What kind of interactions do you have that make this a frequently applicable concept? The only reason to get a good or service from a friend rather than a stranger professional is if it is in some way more efficient. Even disregarding the fact that asking for things from friends is generally less efficient because of the potentially fraughtness, this doesn’t happen much for me. If I ask a friend to make me a cake, it’s because I already know it is positive sum. If I want cake qua cake I go to a cake shop. The only examples I can think of where it would be applicable are:
Staying with a friend for a period where it’s unclear if/how much rent you should pay
Division of chores with housemates (but limited applicability because IME people are averse to significantly uneven splits of labour even if compensated)
Possible-example: in my world it is customary to attempt to offer compensation if you freeride on someone driving somewhere. I suspect this might seem strange to you, since assuming they enjoy your company and the difference in gas costs is negligible, the cost to the driver is surely negative so the money should flow the other way.
Non-example: selling something second-hand to a friend—I would just use ebay price minus P&P, possibly with some arbitrary discount
This does not seem like enough to warrant minting a general concept, so I’m curious what examples you have in mind.
I was trying to come up with examples where the exchange was very small. I agree the three you don’t like were ways of resolving often unimportant preferences and can sound petty.
That said:
For the first one I know at least two people with PTSD-like symptoms who have requested something similar from me, which wasn’t petty. I expect that they’d feel more comfortable if they could offset the cost with money, rather than feeling like they’re paying an unknown, possibly large amount of social capital (indeed one of them was severely disruptive to me, and I never really brought it up).
For the second, I think that people have different standards for thinking about microcovids and such, and I have exchange great deals of money in this way. I wouldn’t think much of it if someone asked me that, likely we’re already exchanging dollars for microcovids.
This one is the one I most identify with! Clean surfaces are a big quality of life improvement for me, and I’d happily pay for it.
For the last, you say that even normies wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I think it’s plausible my mum would be upset if I offered to pay her to drive me to the airport.
Thanks! This has definitely helped me to think about the concept of cheerful prices. Here’s my current position.
I do see the value in avoiding the situation of “I’m paying you to do X, you accept, but are secretly annoyed about it”. By paying instead X + cheerfulness bonus you avoid it. However,
I don’t have much IRL experience with rationalists, but I would expect that if you buy into the idea of exchanging money in these sorts of scenarios, that you’d also buy into the idea of Tell Culture, at least enough such that you can have some back and forth and avoid the “but are secretly annoyed about it” part.
Even if I’m wrong about (1), isn’t the cheerfulness bonus too large? “Cheerful” and “excited” seem like they really overshoot “don’t have secret feelings of annoyance”. Maybe a “non-begrudging/non-reluctant/non-sour price” would make more sense. In practice, I expect that the payer would often feel resentment about paying cheerful prices. “Ugh, do I really have to keep paying this person $100 to clean up the kitchen?”
While in my experience the rationalists have some of the best conversational norms for communicating about conflict and costs and disagreements, I would not say that the rationalists I meet have solved these problems, to the extent where there are not costs that are very difficult to do conscious accounting of. So from one perspective, I’ll take all the tools I can get, and this seems like it may help with some such situations.
That said, I think you’re right that the cheerfulness bonus is probably too large in some of my examples. The actual cheerful price for the one I have in mind would’ve been… I feel confused, somewhere between $50 and $500. Still, I think it would’ve been a bit high for them. But my fair price would’ve been lower.
I guess I’ll look for opportunities to use cheerful prices with the people I know. I’ll see if I can find at least three occasions to use it in the next few weeks.
“Buying expertise” seems like a good candidate. A friend might prefer to pay me to fix their computer, instead of taking it to a shop, because they know I won’t tell them they need an expensive frobnitz unless they actually do. My cheerful price might be higher than the shop’s, but it could easily be worth it. A similar situation probably applies to car mechanics.
Non-example: selling something second-hand to a friend—I would just use ebay price minus P&P, possibly with some arbitrary discount
The ebay price is reasonable if the person is clear about wanting to sell the item. There are cases where a person owns something that they don’t regularly use. It would be a valid question to ask: “What’s your cheerful price for selling this to me?”
What kind of interactions do you have that make this a frequently applicable concept? The only reason to get a good or service from a friend rather than a stranger professional is if it is in some way more efficient. Even disregarding the fact that asking for things from friends is generally less efficient because of the potentially fraughtness, this doesn’t happen much for me. If I ask a friend to make me a cake, it’s because I already know it is positive sum. If I want cake qua cake I go to a cake shop. The only examples I can think of where it would be applicable are:
Staying with a friend for a period where it’s unclear if/how much rent you should pay
Division of chores with housemates (but limited applicability because IME people are averse to significantly uneven splits of labour even if compensated)
Possible-example: in my world it is customary to attempt to offer compensation if you freeride on someone driving somewhere. I suspect this might seem strange to you, since assuming they enjoy your company and the difference in gas costs is negligible, the cost to the driver is surely negative so the money should flow the other way.
