Pi-Consulting

“Walk? Not bloody likely!” Eliza Doolittle in Shaw’s play Pygmalion memorably declared, “I’m goin’ in a taxi!”. This may be the last recorded expression of unconditional enthusiasm for taxicabs as a mode of transport. In today’s world, you are more likely to hear a string of complaints about them. A taxi ride seems to be one of those products or services which consumers pay for because they have to, not because they want to.

In a world of increasing product harmonization, is a standard-issue cab ride a more or less standardized experience around the globe? On some measures it probably is. Taxi users everywhere are united in their complaints about high prices, indirect routes, surly drivers, mysteriously defective taxi-meters, and the fact that you can never find a cab when it’s raining. (Actually that last one is sort of a back-handed compliment to this much reviled mode of transport. There are moments when we actually need a cab).

However, the complaints about high prices may not always be justified. An examination of available sources on five large cities in different corners of the Americas suggests that price is only part of a complex of variables determining how many people use taxis in a given market.

In a recent comparison, Los Angeles was charging the highest urban taxi fares in the world, at just under $15 for a 3-mile ride. New York was not far behind, and both cities showed low figures for “used a taxi yesterday”. Coincidentally, high percentages of Angelenos and New Yorkers own their own cars. By contrast, both cab fares and car-ownership are dramatically lower in places like Buenos Aires and Mexico City, and taxi usage is therefore higher. The principle seems to be that fewer private cars mean a bigger pool, both of taxis and of paying customers to ride in them. If it’s true, that means there are parallel economies of scale which hold down prices and increase uptake as a result. In many cities, taxis are a ‘commoditized’ alternative to a creaking and unreliable urban public transport system. One wonders if this ‘benign circle’ might possibly be repeated elsewhere. Could traffic congestion in New York and London be reduced by slashing 80% off taxi fares? We will probably never know.

Of course a taxi ride is not just about getting from A to B. It’s also an opportunity to exchange views with one of the most dogmatically opinionated people on the planet. New York cabbies, in Pi’s experience, know very little, but have strong opinions on just about everything. If their passenger is brave enough to voice an opinion of his own from his perspex prison-cell in the back of the car, chances are he will be sharply told to “fuggeddabadit”. London cabbies, by contrast, really do know everything. Since London traffic has now apparently slowed to an average speed of less than 5 miles an hour, even a ride of a few blocks gives your driver the chance to share with you the full extent of his knowledge about the entire universe, sometimes twice.

What of the “in-taxi experience”? Depending on where in the world you hire your cab, its interior fixtures and décor will probably differ in exotic ways. The miniature football boots dangling from the rear-view mirror will be the same, but everything else will be a tribute to the uniqueness of local culture. In Mexico, for instance, the inside of a taxi is often decked out like a religious shrine Crimson ‘altar cloths’ fringed with gold tassels cover the dashboard. St. Christopher medals and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe dangle distractingly in front of your driver’s eyes. (This is so that he can take his hands off the steering wheel and clutch onto something genuinely reliable when a traffic accident is imminent). In Saudi Arabia, Pi was told, you will find cabbies watching miniature TV sets while driving you around. One nervous English passenger asked if this wasn’t a rather dangerous practice. “Not really”, said the driver, “at least it’s not as dangerous as reading the newspaper”.

The importance of in-cab appurtenances should not be underestimated. The taxi market is apparently governed by a “price-to-kitsch ratio”. Comparative figures reveal that the cheapest cab-rides are to be had in Mumbai, Bangkok, Jakarta and in the rainbow-colored ‘jeepneys’ of Manila. Coincidentally, these are all cities where taxi-drivers vie for the honor of owning the most exotically decorated taxi on the street. How different from the sober black of London taxis, (which of course cost a lot more to ride in).

The mathematical principle at work here seems to be that the fare charged for a cab ride varies in direct inverse proportion to the garishness of the vehicle’s décor. So, when hailing a cab in foreign parts, Pi advises you to keep an eye out for fairy-lights, gold trimmed crimson altar cloths, holy medallions and little flashing neon football boots. You’ll probably save money.

