Let's make a deal.

MANNERS Let's Make a Deal RICHARD BROOKHISER Mr. Brookhiser is a senior editor at NR. THE shop in the souk, or market, of Marrakesh mostly sold artifacts: Berber doors, Tuareg boxes, daggers, rifles with inlaid stocks. But on the wall in the back room hung an unusual rug: dark green, with glowing stripes that looked like news tickers in an unknown system of hieroglyphs. We had seen it the day before, and told the owner we liked it. Advantage, him. An assistant took it off the wall, while he produced a second rug. Since this was not a rug store, we had not gone through the process of looking at fifty, keeping out only five or six, then focusing at last on two. Advantage, him. He offered a price for both rugs -- let us call it x. My wife offered 45 per cent of x, and explained that we were buying for friends, who had given us only so much to spend. Advantage, us. Now we all went to work. He said he did not normally sell rugs, but when his grandfather -- he gestured at a photograph of a tough old bird in a fez -- saw something ''special'' in the villages, he would acquire it. We told him we had been to Marrakesh twice before. He said that was why he had given us ''real price, not tourist price.'' We stayed at 45 per cent of x. He offered us sweet mint tea, in old-fashioned stenciled glasses. We said again how fine the green rug was, though it had a small hole. He said he was here for tomorrow, not just today, which was why his prices were so reasonable. He asked, ''What is your real price?'' We stayed at 45 per cent of x. He asked me what was my price. I said, ''My wife speaks for us.'' Much more of this went on, as he and his assistant held the rugs up, took them outside in the sunlight, then spread them back down. Finally, on his knees, he turned to my wife. ''If you give me [45 per cent of x], I will only have enough for little green salad. Please give me enough for meat and vegetables.'' ''But if I give you enough for meat and vegetables,'' my wife said, ''then I will have only water to drink.'' He smiled, and we went up to 47.5 per cent, whereupon he offered his hand and produced his credit-card machine. Had we been taken? Probably, but not as badly as the day before when, after we bought two rugs in another store, the merchant threw in a third one for free. He must have sensed the dismay his generosity had produced, because he said, ''At least you have not spent your money at the casino.'' Bargaining is fun when it's for rugs. It is less fun when it is also for taxis, tape cassettes, and anything at all. Americans bargain for cars and houses, but how many times in an average life does that happen? Twenty? People who live in a bargaining culture haggle twenty times a day, every day. Economists call the bargaining situation a bipolar monopoly: for every transaction there is one buyer and one seller. In the free market (many buyers, many sellers) and the traditional monopoly (one seller, many buyers) it is easy to devise models which explain how prices are determined. In a perfect free market, buyers and sellers compare notes, and an equilibrium price results. In the traditional monopoly, the seller decrees. The best that economists can do with the bipolar monopoly is to predict a band within which the final, negotiated price will fall. In other words, theory tells us what we already knew: the price of a rug depends on honey, guile, and staying power. In a culture of bargaining, everything takes more time. In a fixed-price culture, the only reason to linger in a store, or on the stock exchange, or online, is that you feel like it. The minimum amount of time for any potential transaction is as long as it takes to find out the price, and compare it with some other price. In bargaining cultures, life moves at a camel's pace. Fixed prices have a civic dimension, related to the rule of law. Sellers can raise or lower their prices at will, but whatever the price of the moment is, my money will buy as much as the next man's. The mantra of bargainers -- ''for you, special price'' -- can seem immoral to WASPs and other stern types. When Jean-Antoine Houdon went to Mount Vernon to sculpt his famous statue of George Washington, he supposedly found the expression he wanted when a horse trader offered a bad deal. The Father of his Country frowned, and Houdon knew: that was the face that had crossed the Delaware. Bargaining turns commerce into socializing. That accounts for its occasional delights -- chatting, drinking tea, passing the time. It is pseudo-socializing, however, because it is based on lies. White lies, to be sure, which everyone knows are lies, but lies nonetheless. We weren't buying rugs for friends; we paid by credit card, so clearly we weren't limited by what was in our wallets; the hole we saw in the green rug was there, but it was tiny, and it made no difference to us. On the rug seller's side, the story of the ''special'' pieces from the villages was an obvious fantasy: if we had really been tossing the salad around, he would have produced a hundred rugs, somehow. Advertising is not strictly true, either, but it usually avoids outright lies by avoiding falsifiable statements. When Calvin Klein says a fragrance will make you sexy -- well, maybe it will. Politeness often involves stopping short of the truth --but that is to respect other people's sensibilities. Bargainers lie to jockey for position. They all know it -- except possibly the American newcomer -- but a fog of falsity blankets life. The late Luigi Barzini described a similar phenomenon in Italian ritual compliments. When one Neapolitan said, ''I am less than your waistcoat button,'' and the other replied, ''The least of my waistcoat buttons is made of diamonds,'' it is charming, at least the first time. But what happens when Neapolitans want to say something serious? Traditional Italian compliments are rococo emotions. Cultures of bargaining have a rococo civic life. I don't know why bargaining should pervade the Middle East. It's not a Muslim thing -- Jews, Armenians, and Greeks do it too. The only Middle Eastern country I have ever been in where bargaining does not dominate is Turkey, and that is because Kemal Ataturk tried to transform his people in one step into Germans. Now that his legacy is receding, Turkey will probably rejoin the vast regional souk. Before giving fixed-price cultures all the prizes, remember that there are always situations outside the laws of normal exchange. If you are dealing with Communists, or congressmen, a lifetime of dealing with clear signals and honest options may be disabling. Who was a more effective Republican leader -- Bob Dole the horse trader, or Newt Gingrich the man of the future? The jury is still out.