In searching Flickr’s Creative Commons for a photo to go with that last post, I came across an interesting picture of a sign that is apparently located in a place called Broker’s Bier Börse in Berlin.
The idea behind this place is that the price of individual beers goes up and down depending on the current demand for that beer. A beer gets cheap, so more people order it, so the price goes up, which leads to fewer people ordering it, so the price goes down. It’s a gimmick, but it seems like it might be fun if the beers are decent.
I wonder if they let you play the market, buying a bunch of pitchers to drive the price up then re-selling them at a profit. At the very least, I’d want to go with a group of friends and try to game the system among ourselves. I could short beer! If I was convinced the price of a beer was going to go down, perhaps I would agree to buy the next pitcher when it’s a friend’s turn, provided said friend gives me ten dollars (or the German equivalent) now. If the price drops below ten dollars, I make a profit. If it goes up above ten dollars, he makes a profit. Fun for the drunk and geeky!
(Photo by James Cridland)
That is exactly the way to get me completely drunk.
I keep all of my money in nacho futures, myself.
Funny you brought that up. During happy hour, I often offer to pay the barkeep for my future drinks in advance in order to lock in at the lower rates before prices go up. Sometimes they humor me.
I am a nerdy-nerd-nerd.
There’s a company in the UK (Bar FTSE) who do this and tour the concept around student’s unions…..although the beers are resolutely not good.
Hah! That’s great. I wish I could play the Beer Market. I’d wear a nice business suit and a pony-tail.
And if your economic theories prove poor – because you came up with them while drunk – the worst you will end up with is more beer rather than an expanding underclass demanding more social services you can’t afford because of your poor (drunken) economic decisions.
There actually is a game entitled Bierbörse–it’s a beer-themed version of the Sid Sackson classic Bazaar, so you get all the fun of solving simultaneous equations while drinking.
Lore! I realize this is entirely irrelevant, but I couldn’t find your e-mail address and wanted to alert you to some condensed awesome (assuming you aren’t already aware of it):
http://dresdencodak.com/
That’s absolutely brilliant. I’m not even a big fan of beer, and I’d go just to play with and tweak the market.
Bar FTSE? So very happymaking is your comment, Mark R.
It’s funny, I just finished linking to Dresden Codak over on Table of Malcontents before I came over here to moderate comments.
There is such a bar in Paris too, called Footsie. See here for example :
http://www.wolfstad.com/2005/10/paris-footsie-bar/
http://www.parispubs.com/pub2.php?id=243
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