An new but talented artist is doing some advertising pieces for me. She hasn't given me a price yet, but I do not think she will ask what I'm willing to pay. Should I encourage her to to charge more than she asks?
Short answer: No. Pay a completion bonus instead.
Long Answer: ~~ A short primer in business Ethics~~
Here is a spectrum with many, many points but five major colors:
Charity: you freely give money for little or no product at all. You provide fantastic products and services for next to nothing.
Soft Business: you pay generously for the things you need and want. You charge low for a superior product
Fair Business: you pay fair and charge fairly for fair service and products that are as good as the competition.
Hard Business: you dicker to get the best product for the least money. You provide nearly adequately for high prices.
Criminality: you get things you don't pay for. You provide a dangerous product for inflated fees.
One can run different areas of life differently without much difficulty: "Charity to family, fair business to everyone else" is a common example. One can, like SL, run a Hard Business, but market itself as a Charity. "Legal" isn't really a consideration, since you can be "legally criminal", say, if you are an insurance or fossil fuel company. Maybe gambling is "criminal", but perhaps casinos and lotteries really are selling entertainment as a hard business. The variations are endless and interesting to think about.
Now, where you put your dealings on this scale is largely a matter of personal decision, with a few modifying factors like corporate climate, zeitgeist, personal competence and current affluence. You can also decide who you will deal with and who you will avoid, with a few exceptions, like government. You can give your business to folks you respect. You can walk away when you are treated hard. The one thing you CANNOT do is decide what ethical style of business another person is going to run. Advise, yes. Set an example, yes. Encourage, yes. You can even enact or enforce laws to discourage criminal and hard business practices (unions were founded to discourage hard employers), but that only changes the playing field, not the intent of the players. Intentions can only be changed by the intender.
I like to run Fair to Soft Business, with some Charity, except where I have good skill but do not enjoy the work or people, then I run a Hard Business. Now, here's the point: for any style of business, but especially soft/charity folks, it's a slippery slope to encourage someone else to run a harder business and charge more than they already do. She might raise prices out of your budget. She might be treating you as a charity by choice. You often do not know, and can only rarely pry into that. You can still be soft charitable.
The soft/charity way to pay someone who is undercharging you is to pay them their usual fee early and eagerly, then pay a bonus or tip at completion, too. If she's not even that far and she does not have a usual price, then you (soft charity) make her a fair offer first. That favors the negotiation process toward her. (The Hard and Criminal business negotiating tactic is to either make your first offer hugely in your favor, or wait for the adversary to make the first offer.) When she accepts or names a price, accept it yourself so she saves face in an easy dicker, and you can still pay a bonus at the end of the job.
Love, Arth.
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