To me this post may very well be a good example of some of the things that make me uncomfortable about the rationalist community, and why I so far have chosen to engage with it very minimally and mostly stay a lurker. At the risk of making a fool of myself, especially since it’s late and I didn’t read the whole post thoroughly (partly because you gave me an excuse not to halfway through) I’m going to try to explain why.
I don’t charge friends for favours, nor would I accept payment if offered. I’m not all that uncomfortable with the idea of “social capital” as a whole—I grew up partially with Portuguese culture where people will, for example, fight to pay the bill at a restaurant, because it turns out to be pretty good to be known as the guy who’s done favours for everybody in the village—but generally speaking, if I’m not willing to do a favour for a friend, then no amount of money will change that fact. At the point where you’re paying me, it ceases to be a favour, and it becomes a business transaction. Business transactions between friends are fraught.
I think a lot plays into this.
Turning a favour into a transaction means it starts being judged based on market norms rather than social norms. People treat these situations differently: there’s a famous case study of a daycare that started charging parents for picking up their kids late, only for the number of late pickups to skyrocket, because parents now felt that they could absolve their guilt by paying the fine. That change was long-lasting: even after removing the fine, things didn’t get better. In fact, IIRC it got even worse. They were still judging it based on market norms, but now the cost was $0!
When you pay someone to do things, you briefly become their employer, and that’s not a good kind of relationship to have with a friend. The employer-employee relationship is one, at least partially, of dominance: the employer now has the ability to make the employee’s life better or worse in some marginal way. You don’t usually want that in a friendship, it’s better to be in even footing.
And also? It sends a signal that you’re bad at estimating social capital and trying to paper over that weakness with money. This throws up alarm bells about what other social situations, with myself or with a third party, you might mess up in the future, and whether or not it might be a social risk to associate too closely with you.
These are all things I can tolerate in an ally, but would negatively affect anyone who wanted to be a close friend. Maybe I could put up with it, but it would take effort and patience to get past that.
My point in this isn’t to criticize you personally, or to say you’re a bad person for doing this. (Far from it, I admit there’s a kind of economic elegance to it.) It’s to try and describe the flip side, that it’s about more than just “feeling icky”.
And I think this is important, especially for building IRL communities, because I expect that people like me outnumber people like you.
I think it’s important to keep in mind a few things about this (or any other ‘weird’ social rule/trick/technology/norm/etc.):
It doesn’t have to be used all the time, let alone frequently, often, or even at all!
It doesn’t have to replace any other form of trading favors (i.e. exchanging social/friendship capital)!
It seems like you’re imagining a world, or even just a single relationship/friendship, where each person is frequently, or always, using cheerful pricing instead of all of the existing social/friendship favor trading forms.
But I’d be surprised if you couldn’t think of any examples where this would work better than the ‘social norms’ you’d otherwise use.
Have you never asked a friend for a favor that involved their professional expertise? That seems like an excellent scenario for this kind of thing – to me anyways. Whereas, under ‘social norms’, this might require considerable exchanges of social/friendship capital, even with the ‘professional’ friend offering a ‘friend discount’, asking them to name a cheerful price signals that you value your friend’s expertise and their time, and at a significant premium too. And more too that you’re willing to solicit a price from them that’s higher than they’re willing to ask for or demand. Regular favors also have the problem of being hard to reject sometimes.
I’d expect this to be even more useful when the favor directly requires some kind of financial cost to the friend as well. I’ve often found that, even when there seems like there might be some kind of mutually beneficial exchange possible, the ‘transaction costs’ of not having a norm for simply paying for things with money can swamp the (potential) positive gains to both parties.
When you pay someone to do things, you briefly become their employer, and that’s not a good kind of relationship to have with a friend.
I find a similar dynamic to be at work even when a friend agrees to do a favor ‘for free’ (i.e. for $0) – their commitment to do the thing is also something like you being their employer, e.g. you can reasonably be upset if they fail to do what they agreed to do.
I also don’t get the sense often that any two friends are perfectly on “even footing”.
But I also pay many people to do things for me where I don’t feel like their employer, e.g. plumbers, delivery people, consultants, contractors. There are lots of trades where even a ‘failure’ in the transaction or exchange being completed doesn’t give me significant latitude to punish the other party.
It also seems important to keep in mind that this whole ‘trick’ only even works if both parties are generally okay with it at all, i.e. asking each other for their cheerful prices and respecting each other’s answers as honest.
Your criticism is very fair too. And I’m generally curious about why people ‘bounce off’ the “rationalist community”. I’m also mostly a lurker, particularly IRL. And I think a big part of that is the kind of thing you described. But I do want to do better at being open to really trying weird ideas (and in real life too!). (I’m pretty weird to my acquaintances, friends, and family already.)
I’ve already found this ‘trick’ pretty useful. I haven’t had anyone offer a (radically) honest answer to my asking them for a cheerful price. I suspect that the people I’ve asked don’t fully understand that the question is sincere and shouldn’t be answered in the context of ‘standard’ social norms. And that’s too bad! I’ve asked because I’m serious and sincere about wanting to remove any obstacles (or as many as possible) to us making a particular exchange.
