When in fact the opposite should be true. How can I as a company maximize my value to you. This is the type of companies I choose to partner with.

its a backwards system and then when you combine sales teams that are commission based how can anyone realistically expect to get a fair price when a human's pay is based on getting as high a price as possible

I believe not giving you a fair price is the goal there. A fair price would mean leaving money on the table. Your money, which you probably should not have, especially when it's something they're helping you make.

Some businesses think of you from the perspective of partners. Others think of you from the perspective of farmers or ranchers, where they try to pen you in and extract what they want, but understand the necessity of at least some investment on their part. And then there are those who are more like poachers.

This isn't always true. Sometimes you want to stop large customers from performing naive cross-comparisons of price when the on-the-ground reality is more nuanced.

This can be price levers on individual features, security track record, non-obvious user patterns that deliver a lot of value, etc. You're given more opportunities to pitch the full value of your product in a way that engages the customer with their particular pain points.

Maybe we should still all use transparent pricing, but I don't think it's fair to say it's used to extract more cash (though some companies definitely do that).