Femdom as an Economic Theory - Adverse Selection and the Lemon Problem

At the end of my Barter System post I briefly discussed some of the negative aspects of being one of a few Femdoms confronted with an over-whelming number of malesubs.

These problems are rooted in a couple of economic theories that were developed in order to describe certain types of market failures (market failures = when supply and demand fail to establish a perfect equilibrium).  

Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection and the Lemon Problem

Asymmetric information is a term that refers to a situation when one party has better or more complete information than the other.  Adverse Selection is term referring to market failures due to "bad" outcomes occurring based upon asymmetric information. 

The Lemon Problem describes the market for used cars and is the most common example used to describe this situation. A person selling a used car knows exactly how it has behaved over time and what problems it may have.  A person buying a used car only knows what the seller tells them, which may or not be completely accurate/true. 

Let's say:
1. A perfect, great running, used car should sell for $10,000.
2. An unreliable, problem prone, used car of the same year, model, and features should sell for $4,000.

The buyer doesn't know if the used car will be #1 or #2 (or somewhere in between).  The actual selling price will likely be somewhere around $6,000-$7,000.  This is considered a market failure since good cars sell below what they are worth and bad cars sell for more than they are worth. 

The same used car may sell from a dealer for say, $9,000 since the dealer will likely have done a thorough inspection and offer some sort of warranty, but that is outside the scope of this post.


Why this makes it harder for subs

This same type of market failure happens frequently in D/s courting.  The sub is like the used car and the Domme is the buyer.  Good subs will sell themselves as good subs and bad subs will also sell themselves as good subs.  It's (almost) impossible to tell good subs apart from bad subs without spending a significant amount of time with them. 

This leads to several problems. 
Many good subs will get passed over while being mistaken for bad subs in disguise.   
Many bad subs posing as good subs will be chosen (and discarded), making Dommes even more skeptical towards subs in general. 
It becomes next to impossible to truly sell yourself for who you are.

I know many Dommes that have developed intensive evaluation and testing periods in order to weed out the good from the bad.  While I think that it is wise of them to do so, I think it's a bit of a shame that it has to be that way.