They Bluff High and Sell Cheap

Veils and haloes should be unceremoniously yanked off. Few people are worthy of being kings or princesses. Assume crown wearers are impostors.

They will tell you their hopes and dreams, and how they would do anything to achieve them, though they do nothing to bring them about, and have no plan offering a chance of attainment. They will say their price is high, even priceless and not available on the market, as if they are the highest paid prostitutes or exclusively private ones, and that their enormous price should be honorably respected, but when you watch what they do, they always eventually settle for cheap scraps, a welcomed poverty absurdly far from their claimed price.

They were bluffing the whole time. They would have taken any reasonable offer, and you would have done them a favor to have offered fair market value instead of the cheap deal they ultimately accepted.

Worse, when you took their bluff seriously and made no bid, thinking you could not afford their claimed expectations and would only insult with your offer, you backed them into a corner from which they had to settle low for the first offer that came their way.

They all go cheap, especially if they claim not to.

[From 1997]
Poultry giant Tyson Foods Inc. pleaded guilty yesterday to giving former agriculture secretary Mike Espy $12,000 in illegal gratuities and consented to pay $6 million in fines and costs. Tyson officials agreed to testify at Espy's upcoming trial.

Tyson Foods admitted to lavishing gifts on Espy -- including football tickets, airline trips, meals and scholarship money for his girlfriend -- at a time when his department was considering action on several matters affecting the company's business, including safe handling instructions on poultry packaging.
...
According to court papers filed yesterday, during the period it was showering gifts on Espy, Tyson Foods was urging USDA to go slow on imposing new meat and poultry handling instructions. Smaltz's office said prompt imposition of the new rule would have cost Tyson Foods $30 million.
[Tyson Foods Admits Illegal Gifts to Espy]

Politicians, spies, and much that has tremendous value often disregards its worth and turns over cheaply. The "princess" demanding a prince settles for a jester or janitor, accepting a one-room hovel in place of a castle.

All other pretensions fall similarly. In an age defined by its grand squandering of value, there are great bargains to be had, mostly fixer-uppers that can be salvaged by good hands, if not yet structurally rotten and burned out.