It used to be that anytime you wanted to buy something, you had to haggle. The store owner and the potential buyer started out at different prices, and through negotiation – or argument – came to agree on a single price. And that single price would be different for each buyer who walked into the store. The Quakers were not fans of this. Since everyone was equal, according to their religious beliefs, it was un-equal to charge different prices. So they invented the price tag. In the mid-1800s in Quaker stores, each item in the store cost exactly the same thing, no matter how rich you were or how good you were at haggling. Revolutionary!
it’s not just equality but also ‘simplicity’, which is a quaker ideal, meaning honesty, meaning humility, meaning no greed, no status symbols, no adversarial relationship with your community. just be who you are and do what you do, no fronting. it’s why we don’t swear oaths – because oaths imply that you’re not committed to being truthful the rest of the time. instead, in court and the like, we ‘affirm’ that yep, we’re on the level.
haggling implies that the value of a thing is whatever you can convince someone to pay – and thus you’re always going to be pushing for more money. fixed prices mean your goods are worth what they’re worth, and people can decide to pay it or not. it means you’re not in an adversarial relationship with your customers. you’re not trying to take them for all you can get.
08 março 2017
The Invention Of Prices
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