ANST - why membership

[leigh- at primenet.com]

At 07:52 PM 02/14/2000 EST, you wrote:
>
>Yanno, this sounds like the old "chicken and egg" situation.
>
>To explain how it relates to memberships, let us revisit the old economics 
>lesson of "supply and demand".  We have a high demand, and we run low, so
the 
>price gets driven up.  Now we have a lowered demand, and more supply, but we 
>haven't lowered the price yet.
>
>The point:  The SCA, Inc. has driven the price up above what the demand was 
>willing to pay.  Result:  Lowered demand.
>
>How do we solve this?  The laws of economics demands that the prices be 
>lowered to increase the demand.  So, why aren't we following the laws of 
>economics?

Well, for one thing, even though the demand for SCA "services" may have
dropped the prices paid in the mundane world for those services (insurance,
printing, postage, rentals) have increased. As long ago as 1996 when I was
a kingdom chronicler the cost  of printing and mailing the kingdom
newsletter was more than the stipend allowed for printing. Postage has gone
up several times since then and the US Postal service is moving to bring
non-profit rates more into line with for-profit rates, that will severely
increase the costs of the kingdom newsletters throughout most of the SCA.
How do you decrease the membership costs and still cover the benefits (like
the newsletter) that have increased costs? 

Laetitia








>Lord Johanne Kiefer Hayden          Paul E. Kiefer, Jr.
>Barony of Bryn Gwlad                "Insanity with an attitude."
>Kingdom of Ansteorra                pkieferjr at aol.com
>============================================================================
>Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.
>
>
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.