Rickk
Contributor
This discussion is missing basic micro economic considerations.
The cost of something has absolutely zero impact on the price that someone can charge. The price will impact the supply available. The price and quantity bought and sold in the market place will be at the intersection of the supply and demand curves in a free market.
Note: free market is not an unregulated one, it is a technical term describing a set of market conditions where there are a large number of buyers and sellers, low costs to enter or leave the market and perfect knowledge.
Dive guiding markets will tend to be a oligopolistic market, more buyers than sellers and more knowledge on the seller side than on the buyer. However anyone who has taken microeconomics 101 can draw the supply demand curves and explain how the pricing points are reached.
They end up at the place where the profit per seller is maximized.
Short answer, they charge per diver because they can and people will pay for it. Local peer pressure stops them from discounting prices to much for multiple divers and so most guides charge the same per diver with no regard for the number of divers.
The cost of something has absolutely zero impact on the price that someone can charge. The price will impact the supply available. The price and quantity bought and sold in the market place will be at the intersection of the supply and demand curves in a free market.
Note: free market is not an unregulated one, it is a technical term describing a set of market conditions where there are a large number of buyers and sellers, low costs to enter or leave the market and perfect knowledge.
Dive guiding markets will tend to be a oligopolistic market, more buyers than sellers and more knowledge on the seller side than on the buyer. However anyone who has taken microeconomics 101 can draw the supply demand curves and explain how the pricing points are reached.
They end up at the place where the profit per seller is maximized.
Short answer, they charge per diver because they can and people will pay for it. Local peer pressure stops them from discounting prices to much for multiple divers and so most guides charge the same per diver with no regard for the number of divers.