This is kind of my sentiment on the whole issue. You're paying for
expertise, not time. The neighbor's kid has time. So does his dog. So if he
doesn't diagnose and fix the problem, he shouldn't get paid. However, in
real life it doesn't always work like that.

HVAC people and other tradesmen will put a lien on your building if they
don't get paid. You can argue the fine points in court if you want, but
you're paying your lawyer $350 per hour to do it. Judges don't know anything
about HVAC, so then you've got to get your expert witness in as well. All
said and done, you might as well just pay the bill. Or you can pay it when
you sell the building, out of escrow. The tradesmen, incompetent as they may
be, get their money.

Car are different since you can't place a lien on them. But what about the
case of the smaller community where there's only one Saab (or Vanagon)
mechanic in town, and you don't know nothing about cars? Do you really want
to alienate that guy by refusing to pay his bill?

You know, I have the feeling that more and more, people are climbing over
each other for money. The mechanic can't just give away free time because in
reality, despite what seems like a high labor rate, he's just barely
squeezing by too, after he pays all his business and personal expenses. Even
at $90 an hour no one's getting rich, at least not in the Bay Area.
Conversely, the person who has to shell out for work poorly done is irate
because he has to pay mortgage, health insurance, and all the rest of it,
and where does the money come from? Maybe what we're talking about is really
more of an economic or better, macroeconomic, issue, than it is a moral one.

I'm reminded of an anthropology book called "The Mountain People," in which
a British scientist named Colin Turnbull goes to East Africa to live with a
tribe that has been cut off from its traditional means of subsistence (by
the creation of the Kenyan game reserve in the 1970s.) These people, reduced
to eating the bark off trees, become depraved and lose all the morality they
presumably once had. That's my feeling about these money issues: in a world
of plenty, they would not arise, or would not be so severe. Those of us who
have reached a certain age remember when things were more plentiful. Now we
spend too much on health insurance and the destruction of innocent
countries. The feeling of deprivation, of living close to the bone, makes
technicians charge for work poorly done and customers clamor for refunds not
really due them. That's the origin of the "game" you're talking about.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.