Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
...
Let's do another analogy. You are looking at a really nice wristwatch for $2000 in a shop and you really think you'd like to have it.... You do not want pay full price so you say, "will you take a thousand cash for it?" The clerk says, "wait a minute" and goes to the manager, the manager looks at you from afar and sees you have on some nice clothes, then the clerk comes back and says, "he says he'll take whatever you have on you right now- how much do you have on you?" You know you have two thousand in your wallet but instead you say, "well, I have only eleven hundred on me today". Eleven hundred is much less than what you have, and you just told a bold-faced lie. But it was a fair context for telling a lie, wasn't it? If you dished out all two grand in the name of not telling a lie, you would have been a fool. A nine hundred dollar fool in this case.
....
Ridiculous analogy, IMHO. Here you are discussing bartering, or in a legal context, negotiating a simple contract. Neither party is being completely forthright in this example. The manager is the real fool because he is gambling on two issues; 1) that the customer will be honest, and 2) that the customer has the minimum price that the manager will accept in exchange for the watch. What if the customer only had $200? Would the manager then renege on his "offer" to exchange the watch for 'whatever the customer had on him at that moment'? My guess is yes, or the manager wouldn't be in business very long. As to the lie about the $2000. In the context of negotiations, when the customer say's he only has $1100 he is not telling a "bold faced lie" from the standpoint of what he is willing to pay for the watch. What if the customer had $6000. Is he obligated to tell the manager that? I don't think so. And even if he did, no contract has been formed that would obligate the customer to fork over $6000 for a $2000 watch. I know it's semantics, but to say that the customer's offer of $1100 for the watch when he in fact had $2000 in his pocket is a "bold faced lie" mischaracterizes the "context" of the circumstance.