Sorry, that sentence is terribly written. Let me try to express it in separate thoughts:

Hidden pricing will inevitably create some circumstances where a lead and I spend a bit of time talking to each other despite that lead not being a great fit for my services. From my perspective, this is OK, because if I were to unhide my prices it would make it impossible for me to do things like pitch BigCo on a million dollar engagement, which is valuable to me. Unhiding prices would also limit my flexibility in changing them. Over the 2.5 year course of my consulting career they went from $100 an hour to $30k a week, often with discontinuous jumps between engagement N and engagement N+1. Clients who were prepared to pay the price I quoted N+1 might be less inclined to pay it if they were aware that, mere days earlier, I had been charging the rate I charged for engagement N for what might, to that client, feel like "the same" thing.

I believe: "Whoa, you could have saved me some time if you had just quoted that at me. I'll never pay it." being an acceptable frequent response to be able to charge quite a large amount of money to larger clients (Fortune 500 Patrick mentions).

Allowing him ALSO, to set his rates continually higher then one would expect (fast-growth of pricing, from 20k/week to six figures).

So, it was "ok" to have a "wasted" conversation between parties who couldn't afford his rates, to be able to continually raise his rates for those that could afford it. While, not publishing this pricing, and creating his own ceiling.