My issue with this is that barter and haggling is a very diverse practice that is seen differently across the world. All cultures do it in certain forms and in certain contexts, but both those concepts and how haggling is performed/perceived differ wildly. This in my opinion is a very solid question for general anthropology. Before the thread got removed, I was getting answers about all kinds of places, not just the Middle East.

One really good comment in that thread that is now removed mentioned that, when they went to Thailand, the merchants had a system where they would hand you a calculator with the price punched in and you would change that price and hand it back. They said that they entered in decimals that don’t exist in Thai currency as a joke, and that the merchant seemed entertained. I don’t think that I can get these kinds of answers from mass-posting on subs of a bunch of different countries–I wasn’t even thinking of Thailand when I wrote the original post.