SC - Flori-thingy-OT-OOP

[Catherine Deville]

Nyckademus asked:
> While splitting the bill for cheese sticks and pitchers I wondered how do
> you listees come to a fair trade when offering goods and services to fellow
> scadians.  Generally I take my time multiply it by how much I make at work
> an hour and add the cost of materials.  When I was building houses it was
> cost of materials times four or five.  (Four or five depending on our
> estimate of what kind of jerk this client could turn out to be.)
> 
> I would like to know your thoughts or formulas.

hmmm. "take my time multiply it by how much I make at work an hour and
add cost of materials times four or five". Taken at face value, I
don't think that will work too well. I work as a degreed engineer.
If I charged that rate for making pewter medallions for instance, no
one would buy them. But then I do this as a hobby and not a job. There
has in fact been some friction between people doing things as a hobby
such as leatherwork, and those doing it as a job. The merchants can
see themselves as being undercut while the hobbiest can moan about
the corners the craftsman may cut in order to produce an item at a
price that he can make money with.

I also seem to remember a comment where an SCA craftsman was asked
how much for an item, say shoes. Then the craftsman was asked how
much for a dozen of the same type of shoes. The craftsman unexpectedly
quoted a price that was more per pair than for the single pair. When
asked how this could be, the craftsman replied that making one pair
was fun. Making a dozen pairs became work.

There was a discussion on this topic on the Rialto a while back. I think 
I put some of this in this file in the COMMERCE section of my files:
merchanting-msg   (44K)  7/ 7/99    Merchanting in the SCA.
- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****