Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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I don’t know if I can quite put my finger on it as a generalization, but there’s this way some people on the western internet talk about products, maybe more of a USian thing and extends to political thinking too, where it’s like they have no sense of bargaining or negotiating in them; they view it like you’re supposed to just take things as they are and deal with them without complaint. Maybe it’s a side effect of rugged individualism? And of having a business culture where prices are kind of just set by major corporations and you deal with it?
Like some of these people will go to great lengths to defend the corporate side of things and talk like you’re odd if you don’t immediately cave to the terms a corporation has set out for you. It’s so weird. I know there isn’t really a haggling culture in the US, like there is in some countries, but the degree some of these people go to in the opposite direction baffles me.
Do you think it relates to the western tendency to treat capitalism and “the economy” almost like deities? I find a lot of people who behave like you mentioned tend to treat it almost like these prices have been Divinely Ordained by the Holy Free Market or something.
That’s an interesting thought. Could be. I haven’t looked into it enough to be confident that’s what people are doing, but I could believe it.