[eadmund]

Everybody wants to charge as much as he can. Workers do the same: we all want to charge as much for our labour as possible. Unions do the same thing too.

Everyone also wants to pay as little as he can, too.

Fortunately, as long as there are many buyers and many sellers, the market tends to find efficient prices. When there is a monopoly or a monopsony, though, prices get out of wack.

[sojsurf]

One thing I've noticed is that our current economic model, which builds in constant inflation, forces buyers and sellers to have this conversation non-stop. Why are prices higher? Because our costs are higher. Or because everyone else is charging more. Didn't you just raise prices recently? Yes...

If you don't increase your prices with inflation, your business will not be sustainable in the long term.

[Bjartr]

> Everybody

Not everybody everybody. Some people want to charge/pay/receive the maximum reasonable amount. Where "reasonable" is informed by social norms. The existence of so many amoral corporations, and sociopathic individuals running them, has absolutely skewed social expectations though.

Such people are certainly less common, but they do exist (anecdata of one, me)

Homo economicus does not actually exist.

[walkabout]

My experience is that kids have to be taught “‘fair’ is what the market will bear” because they start out feeling quite strongly that it’s not true.

Tons of kids aren’t taught that, some of them start businesses, and they may struggle to make ends meet (or at least to thrive like they could be) because raising prices to market rates feels so unfair to them that they won’t do it unless prodded to and told it’s ok by someone else (and they still might not)

I definitely am not convinced market-rate-is-ethical-and-fair is natural thinking for most people, or the kind of thing they want to do.

(I’ve been the one telling people they should raise prices and I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s kinda wrong…)

[terminalshort]

> kids have to be taught “‘fair’ is what the market will bear”

Because it seems like the normal default for humans is that "fair" means when I sell something I take the highest offer I can get, but when I buy things the seller should give me the lowest offer he can while meeting his expenses or he is being "greedy." If you don't believe me just read the HN comments on any financial topic.

[walkabout]

Nope, it works both ways, at least for lots of folks. The other attitude often (in my experience, most of the time) has to be explicitly taught or conditioned in from getting fucked enough times and deciding you may as well be fucking people too.

[terminalshort]

Not liking the price but paying it anyway isn't "getting fucked" like you and so many other people seem to believe.

[walkabout]

K. But from what I’ve seen most people have to be taught your way of thinking.