Tech rules. The average American comes up with more commercially exploitable technological innovations and ideas than people from practically any other country. The Finns, for some reason, seem to be the runners-up. Despite this, the typical American faced with a malfunctioning electronic device, notwithstanding his/her membership of the most technologically advanced society in man’s history, still usually resorts to ‘percussive maintenance’, i.e. thumping the crap out of the thing to try to start it working again. (Sources: World Economic Forum, The Dilbert Zone, Pi)

God gave Adam a luxuriant growth of facial hair, but every morning his sons laboriously scrape it off again. A huge global industry is based on this curious fact.

What do men use to keep themselves clean-shaven? A recent survey in Europe showed that 45% of European males have electric shavers, and that nearly two-thirds of them use some kind of wet-shaving system, whether conventional razors or the disposable kind. All together those who shave seem to represent nearly 90% of adult males. (There is some duplication: a significant number of ‘wet shavers’ apparently keep an electric shaver handy as well). That leaves around 10% of adult males who don’t give any direct evidence that they shave at all.

Logic says that we can assume that those guys all wear beards. In the absence of “Do you have a beard?” as a questionnaire item in most surveys, it’s perhaps as close as we’re likely to get. (But wait. Could these people be regular shavers who happen to use someone else’s razor? Their wives’ or girlfriends’, for instance? Ewwwww!!! If yes, Pi would like to hear from the Wronged Women whose shaving equipment is being borrowed by their Unprincipled Menfolk. In keeping with this website’s fearless editorial policy, We Will Name The Guilty Men).

Interestingly enough, a man’s propensity to wear a beard seems to vary according to a North-South divide, at least in Europe. A higher proportion of British men turned up in the “don’t shave” column than Frenchmen. There are considerably more bearded men in the chilly climes of Germany than in sunny Spain, where the clean-shaven predominate by a higher margin. Pi’s Law of Thermobarbanomics (“more heat, less beards”) could be close to becoming proven scientific fact.

Electric shaver owners tend to be older (peak age is 55+), and predominantly married. They seem to be the buttoned-up sort, who like organized routines, and judge a fellow by the car he drives. Wet shavers cluster in the younger age ranges, and are slightly more likely to be divorced or separated.

How do non-shavers differ from their clean-shaven brethren? For a start, they tend to be either way older or way younger, polarized to the under-20 and over-65 age groups. Many of the younger ones are students, and still single. Temperamentally, they can be casual to the point of untidiness, forthright to the point of rudeness, and they tend to do things impulsively, on the spur of the moment. They don’t really see cars as status symbols, don’t put much effort into appearing attractive to women, and are not particularly happy with their jobs. Barbarians, perhaps… ?

Paris is where good Americans go when they die, it used to be said. The same is true about Miami and the Latin Americans. People from all over Hispanic America speak of Miami with a wistful sigh and a flutter of the eyelids, as if it were some kind of earthly paradise. Instead of pronouncing the name “Mee-ah-mee”, Spanish-style, they call it “My Yammi”, much as Americans used to refer reverentially to “Paree”. Anyway, your blogmeister used to live overlooking Biscayne Bay and South Beach, and, with the curiosity that comes naturally to a Pi executive, studied up on what makes the place tick.

