Bargaining
I've got a little gripe about bargaining in India. Nope, it's not the usual one that I'm always getting ripped off (although I'm sure it happens regularly). It's not even that I get tired of having to do it for soooo many things (I just got back from holidays, so the bargaining quotient vs. normal transactions was waaaaay up). It's more a complaint about the concept of bargaining today. Quite simply, it makes no sense.
Think about where the concept of bargaining originated from. It originated from when people used to barter for goods. You have a pint of milk, I have some eggs. Now how many eggs do I want to give you for that pint of milk, and how many do you want? Then, the concept makes sense. Neither knows the exact value of the thing they have produced (in terms of what the other has), and neither knows the exact value of what the other has to exchange. Nowadays, however, that isn't true. At least on one side of the transaction, and more often than not, on both.
Take that age-old tourist favourite: souvenirs. The guy selling it knows exactly how much the item is worth. He paid a certain amount for it (presumably not in eggs), and he has costs to run his shop. Therefore, he knows exactly how much extra he has to get to make a decent margin (say 20% or whatever, depending on what he's selling). Not only that, but he also knows how much the value of what he will get in return is. Because it's in rupees, or dollars, or whatever. So in fact what is happening in these transactions isn't 'bargaining' any more.
It's ripping people off.
That's because there is no grey area in the transaction. The value of what the customer has (money) is completely known, to both customer and seller. But only the seller knows the value of what they're selling (and they know that completely). So there is no 'bargaining' as such, given that the seller already has a bottom price that they will sell the item for. There's only attempts by the seller to get as much extra on top of that price as possible.
There's only one possible caveat here. The seller is so desperate that he will undercut his margin just to make a sale and get some cashflow. That's a possibility I suppose. But then at least that's a risk you take when having a 'bargaining' system (Wow, think about it, a possible downside for the seller!). And I would be willing to bet that the seller ends up on the right end of the ledger a lot more than half of the time.
Perhaps we need to change the system a little, and given that I am currently in India to solve problems, here's my solution. Make everything legal currency in the tourist markets- so reintroduce bartering. You can pay in rupees if you want. But you can also pay in Kazakhstani Drachmas (apologies to Kazakhstanis as I have no idea of the legal currency there). I'll take two papier-mâché(fancy spelling from wikipedia) elephants for 2,500 Drachmas, you'd say. Or you could pay in eggs if you wanted- but the idea would be to pay in things that the seller had no idea how much they were worth.
At the very least it would make your next souvenir-buying outing a more interesting experience.
I've got a little gripe about bargaining in India. Nope, it's not the usual one that I'm always getting ripped off (although I'm sure it happens regularly). It's not even that I get tired of having to do it for soooo many things (I just got back from holidays, so the bargaining quotient vs. normal transactions was waaaaay up). It's more a complaint about the concept of bargaining today. Quite simply, it makes no sense.
Think about where the concept of bargaining originated from. It originated from when people used to barter for goods. You have a pint of milk, I have some eggs. Now how many eggs do I want to give you for that pint of milk, and how many do you want? Then, the concept makes sense. Neither knows the exact value of the thing they have produced (in terms of what the other has), and neither knows the exact value of what the other has to exchange. Nowadays, however, that isn't true. At least on one side of the transaction, and more often than not, on both.
Take that age-old tourist favourite: souvenirs. The guy selling it knows exactly how much the item is worth. He paid a certain amount for it (presumably not in eggs), and he has costs to run his shop. Therefore, he knows exactly how much extra he has to get to make a decent margin (say 20% or whatever, depending on what he's selling). Not only that, but he also knows how much the value of what he will get in return is. Because it's in rupees, or dollars, or whatever. So in fact what is happening in these transactions isn't 'bargaining' any more.
It's ripping people off.
That's because there is no grey area in the transaction. The value of what the customer has (money) is completely known, to both customer and seller. But only the seller knows the value of what they're selling (and they know that completely). So there is no 'bargaining' as such, given that the seller already has a bottom price that they will sell the item for. There's only attempts by the seller to get as much extra on top of that price as possible.
There's only one possible caveat here. The seller is so desperate that he will undercut his margin just to make a sale and get some cashflow. That's a possibility I suppose. But then at least that's a risk you take when having a 'bargaining' system (Wow, think about it, a possible downside for the seller!). And I would be willing to bet that the seller ends up on the right end of the ledger a lot more than half of the time.
Perhaps we need to change the system a little, and given that I am currently in India to solve problems, here's my solution. Make everything legal currency in the tourist markets- so reintroduce bartering. You can pay in rupees if you want. But you can also pay in Kazakhstani Drachmas (apologies to Kazakhstanis as I have no idea of the legal currency there). I'll take two papier-mâché(fancy spelling from wikipedia) elephants for 2,500 Drachmas, you'd say. Or you could pay in eggs if you wanted- but the idea would be to pay in things that the seller had no idea how much they were worth.
At the very least it would make your next souvenir-buying outing a more interesting experience.
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