Non-example: selling something second-hand to a friend—I would just use ebay price minus P&P, possibly with some arbitrary discount
This does not seem like enough to warrant minting a general concept, so I’m curious what examples you have in mind.
I used it this afternoon to pay a housemate to sterilize the contents of a package. They said $5.
Do any other examples come to mind? I’m finding it difficult to think about without, say, 5 concrete examples to latch on to.
What’s your cheerful price for not drumming your fingers on things when you’re in the living room
What’s your cheerful price for being responsible for background music at our party tonight?
What’s your cheerful price for keeping your mask on until you enter the house, rather than take it off near the house?
What’s your cheerful price for cleaning up the kitchen as soon as you’ve been cooking in there, rather than some point later that same day?
What’s your cheerful price for driving me to the airport at 5am on Monday?
My responses:
Bleep you
$20 and creative control. A great use of the concept.
Bleep you
Bleep you
A generally understood example that even normies wouldn’t have a problem with. Another good example.
I was trying to come up with examples where the exchange was very small. I agree the three you don’t like were ways of resolving often unimportant preferences and can sound petty.
That said:
For the first one I know at least two people with PTSD-like symptoms who have requested something similar from me, which wasn’t petty. I expect that they’d feel more comfortable if they could offset the cost with money, rather than feeling like they’re paying an unknown, possibly large amount of social capital (indeed one of them was severely disruptive to me, and I never really brought it up).
For the second, I think that people have different standards for thinking about microcovids and such, and I have exchange great deals of money in this way. I wouldn’t think much of it if someone asked me that, likely we’re already exchanging dollars for microcovids.
This one is the one I most identify with! Clean surfaces are a big quality of life improvement for me, and I’d happily pay for it.
For the last, you say that even normies wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I think it’s plausible my mum would be upset if I offered to pay her to drive me to the airport.
Thanks! This has definitely helped me to think about the concept of cheerful prices. Here’s my current position.
I do see the value in avoiding the situation of “I’m paying you to do X, you accept, but are secretly annoyed about it”. By paying instead
X + cheerfulness bonusyou avoid it. However,I don’t have much IRL experience with rationalists, but I would expect that if you buy into the idea of exchanging money in these sorts of scenarios, that you’d also buy into the idea of Tell Culture, at least enough such that you can have some back and forth and avoid the “but are secretly annoyed about it” part.
Even if I’m wrong about (1), isn’t the
cheerfulness bonustoo large? “Cheerful” and “excited” seem like they really overshoot “don’t have secret feelings of annoyance”. Maybe a “non-begrudging/non-reluctant/non-sour price” would make more sense. In practice, I expect that the payer would often feel resentment about paying cheerful prices. “Ugh, do I really have to keep paying this person $100 to clean up the kitchen?”Solid points.
While in my experience the rationalists have some of the best conversational norms for communicating about conflict and costs and disagreements, I would not say that the rationalists I meet have solved these problems, to the extent where there are not costs that are very difficult to do conscious accounting of. So from one perspective, I’ll take all the tools I can get, and this seems like it may help with some such situations.
That said, I think you’re right that the cheerfulness bonus is probably too large in some of my examples. The actual cheerful price for the one I have in mind would’ve been… I feel confused, somewhere between $50 and $500. Still, I think it would’ve been a bit high for them. But my fair price would’ve been lower.
I guess I’ll look for opportunities to use cheerful prices with the people I know. I’ll see if I can find at least three occasions to use it in the next few weeks.
“Buying expertise” seems like a good candidate. A friend might prefer to pay me to fix their computer, instead of taking it to a shop, because they know I won’t tell them they need an expensive frobnitz unless they actually do. My cheerful price might be higher than the shop’s, but it could easily be worth it. A similar situation probably applies to car mechanics.
The ebay price is reasonable if the person is clear about wanting to sell the item. There are cases where a person owns something that they don’t regularly use. It would be a valid question to ask: “What’s your cheerful price for selling this to me?”
There’s a cost to figuring out that someone is trustworthy.
You could think of it this way :
Cost of finding a friendly assisting intelligence + normal cost of a good or service >> cheerful price
(pun intended)