Still today in the Orient and even in many parts of Italy one does not find the concept of the set price which establishes a fixed restraint on the subjective interests of both buyers and sellers. In those places everyone sells as dearly and buys as cheaply as he possibly can. Exchange there is exclusively a subjective transaction between two persons. Its outcome depends only on the cunning, greed, and tenacity of the parties, but not on the thing and its consensually grounded relation to price. Under these circumstances, as a Roman antique dealer explained to me, a business transaction consists of a process wherein the seller asks too much and the buyer offers too little and they only gradually approach one another to reach an acceptable point.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader philosophy of money as an abstractive, objectifying force that replaces subjective personal negotiations.

XREF: Connects to the historical development of fixed pricing and market institutions, and to anthropological studies of gift and barter economies contrasted with modern market exchange. DEFINE: Contrasts subjective bargaining with consensually grounded fixed pricing as two distinct exchange mechanisms.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 265