Paying the right price isn't a bad practice.

Since the whole article is a rant,
here is the cutest piggy bank.

"Hi everybody, I would like to have some graphic design done, it should look professional and clean, from a concept I have in mind. I need it pretty urgently but, since I'm in Bali I'm not ready to pay the Bule price."

Every single time I hear such a thing, my gears grind to a complete halt.
On regular basis, I stumble about this enormous assumption that since one lives in Indonesia, more specifically in Bali, and not excluding Ubud, one should benefit from professional service for a fraction of its real price - guilt free, at that.

Having dabbled myself in the creative industry for a certain amount of years, I'll be the first to tell you that whenever you're supposed to produce something even remotely good looking, you will have to be extremely careful if you don't want to do so while bending over (not really comfortable, neither productive). At a local level though, the bending tends to go so far that poor designers, web designers, creative marketers, videographers, along with gardeners, maids, repairmen and the whole service industry can now fit in tiny boxes without needing to warm up.

Since it's a pretty long read, so here are bullet points to avoid an acute TL;DR attack:

• Choosing cheap over good is bad for industries as a whole
• Economy of scales cannot work for freelancers
• Good, fast or cheap: pick two
• Thinking "You have to be cheap because you're a local" is not okay
• Paying a fair price will help the community, grant you a joy dance

Now, O greedy one, let me count how many times your'e wrong (and explain you why):

1001: Quality or price: your choice influences the whole industry

Offer and demand mechanisms can get tricky at some point, but at this level it remains pretty simple: when you're opting for the cheapest services, chances are extremely high that you will also get one of the worst, and there's a 100% chances that you will never get anything more than a slightly over average result.
This is to say, when you opt for price over quality, you increase the demand for... cheap and crappy services. That's right.  In some extreme cases, this behavior can completely deplete an industry from its skilled workers.

But that's not all. As a reaction to a large demand for cheap and dirty work, services achieving an average quality will rarefy. What goes together with scarcity? A price increase.

Right now, in Indonesia, you can find as many low quality web developer as there is  banyak in banyak minta ampun, but medium quality ones will cost you as much as a top quality service elsewhere... if you ever find them.

1002: Economy of scales don't work for freelance workers

To make is really simple, let's say you're producing cars. You buy a car-making machine, raw material, and you start your production line. Your first car will cost you as much as the raw products plus the price of the machine. After 1000 cars, one unit will cost you as much as the raw products plus a thousandth of the price of the machine. After a million cars, you can sell for the price of the raw product with almost no cost and do the dance.

In the case of creative workers, the machine is their work process. They need to build it from scratch before every project, unless you want to buy the copy of their previous work. If you really put some effort into getting greedy and nagging with a creative (congrats), it might very well happen. But what about a maid? Will she sell you the cleaning she did for the house owner before you? Well if she does, she deserves to be paid for that trick -enough to patent it.

24 hours in a day, so much energy per hours, and a rate for that energy is what you will get for a given price. Only seasoned veterans can work fast and reliably, but they will not do it for a modal fee.

Asking for professional work at the rate of a high school summer job because "this is Bali" simply means "I don't care about your experience or expertise, you are Indonesian so somehow basic economic rules don't apply for you and no it's not racism at all, why?"

1003: Playing fair is awesome.

The minimal legal monthly wage in Ubud is set below USD150. This, is what some of the tourists coming here can spend in a couple of days -or in one evening if they're feeling that way. This is also the electricity bill of a standard villa.

Knowing that, inquiring first about the standard international rates for a given quality (it bears repeating: quality, quality, quality) work and comparing with what local workers will get you is a good start.
For an equal result, there is no reason you shouldn't pay an local graphic designer less than a expat graphic designer who happens to live in Ubud.

For all work that's not creative, you can inquire about the standard local rate before hand and refuse to pay less than USD250 a month, because you have a heart. And do the dance, because having a heart grants you that. Doing so will automatically have you contribute to the economical growth of the area, as in "that person can actually afford three meals a day on their honors".

Finally, if you honestly cannot afford quality work and really need it, and I know it can happen, the good old 'asking a friend a favor' works really well, as much here as it does everywhere else.

Now, forgive my rant, everybody knows I am old, bald and grumpy.
But I wrote it anyway.
Neener neener.

PS: If you want to contribute to this blog, drop me a message here: http://www.facebook.com/brutal.opinions