Tag Archives: price

Awkward conversations

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As I have continued with my give freely receive freely experiment, I have of course continued to have conversations with people about what I am doing and why I am doing  it.  For the most part these conversations have been really positive, often with people expressing what a great idea it is and that they hope I have lots of success etc etc.  But then some of the conversations have just been awkward…

Part of this is probably due to me not being all that great at expressing my ideas about GFRF yet, and then part of it is probably that the idea is so different from what people are used to and have experienced for their entire lives that they really struggle to understand what its about.  Some of our ideas about exchange are so deeply embedded that they become invisible to us, they become fundamental assumptions that we do not question or even necessarily realize exist.  So when a new idea is presented to us that operates outside those sets of assumptions we still try to interpret them in the context of our underlying assumptions even though they don’t apply, and this can lead to confusion and misunderstanding.

In a way its a bit like trying to tell someone that ‘there is no spoon’, those who’s minds are ready embrace the idea readily, while others just think you’re weird.  I guess what I need to do is demonstrate that there is no spoon to help them to understand.  I’m working on it but I think it’ll take some time.  (If you don’t get the reference, watch the video clip below, and if you do get the reference still watch the video – its a great scene).


So in this post I thought I’d mention some of the comments or misunderstandings I’ve encountered in my awkward conversations.

One of the biggest misconceptions I have encountered has been that by using ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’ I am not valuing what I do.  One quote “Yeah I get what you’re doing, but I don’t think I could do that myself because I value my time too much”.  Honestly this couldn’t be further from the truth.  The way I see it is that I value my time so highly that I don’t want to put a price on it.  The moment I put a price on my time, even a very high price, it becomes a commodity to be bought and sold.  My life, and my time is more valuable to me than that, I will however give it freely at my own discretion.

Another misconception related to this when I mention this system of exchange is that I am expecting people to pay less because of this.  Again not true.  Essentially I expect people give to me freely in return because they want to support what I am doing.  This is not tied to any particular price level.  People will give according to their means and the value they find in what I provide.  I want people to find and evaluate that value for themselves though.  Too often our ideas about value are determined by marketing efforts or by power relationships (monopolies, cartels, vulnerability of one of the parties to the exchange) rather than by the actual value of what is provided.  This leads to distortions in our economy and society and causes resources to be directed to things that aren’t actually useful to us and to be diverted from things that are.  If each of us is able to determine value for ourselves then our individual and collective resources would go to the things that are truly worthwhile and make us happy, rather than being wasted on things that actually contribute no value to our lives.  (Many of the things our money and therefore resources go to under our current way of operating, far from adding value to our lives actually take it away – more on this in another post).

(A classic example of price being determined by marketing rather than true value in this article.  A $3000 vacuum cleaner that doesn’t perform as well as a $100 one: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10829343 ).

I believe there is great value in what I do, that it really helps people in their lives, and that left to find the value themselves they will value this appropriately.  Of course there is the challenge of helping people see past the common externally imposed marketing and power relationship driven value system, but you’ve got to start somewhere and I believe that exchanging in this way may actually cause people to value what I do more highly than if I put a set price on it.  Most people are actually quite intelligent if you give them a chance to be.

A third misconception again related to the other two, is that somehow by doing this I have given up on having all the things our material society values.  Basic things like owning my own house, take holidays and so on.  Again not true at all, I still want those things and think I have a good, maybe even better chance of receiving them by giving freely and receiving freely than by charging set prices.

What I have given up on is the idea of struggling and competing against others in my society.  I guess you could say I have given up on the rat race, but I don’t think that the rat race is the only way to achieve those material aims.  I think there is a better way, and that is what I am pursuing.  This way involves more trust and more co-operation with others in our society.  It will bring out the best in me so that I end up contributing more that is of true value to individuals and society without wasting as much energy on the things that are not of value; and if it works properly I will receive more in return for the true value I create.

This way is the Give Freely Receive Freely way.  I hope you’ll continue to follow my journey as I explore these ideas and learn how to make this work in practice.

China – no fixed price

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I have just got back from my trip to China.  My purpose in going was mainly for my kung fu and qigong teaching, to check out the schools there, gain ideas and inspiration, and prepare for when groups from my school may make trips there.  But I also found that I had a lot of experiences and saw a lot of things that gave me food for thought about the ‘give freely receive freely’ concept.

The Great Wall of China

One thing that was particularly relevant was that in China there is no fixed price on almost anything.  Almost everything is negotiable and the locals expect there to be some haggling before a final price is established at which an exchange will take place.  At one of the major markets the vendors will typically ask in the region of 10 times what they will actually accept for what they are selling.  Then a drawn out negotiation begins during which they will act like whatever price you suggest is ridiculous, tell you how other people they would normally quote a higher price for but for you they quoted a reasonable price, they will try and show you inferior products and suggest that maybe you could buy one of them instead, they will suggest a price not much lower than they initially offered, you walk away and then they call after you with a better price, they may act sad, angry etc and then eventually you come to a price you a both happy with.

