<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # Civilized language has made the word price sound... > Civilized language has made the word _price_ sound vulgar anywhere near love, family, friendship or human dignity, as though introducing accounting into a relationship somehow cheapens the person being discussed. The opposite is true, because {{pricing is not a theory of human worth. It is a theory of consequences.}} {{In behavioral pricing, your price is not what you are worth. Your price is what another person expects harming you to cost them.}} That cost may be the loss of access to you, the loss of a relationship, the arrival of witnesses, the preservation of evidence, the refusal of a coalition to remain neutral, damage to reputation, intervention by an institution, or simply the discovery that you can leave and will not return. Money is almost irrelevant to the idea; moral worth is completely irrelevant to it. A person may believe you are priceless and still abuse you if experience has taught them that abusing you costs nothing, while another person may dislike you intensely and leave you untouched because the consequences are obvious. {{People do not have to value you in order to leave you alone. Sometimes they only have to understand that harming you will be expensive.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Civilized language has made the word price sound vulgar anywhere near love, family, friendship or human dignity, as though introducing accounting into a relationship somehow cheapens the person being discussed. The opposite is true, because pricing is not a theory of human worth. It is a theory of consequences. In behavioral pricing, your price is not what you are worth. Your price is what another person expects harming you to cost them. That cost may be the loss of access to you, the loss of a relationship, the arrival of witnesses, the preservation of evidence, the refusal of a coalition to remain neutral, damage to reputation, intervention by an institution, or simply the discovery that you can leave and will not return. Money is almost irrelevant to the idea; moral worth is completely irrelevant to it. A person may believe you are priceless and still abuse you if experience has taught them that abusing you costs nothing, while another person may dislike you intensely and leave you untouched because the consequences are obvious. People do not have to value you in order to leave you alone. Sometimes they only have to understand that harming you will be expensive.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-civilized-language-made-understand-harming-expensive ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->