scarcity attraction
20100621 15:26it’s a powerful margin-skewering force, the fear that you may be excluded from something. i think it draws on survival instinct primarily, with a mix of stupidity, jealousy, and probably other crazy stuff. salesmen manipulate based on the attraction of scarcity, but i think its potential is often overlooked. always liked this snippet from The Innocence of Father Brown:
[...] The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product–an “exclusive” commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them. If there were a fashionable hotel in London which no man could enter who was under six foot, society would meekly make up parties of six-foot men to dine in it. If there were an expensive restaurant which by a mere caprice of its proprietor was only open on Thursday afternoon, it would be crowded on Thursday afternoon. [...]