But I wonder if maybe part of this is due to overly focusing on the specific trade being proposed? Everything you wrote seems absolutely germane to answering someone’s question to you about your cheerful price! And, or so I’d suspect, anyone that would ask you for your cheerful price for something would very much want to know all of this info – so that, for one, they’d no not to ever ask you for a cheerful price again.
My point is that it’s basically impossible to not expend friendship capital when asking someone to name any price at all.
I would think that asking for anything, even if you’re cheerfully willing to do it when asked (i.e. not obviously more than once) for ‘free’ ($0), ‘friendship capital’ is still being spent/exchanged. More generally, is it possible to even interact with a friend at all without (constantly) exchanging friendship capital? (I’m not sure! But I’m leaning towards ‘no’.)
I might also be biased because the most salient related example that’s most fresh in my mind is someone that would try to ‘overpay’ (i.e. pay me something like my cheerful price) for something I’d done for them – because they had effectively imposed it upon me (and definitely without my knowledge, let alone consent). Were that person to have asked me for my cheerful price for my ‘service’, I could have told them what it was, especially if it was higher than what they would have been willing to pay (and it would have been almost always).
All advice is bad advice for someone (generally)!
But I wonder if maybe part of this is due to overly focusing on the specific trade being proposed? Everything you wrote seems absolutely germane to answering someone’s question to you about your cheerful price! And, or so I’d suspect, anyone that would ask you for your cheerful price for something would very much want to know all of this info – so that, for one, they’d no not to ever ask you for a cheerful price again.
I would think that asking for anything, even if you’re cheerfully willing to do it when asked (i.e. not obviously more than once) for ‘free’ ($0), ‘friendship capital’ is still being spent/exchanged. More generally, is it possible to even interact with a friend at all without (constantly) exchanging friendship capital? (I’m not sure! But I’m leaning towards ‘no’.)
I might also be biased because the most salient related example that’s most fresh in my mind is someone that would try to ‘overpay’ (i.e. pay me something like my cheerful price) for something I’d done for them – because they had effectively imposed it upon me (and definitely without my knowledge, let alone consent). Were that person to have asked me for my cheerful price for my ‘service’, I could have told them what it was, especially if it was higher than what they would have been willing to pay (and it would have been almost always).