Why I don’t haggle

tl;dr Because of Guilt

Last week I had a long altercation with a friend leading to some interesting insights into my own belief system. She was annoyed because I paid extra for a cab ride rather than paying what the fair price by a meter would have been.

It is common where I live for the cab drivers to quote their own price rather than use the meter onboard the vehicle. Most people just haggle the price down to a lower value than what was quoted but still higher than the meter price.

My friend was very annoyed with me because I refused to partake in this tradition of a 5 minute argument to get the price down by 10 bucks. At first she tried to explain how I was being cheated by cab drivers and when that didn’t work concluded that I don’t haggle because I am uncomfortable or even incapable of having an argument or a haggle debate.

I didn’t care much about her explanations but when my competency for a task was questioned, my ego rushed in and I knew I had to defend myself. I hate being told that I am not good at or can’t do something (more on that in a different article maybe). And in this particular case I knew that she was wrong.

Not only am I comfortable in fact I love having arguments and debates. Most of my close friends would agree with this begrudgingly but you can’t beat me in an argument. She however didn’t know this as we weren’t very close.

I still had to defend myself so I started introspecting my own actions and why I don’t haggle. After a lot of introspection I realised that the reason I don’t haggle with cab drivers, street vendors or anyone else is for the same reason.

The reason is Guilt. I feel guilty because I was lucky to be where I am and they probably weren’t.

My friend was trying to explain it to me as to how it is not fair to pay extra money and how I was being unfairly taken advantage of. She was right about one thing and that was that the whole ordeal was unfair. But I believe that there is something more unfair at play if you can just look at it differently.

It is unfair that I had access to good education and opportunities while the cab driver probably didn’t. It’s unfair that the vendor you haggle with was born to an alcoholic dad and an illiterate mom in a poor household where they couldn’t support his or her education.

When you put the unfairness of circumstances of birth versus unfairly being charged more money, the former triumphs as the greater injustice.

Also that extra ten bucks probably means more to the vendors than it does to you. The marginal value for you (who has more money) of the ten bucks is lesser than what it is for a poorer person. That’s very simple economics. It’s called the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Maybe I am right about how I think about this or maybe I am wrong. But empathy is a beautiful thing and if only more people even partially practiced it the world would be a better place for everyone.