I have a friend who runs a salon. He once styled Hillary Clinton's hair. He has no posted prices for his services, and charges pretty much whatever he feels his client should pay. Regardless of the time or effort spent on any two clients, the fee he charges will vary by $100 or more between them for similar services. Yet I'm positive that the client who spends more is confident she received the better treatment.
So based on these two articles, "Eliot Spitzer and the Price-Placebo Effect" and "Of e-books, business models and Eliot Spitzer’s hookers," I'm beginning to wonder when libraries will start charging huge amounts for basic services.
The Washington Post article says,"The medial orbitofrontal cortex research suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, people who buy something at a discount may unconsciously derive less satisfaction than people who pay full price, or a premium, for the very same thing."
We already know that rich people pay a buttload of cash for worthless crap to convince us that it's special. Like Amazon spending $4 million of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Sure, the money went to charity, so why not just give the money to charity? The same thing with the Mona Lisa. I really have nothing against the painting, but if were ever for sale, I'm sure that the sale price will be in the billions of dollars. Why? Because someone has billions of dollars, and that someone would need to prove to the rest of us what a cool dude he is.
Humans must need to overvalue things to validate out existence. If nothing is worth more than you'll ever make in your lifetime, then what's the point of living? If no one can produce something so awesome that it captures the emotions for generations, then why create? Why live at all? So we need these things, these expensive, special things that few of us can obtain. Otherwise, we're just naked mammals.
The guy who pays $5,000 for a prostitute probably thinks, "I'm gonna impress her. Not every John can drop five grand on a hooker. She's gonna remember me."
Spending money is all most of us have to make some sort of impression on the world. We buy expensive cars and wear expensive jewelry. And as for sex, the man who can say the following must be super-awesome, and deserving of respect: "I spent $5,000 on something that when I was a teen, I used to get for free, or at most, for half a can of Coors and a few french fries."
If libraries want to prosper, we need to act like a $5,000 hooker: provide the same service for everyone, but charge the people who look like they can afford it. If your library is in a poor part of town, but is often visited by more wealthy residents, charge them for use of the library. And don't just charge $1, charge $10. And charge non-residents ten bucks for Internet access.
Charge to use a clean bathroom. Charge for a quiet corner of the library. Don't these things have the same qualities as the $5,000 prostitute? They're cleaner; it's a nicer environment, and fewer people have soiled the equipment.
Charge for things to make the purchaser feel that little bit of immortality that comes with purchasing nice things. Take a tip from the ads for Patek Phillipe watches that say, "'You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.'" The meaning being that something you own will carry a little bit of you on with it after you're gone. The thing is more important than you.
I'd never really thought about these fees before but recently I saw a list of fees for a library that rents meeting rooms and the top price is around $2,000! For a meeting room...in the library!
So we need to charge fees, disgustingly huge fees. And if the science is there to back it up, then all the more reason to do it.
