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words have meaning (SCA)
About a year ago the SCA corporation started imposing a $3/person/event fee for people who are not members of the corporation. (Events are produced by local groups at their own expense and are generally designed to roughly break even.) The corporation calls this $3 fee a "non-member surcharge", and some people have argued that that's not sufficiently positive and want to call it a "member discount" instead. I sent the following to the kingdom mailing list, but I wanted to record it here too. The argument comes around frequently; I think I'll probably need these words again in the future. :-)
The $3 fee is not a discount. Technically, it's not really a surcharge either. Discounts and surcharges are price adjustments offered by the entity setting the price. Most events offer discounts for children, and some set surcharges for late reservations. The salient point, though, is that the person or group whose bottom line is affected sets these adjustments and deals with the consequences. (To those who would say "but AAA gives me discounts at hotels!", I say: no, those hotels agreed to grant those discounts to people associated with AAA. AAA does not have the ability to impose a discount on an unwilling hotel.)
The $3 fee is not a discount. Technically, it's not really a surcharge either. Discounts and surcharges are price adjustments offered by the entity setting the price. Most events offer discounts for children, and some set surcharges for late reservations. The salient point, though, is that the person or group whose bottom line is affected sets these adjustments and deals with the consequences. (To those who would say "but AAA gives me discounts at hotels!", I say: no, those hotels agreed to grant those discounts to people associated with AAA. AAA does not have the ability to impose a discount on an unwilling hotel.)
A fee assessed by an outside entity is a tax. Taxes are usually set by governments, of course, but in this case it is set by the corporation. Either way, the taxing authority has no direct involvement in the activity being taxed. It's a fee paid in exchange for permission to do business.
This is not just a point of pedantry. Words have meaning, and if you use an inappropriate word you change people's perceptions of the thing being described. It is misleading to call this fee a "discount", in my opinion, and the corporation was right to avoid that usage. It's unfortunate, but not too surprising, that they didn't acknowledge it as a tax.
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One difference between the SCA and McDonald's is that McDonald's doesn't say it owns the hamburger space; it says it owns the McDonald's brand. The SCA isn't really a brand any more; it's too broad and diverse. The big-tent medieval/renaissance re-creation that SCA folks do is the generic form; it hasn't especially been facilitated by the corporation, and I don't think the corporation really has a claim on it. It would have been far better if the corporation had either been created at the very beginning, or much much later. (Had it been later, it would likely have been one of several, presumably cooperating, entities.)
I think "fee" is the most neutral word I can think of for the $3 charge.