Honesty and Polanyi's Anonymous Market

Appointments and meetings to remember gathered in my head and I still had no diary to write them in, so I decided it was time to find another moleskine booklet on Oranienstrasse, where I also hoped to find the Habermas books I need to buy for my seminar. Oranienstrasse is a mix of turkish vegetable shops, cheap asian clothes shops, fancy sushi places, dupy-fancy Indian restaurants, dirty kebab cupboards and a few indi bookshops, with the mixed crowds one would expect from such varied buying opportunities - hip students, gangs of loud young boys, women with head scarves. In my new attempt at de-anonymising my consuming patterns, I wanted to buy my books in a small shop instead of heading for the Ominous Culture Shop that constantly swallows masses of happy buyers on Friedrichstrasse.
After nips inside various bookshops, I stepped into oh21. As in all previous shops, the Habermas I needed was not on the shelves, though they looked as though they would have everything I need. I decided I liked the place, very much like a book-freak's living room, and would order the book there, especially as I found probably the last moleskine 2006 diary available in the city, too massive to be convenient, but available all the same.
I grabbed it and asked for its price. The man at the counter was as clueless as me as we couldn't find the price tag. He eventually looked at other moleskine books with a similar size and decided the diary probably cost the same, 13,80.
After having walked outside in the cold and wet for a little while, I opened the diary and on the first page, saw, written in pencil, a squiggle indicating it actually cost 18. That's a lot of money. A lot of money for me, but also a fair amount the indi book shop was losing. I hesitated and eventually went back and stepped anew in the shop. As I explained why I was here again, the forty-something man stared at me with large eyes and started stuttering with surprise and disbelief. "Really? You've come back to pay the difference? But... really?" I put 4,20 on the table and walked out again while he repeatedly wished me a good weekend.