Inside a market in Shanghai

The process can be entertaining I suppose, but also takes quite a bit of time.  On the two occasions when I tried to shorten the process and get to a price I was happy with faster (and KNEW I could get from experience with other stallholders), they wouldn’t sell to me.  It seems like in order to get a reasonable price I HAD to go through the charade, even though getting to a price we both new was reasonable faster would have saved both of us a lot of time and energy.  After awhile I began to avoid the markets because I didn’t want to put so much time and effort into a simple transaction, although I suppose I would still go there if there was something I really needed.

But it doesn’t stop there, even in the big flash department stores with marked prices on everything, apparently things are still negotiable.  It became very difficult to know what price to really expect for things.

The bright lights of East Nanjing Road, lots of upmarket big brand shopping.

The one exception was food.  I had a long conversation about this with a Chinese lady who  made sure to let me know that I should negotiate on absolutely EVERYTHING in China with the only exception being food, for food the price was the price.  She probably wasn’t aware that there was a slight proviso to that, the price is the price as long as you are CHINESE.  Probably 90% of the time or more I think the people selling me food just charged me the same price as they would anyone else, but there were a couple of occasions at fruit shops where I was charged far more than I should have been.  At one of these I know I was charged 10 times the price of a local, because I saw what a local was charged for the same items.  I could have entered into negotiations at this point to get a better price, but was quite bemused by the whole thing at the time so just paid the money and left.  But while I may have had more money than some of the locals, I certainly did not have enough that I would have been able to afford that price for food on a regular basis, so if I had been staying in the area I never would have bought from that shop again.

A fruit and vegetable stall at Deng Feng (not one of the ones I was ripped off at)

So how does this all tie in to the ‘give freely, receive freely’ concept?  Well for a start in many ways I liked there not being a fixed price, it provided a mechanism by which those with more could pay more and those with less could pay less.  A lot of the time I am sure that even with some hard bargaining I still paid considerably more than a local would, and I don’t mind that, because it was a price I could afford and was happy with.  The bargaining to reach a price though became tedious and time consuming.  So much energy was put into the transaction by both sides to make sure they got as much (or gave as little) as possible in the deal.  Surely we all would be better off if this energy was put into other productive things.  With give freely receive freely, no energy is expended on negotiation, meaning we all have more time and energy for the things we really want and need in life.

It is very hard for us to know the circumstances of everyone we deal with.  Sometimes the initial price quoted by a vendor would be so high it seemed ridiculous even to a westerner used to paying more in their home country.  They really seemed to have little conception of what would seem like a reasonable price to us.  On the other hand, for a foreigner it was very hard to tell where the true local price point was, because many things were so cheap that you could pay two or three times what a local would and still feel like you got a pretty good price.  Using a give freely receive freely approach means that we do not judge the circumstances of another but let them give according to what they can.  I wonder how some of the stall holders might have fared under such a system.  I know there were times when I would have gladly paid more for something, but the whole mindset of bargaining sets you up to try and get as low a price as you possibly can (or have the time and patience to bargain for).

I also respected the fact that for food at least the price was usually the price.  I think there is a basic human understanding  that there are certain things we need to survive so at least for those things we should deal fairly with each other.  While it was possible to pay a lot for food in China, there seemed to always be very cheap options as well, even in the big cities, that I think even the poor would have been able to afford.  For the most part I think I was treated decently by the people selling food in China, and I appreciated that.  Maybe the exceptions with the fruit could be due to fruit being viewed as a luxury?  I’m not sure about that.

Yummy noodles in Deng Feng, apparently the Henan province noodles are quite famous.

When we deal unfairly with someone in our community, it may make us a short term profit, but ultimately in the long run do us harm.  In the case of the fruit stands that charged excessively for what I bought from them, they would have really lost out if I had stayed in the area.  I eat quite a lot of fruit, but having been ripped of once, I would not go back to that shop, I would find somewhere that charged me fairly and they would get all my business.  I am sure this also has wider implications that will affect those involved even if they manage to only overcharge those who would not be returning to their shop anyway.  The world is all interconnected and our actions tend to have ripple effects.  Others would observe how the shop owner treated foreigners, and this in turn would shape their view of the shop owner and how they interact with them, I’m sure in the end there would be some effect even if not immediately – a bit like the concept of karma.

So all up China was an interesting and thought provoking experience.  There were many other things I saw or experienced while I was there that have a bearing on ‘give freely, receive freely’ too, but I think I will write about those more when I get to writing about various specific topics.