going to have to commence drastic austerity measures to keep up my consumption (in my world, this might mean ironing my own shirts).

However, there is more to think about here. Consider that the pointy end of this chart is suggesting a coffee price of around US$4.665 per kilogram of coffee. If you assume, generously, that each cup has 15g of coffee, this means the price per cup of coffee has soared from around 4.5c per cup to a whopping 7c per cup. Even assuming that wholesaler costs add 100% to this price, we're talking an increase in the price per cup of 5c.

When I moved from Perth to Melborne around 10 years ago, the difference in coffee prices was remarkable. In Perth, a coffee costing up to around $4 was reasonable. $3.80 was about the benchmark for a standard coffee from a standard coffee shop. In Melbourne, anything over $3 was expensive.

The difference between Perth and Melbourne wasn't driven by input costs, like a 5c differential in coffee prices. It was driven by greater levels of competition. Coffee shops in Melbourne had to take a hit to margins to get people through the door - I suspect that some Melbournce cafes sell at very low margins just to get customers in to buy high-margin items (eg, muffins). In Perth, lower competition meant that consumers would pay a bit more. This little allegory points to the fact that prices aren't always driven by input costs - sometimes they're driven by customers' sensitivity to price movements (ie, their elasticity).

However, the story about a West Australians moving to Melbourne 10 years ago perhaps points to the bigger issues here. A sandgroper (West Australian) can still show up in Melbourne and be surprised by getting a coffee for $3 when they have to pay about $4 back home. Over a period where inflation has pushed average prices up by more than a third, coffee prices have moved by only around 5%. Perhaps the level of competition has pushed margins down so far that everyone is feeling the squeeze more than they'd like to, but cafes are too worried about losing market share if they increase prices.

Price fixing and collusion are illegal. Sending a signal out through the media that "we should all lift our prices now while we can blame it one the commodity price" may not be.

Now, if only I could get my salary to keep pace with inflation, I might be able to afford it.

Allen and Gloger

I recently discovered an interesting little biological byline. I take a certainly delight in the rare occasions where trash talk forms a logical nexus with 'respectable' scientific theory. This little observation fell so neatly into that category that it had to get a mention, irrespective of the fears that it might impede the high-brow tone of this publication (*cough*).

It turns out that way back in 1877 a biologist named Joel Asaph Allen posited that endotherms in colder climates should have shorter appendages than equivalent animals from warmer climates. It became known as "Allen's rule".

The initial theory was framed in terms of the hypothesis that figures with more contrast between their dimensions have a greater surface area than figures with the same volume but closely comparable dimensions. That is, a rectangle with dimensions 4x1x2 has a greater surface area (28) than a cube with the same volume (a 2x2x2 cube has surface are of 24). More surface area means more heat loss, which is an advantage in hot climates, but a disadvantage in cold climates.

Examples of this include things like polar bears having short legs and recent studies suggesting that the hotter the climate, the larger the beaks on local birds.

There is another rule called "Gloger's rule" that states that within a species of endotherms, more pigmented forms tend to be found in regions closer to the equator.

I'm sure you can see where all of this biology is headed. All I'm saying is that that if you're walking past the science labs and you hear a girl in a lab coat tell her mate that she "went on a date with a gentleman of equatorial ancestry conforming to Gloger's rule" and subsequently "discovered he was a classic illustration of Allen's rule", you should get what those crazy science chicks are on about.

A New Visa Scheme

Here's a thought.

Bernard Salt, the ubiquitous demographer, recently wrote this article in which he highlight that there's a 'shortage' of men in Australia. The issue is particularly worrisome for those women born in the 70s.

As an example, Salt notes that for the 169,000 women in Australia born in 1971 there are only 156,000 men in Australia born in 1969 (noting that a two year age gap is the norm for couples). This means we are short 13,000 men for that year alone - and that's before we factor in the higher incidences of homosexuality among men, or the fact that many of those men may be cloistered away digging dirt out of some Western Australian hole.

Now, as we all know from the well-worn generalisations dragged through the media, those 13,000 women are all sitting at home with their cats eating ice cream direct from the tub and lamenting that they can't "get a man". They all want to get married and have babies and for many of them time is running out.

Urgent action is required. If we don't get these women married there is likely to be catastrophic social consequences, probably in the form of a feline-borne plague.

So, here's what I propose. We should start up a visa system that will allow men (and men only) to enter into the country - but only on the proviso that a woman in her 30s wants to marry them. If they get divorced at any point in the first five years of the relationship, they will automatically be deported.

This departs markedly from the current visa system - mainly because there are no work or educational requirements and the couple don't have to know each other before the man arrives.

The details could be worked out, but the idea is that the man has to pay his own way to get here. The visa may grant a stay of three months, but during that time the man has to either be in a committed relationship with long term prospects, or have secured at least five dates per week with single women in the target age bracket. Failure to meet the requirements means deportation.

"But what if," I hear you ask "these women are not in relationships because they haven't made relationships a priority in their lives? Or what if some if them are unattractive, or emotionally manipulative or if they're not very nice people?"

All of these points are moot. Sure, the law would be stupid and is that blatantly exploitative of the men involved, but these women have needs and we as a society have to acknowledge that whether we like it or not, these needs have to be met. Besides, immigration is the "world's oldest travel".

If this post sounds logically flawed, inconsistent with our existing legal framework and blatantly sexist, please note it's just a reframing of the stupid arguments used to justify legalising prostitution.