{"id":28026,"date":"2015-09-14T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28026"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:36:27","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T01:36:27","slug":"qotd-fair-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/09\/14\/qotd-fair-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Fair&#8221; prices"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I think that there\u2019s a lot of very dumb rhetoric about \u201cfair trade\u201d and \u201cfair pricing,\u201d usually coming from people who want to tell others how to set their prices. I generally distrust the word \u201cfair.\u201d But there is an emotional side to pricing. Smart businesses want their customers to feel good about transactions, especially repeat-business propositions such as restaurants. That\u2019s why bartenders give out the occasional free drink, restaurateurs sometimes send out a free appetizer or dessert, etc. And, all the management consultants and books notwithstanding, there\u2019s a lot of gut in business; if a cafe proprietor in New Mexico thinks that a price feels right, or wants to know whether his customers think a price feels right, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s insignificant. Businessmen want to do the right thing, too, at least as often as anybody else.  <\/p>\n<p>It does get tricky, sometimes, e.g. the car-dealer who adds $1,000 to the price of everything so he can tell gullible buyers he\u2019s giving them $1,000 off. I think the Internet has made pricing \u201cfairer\u201d in the sense that sellers cannot as often get away with charging above-market rates; there are a fair number of stores that will sell you a product at whatever the lowest price you can document is. It\u2019s hard to say no when somebody\u2019s showing you the same product at a better price on his phone. <\/p>\n<p>Kevin D. Williamson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/389092\/fair-point-kevin-d-williamson\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;A Fair Point&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2014-09-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think that there\u2019s a lot of very dumb rhetoric about \u201cfair trade\u201d and \u201cfair pricing,\u201d usually coming from people who want to tell others how to set their prices. I generally distrust the word \u201cfair.\u201d But there is an emotional side to pricing. Smart businesses want their customers to feel good about transactions, especially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,41],"tags":[563,139],"class_list":["post-28026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-money","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7i2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28027,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions\/28027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}