To me this post may very well be a good example of some of the things that make me uncomfortable about the rationalist community, and why I so far have chosen to engage with it very minimally and mostly stay a lurker. At the risk of making a fool of myself, especially since it’s late and I didn’t read the whole post thoroughly (partly because you gave me an excuse not to halfway through) I’m going to try to explain why.
I don’t charge friends for favours, nor would I accept payment if offered. I’m not all that uncomfortable with the idea of “social capital” as a whole—I grew up partially with Portuguese culture where people will, for example, fight to pay the bill at a restaurant, because it turns out to be pretty good to be known as the guy who’s done favours for everybody in the village—but generally speaking, if I’m not willing to do a favour for a friend, then no amount of money will change that fact. At the point where you’re paying me, it ceases to be a favour, and it becomes a business transaction. Business transactions between friends are fraught.
I think a lot plays into this.
Turning a favour into a transaction means it starts being judged based on market norms rather than social norms. People treat these situations differently: there’s a famous case study of a daycare that started charging parents for picking up their kids late, only for the number of late pickups to skyrocket, because parents now felt that they could absolve their guilt by paying the fine. That change was long-lasting: even after removing the fine, things didn’t get better. In fact, IIRC it got even worse. They were still judging it based on market norms, but now the cost was $0!
When you pay someone to do things, you briefly become their employer, and that’s not a good kind of relationship to have with a friend. The employer-employee relationship is one, at least partially, of dominance: the employer now has the ability to make the employee’s life better or worse in some marginal way. You don’t usually want that in a friendship, it’s better to be in even footing.
And also? It sends a signal that you’re bad at estimating social capital and trying to paper over that weakness with money. This throws up alarm bells about what other social situations, with myself or with a third party, you might mess up in the future, and whether or not it might be a social risk to associate too closely with you.
These are all things I can tolerate in an ally, but would negatively affect anyone who wanted to be a close friend. Maybe I could put up with it, but it would take effort and patience to get past that.
My point in this isn’t to criticize you personally, or to say you’re a bad person for doing this. (Far from it, I admit there’s a kind of economic elegance to it.) It’s to try and describe the flip side, that it’s about more than just “feeling icky”.
And I think this is important, especially for building IRL communities, because I expect that people like me outnumber people like you.
I think it’s important to keep in mind a few things about this (or any other ‘weird’ social rule/trick/technology/norm/etc.):
It doesn’t have to be used all the time, let alone frequently, often, or even at all!
It doesn’t have to replace any other form of trading favors (i.e. exchanging social/friendship capital)!
It seems like you’re imagining a world, or even just a single relationship/friendship, where each person is frequently, or always, using cheerful pricing instead of all of the existing social/friendship favor trading forms.
But I’d be surprised if you couldn’t think of any examples where this would work better than the ‘social norms’ you’d otherwise use.
Have you never asked a friend for a favor that involved their professional expertise? That seems like an excellent scenario for this kind of thing – to me anyways. Whereas, under ‘social norms’, this might require considerable exchanges of social/friendship capital, even with the ‘professional’ friend offering a ‘friend discount’, asking them to name a cheerful price signals that you value your friend’s expertise and their time, and at a significant premium too. And more too that you’re willing to solicit a price from them that’s higher than they’re willing to ask for or demand. Regular favors also have the problem of being hard to reject sometimes.
I’d expect this to be even more useful when the favor directly requires some kind of financial cost to the friend as well. I’ve often found that, even when there seems like there might be some kind of mutually beneficial exchange possible, the ‘transaction costs’ of not having a norm for simply paying for things with money can swamp the (potential) positive gains to both parties.
I find a similar dynamic to be at work even when a friend agrees to do a favor ‘for free’ (i.e. for $0) – their commitment to do the thing is also something like you being their employer, e.g. you can reasonably be upset if they fail to do what they agreed to do.
I also don’t get the sense often that any two friends are perfectly on “even footing”.
But I also pay many people to do things for me where I don’t feel like their employer, e.g. plumbers, delivery people, consultants, contractors. There are lots of trades where even a ‘failure’ in the transaction or exchange being completed doesn’t give me significant latitude to punish the other party.
It also seems important to keep in mind that this whole ‘trick’ only even works if both parties are generally okay with it at all, i.e. asking each other for their cheerful prices and respecting each other’s answers as honest.
This is a fair criticism of my criticism.
I’m glad you thought so!
Your criticism is very fair too. And I’m generally curious about why people ‘bounce off’ the “rationalist community”. I’m also mostly a lurker, particularly IRL. And I think a big part of that is the kind of thing you described. But I do want to do better at being open to really trying weird ideas (and in real life too!). (I’m pretty weird to my acquaintances, friends, and family already.)
I’ve already found this ‘trick’ pretty useful. I haven’t had anyone offer a (radically) honest answer to my asking them for a cheerful price. I suspect that the people I’ve asked don’t fully understand that the question is sincere and shouldn’t be answered in the context of ‘standard’ social norms. And that’s too bad! I’ve asked because I’m serious and sincere about wanting to remove any obstacles (or as many as possible) to us making a particular exchange.