Pi knows that the most absorbing of all sciences is that of human behavior and interaction. All the really interesting places on earth are where races, colors, beliefs, languages, cuisines and tastes collide, and then collude. Rio de Janeiro is one such spot. Xenophobia rarely gets a toe-hold in countries whose populations are mostly immigrants. Such places also frequently have ports attached. Puerto Rico is another cheerful ‘melting pot’, given its kaleidoscopic – and mostly benign – racial and linguistic mix. New York used to be like that, and ought to be today, but somehow isn’t. Someone once acerbically described NYC as “White people in brown shoes exchanging sidelong looks with brown people in white shoes”. The different groups there seem to slide sullenly past each other like oil and water in a Petri dish, even within ethnicities. This may in fact have something to do with socio-economic stratification, or perhaps the concentration of lots of people in a small and very expensive piece of turf. (The imbecilically-named “War on Terror” sure didn’t help, enlarging latent mutual suspicions exponentially). Anyway, by comparison with NYC Miami is big and spread out, and everyone rubs along pretty much okay. (By the way, has anyone ever noticed the unusually high concentration of “Star Trek” fans in New York City? My theory is that Trekkies respond to, but fail to perceive, that venerable TV show’s real underlying themes, ie. [i] the very American concept of obedience to authority and [ii] the ultimate impossibility of any real accommodation with aliens, however liberal your persuasions).

So what about Miami? Definitely another ‘melting pot’ market. You’ll hear Spanish in ten different dialects, (some mutually incomprehensible), plus Portuguese, French (and its Creole derivatives — all the taxi drivers are from Haiti), even Russian. Oh, and English, though it’s not always immediately recognizable as such. Miami is one of the few places where you will encounter Americans making a serious effort to speak a foreign language, whether it be Spanish or, of course, English.

Miami as a city is a jigsaw of different cultures, languages, tastes, diets and shopping habits. Older retirees from the North-Eastern US and sun-seeking newcomers from all over the States rub shoulders with conservative Cubans, dance-mad Dominicans, nostalgic Nicaraguans, and folk from every other corner of the Americas. Burger King vies for your lunch-money with Pollo Tropical (spicy chicken, yellow rice, fried bananas and salsa) and innumerable Cuban and Caribbean-style eateries, serving rice, beans, ‘yuca’, fried plantains and roast pork. Oh, try the “Vaca Frita”, why don’t you? It means “Fried Cow”.

When the writer moved to Miami, he was told how lucky he was to be living here. “What makes Miami such a terrific place”, said my witty NYC-bred informant, “is that it’s so close to the USA”. Indeed, the city has been chosen as Latin American HQ by big hi-tech and service companies, media conglomerates, ad agencies and dozens of manufacturers. (Despite this trend, some Chicago- and Minnesota-based corporations frankly shuddered at the thought of having to mix with all those flaky, unpredictable and tempestuous Latins. Realizing that you can’t easily run a Latin American business from the shores of the Great Lakes, such outfits tended to opt for an HQ in Fort Lauderdale, forty miles up the coast from Miami, on the basis that “At least that’s still the real United States”).

Anyway, the melting-pot thing really works. Miamians turn out in market research surveys to consider themselves 70% friendlier than the rest of the USA. Oh, and nearly two-thirds luckier: Miami Latinos outscore the nation by +63% on weekly purchase of lottery tickets. ¡Mucha suerte, damas y caballeros!

The Product Placement (PP) industry, as it relates to movies and television, was an American invention, and largely remains an American preserve. This is for the overriding reason that Hollywood, the filmed entertainment world’s HQ and epicenter, is located on American soil. Its executives, financiers and writers dance to the tune of American message-mongers, sliding everything from branded beer to iconic cars into the movie fare we watch. The PP industry bankrolls Hollywood to a significant degree, and helps to ensure that $100 million movie productions don’t cost $150 million or more. Even the Pentagon – and its army, navy, marines and air force divisions – have their own anonymous-looking but luxurious offices on Hollywood’s outskirts. They run these “entertainment liaison offices” to ensure that Uncle Sam’s latest combat hardware gets a favorable showing, and that the US military continues to occupy a big and favorable corner of America’s – and by extension the world’s –subconscious. Did anyone think that “The Hunt for Red October”, “Sands of Iwo Jima” and “Air Force One” got made without a generous slab of cash from the Pentagon? Welcome to America’s world of product placement, where all-conquering technology, prominently featured in the movies and on TV, makes sure that America’s military continues to get – and the profitable armaments industry to produce – well… all-conquering technology! Source: London Sunday Telegraph, Pi