As defined, I think my cheerful price for many purposes would be extremely high, like 50$ for giving you the cup of coffee I just bought from the Starbucks across the street. However, it just seems rude to name a price that high to a friend, my instincts to not offend a friend are driving the price I would say downwards, maybe you are trying to not expend friendship capital by asking me for my cheerful price, but naming a high price feels to me like I’m expending friendship capital. And in fact there might be some part of me that resents you for asking me to name a cheerful price, so you’re expending friendship capital in just asking for my cheerful price. If I do actually want to make the trade, I’m also thinking of the likelihood that you’ll stop bargaining once you find out that my cheerful price is too high, which drives the number I’ll say still more downward. My point is that it’s basically impossible to not expend friendship capital when asking someone to name any price at all.
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’ ($0), ‘friendship capital’ is still being spent/exchanged. More generally, is it possible to even interact with a friend at all without (constantly) exchanging friendship capital? (I’m not sure! But I’m leaning towards ‘no’.)
I might also be biased because the most salient related example that’s most fresh in my mind is someone that would try to ‘overpay’ (i.e. pay me something like my cheerful price) for something I’d done for them – because they had effectively imposed it upon me (and definitely without my knowledge, let alone consent). Were that person to have asked me for my cheerful price for my ‘service’, I could have told them what it was, especially if it was higher than what they would have been willing to pay (and it would have been almost always).
As defined, I think my cheerful price for many purposes would be extremely high, like 50$ for giving you the cup of coffee I just bought from the Starbucks across the street. However, it just seems rude to name a price that high to a friend, my instincts to not offend a friend are driving the price I would say downwards, maybe you are trying to not expend friendship capital by asking me for my cheerful price, but naming a high price feels to me like I’m expending friendship capital. And in fact there might be some part of me that resents you for asking me to name a cheerful price, so you’re expending friendship capital in just asking for my cheerful price. If I do actually want to make the trade, I’m also thinking of the likelihood that you’ll stop bargaining once you find out that my cheerful price is too high, which drives the number I’ll say still more downward. My point is that it’s basically impossible to not expend friendship capital when asking someone to name any price at all.
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).