Markets with Bertie: What queues of artificial shortage stand for

Mint

2 days ago

Observing queues fascinates Bertie; specifically, observing what people have to or opt to queue up for is often instructive. As a kid, Bertie had queued to buy train and movie tickets, often dreading the disappointment that would lurk at the end of it, in the form of a 'House Full' or 'Closed for Lunch' board. Once that happened, a tout would accost whichever elder Bertie was with, offering the same ticket at an exorbitant premium. Those queues were symptomatic of an India with inadequate supply, opaque processes and brazen rent-seeking by connected middlemen. Thankfully, most of those queues are now behind us.
But the queues of helplessness have been replaced by queues of desire—to buy the latest iPhone the day it releases or outside a LVMH store to be able to place a bid on the bag that one covets. Since Bertie has no interest in any such queues, he thought they had disappeared from his life. Until, at the behest of his niece and nephew, Bertie agreed to accompany them to a tony nightclub despite knowing that he was going there mainly as a human wallet. The long queue at the door intrigued him; the DJ was unknown, the cover charge was not cheap, and the place was cavernous. That was enough to set off his curious mind in pursuit of the mystery.
What caused the queue, he figured, was an elaborate three-stage screening at the door. He spotted almost as many security guards, bouncers and organizers at the entrance as patrons. Bertie struck up a conversation with a bouncer who was wearing dark gold-rimmed aviators at ten in the night. His main job seemed to be folding his hands across his barrel-like chest and letting his biceps show through the tight black T-shirt. From him, Bertie gleaned that stage one was about checking your ticket and noting down your personal details using pen and paper. Stage two was age verification based on government-issued documents, and the last stage was an elaborate pat down and bag check for cigarettes, vapes and their ilk.
In comparison to an airport security check, which is much more critical, the disorganized system surprised Bertie. What surprised him even more was the chirpy gaggle of teenyboppers who did not seem to mind the inefficiency; in fact, they seemed to be enjoying it. They seemed to feel none of the frustration that Bertie associated with queues. That led him to theorize that this queue was serving another purpose: to create an artificial sense of shortage. Maybe it appealed to the masochistic instinct of the young people around him who, from their demeanour, looked like they had never been denied anything. Or maybe it was playing on the reverse psychology that if anything worthwhile requires hard work, then anything achieved without hardship is not worthwhile. Bertie vaguely remembered his marketing professor saying something to this effect in the context of luxury marketing.
Bertie is a Mumbai-based fund manager whose compliance department wishes him to cough twice before speaking and then decide not to say it after all.