Origin
This is a late 19th-century proverb.
Explanation
If you are paying for someone’s services, you can dictate exactly what you want that person to do. The person who provides the money for something has the right to determine how it’s spent. The person who pays a musician can decide what music he wants to hear. And the person who pays for any service has the right to say exactly what he wants.One who pays for something controls it. The piper pipes because he is a musician. He pipes as well as he can because he loves music, has a vision of how to play musically, and wants to incarnate this vision. The music, and the communication of the music, are his motive. His piping conforms to Thomas Aquinas’s analysis of a properly human action: it aims at what is good. The piper, being a wise and honest man, knows that real life is complicated. Our motives are always interconnected, and rarely unmixed. He pipes in order to make music; but he also pipes in order to earn some money, to please his musical pals. He knows that these goals may or may not affect his piping.
Examples
When Mrs. Dalton told the artist what she wanted her portrait to look like a read person, the artist cringed to think that anyone could have such bad taste. Still, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and Mrs. Dalton got what she wanted.
You may not agree with Mr Brown but he funded this venture, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
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