I’ve been following this thread and thinking about it for a while, so here’s my two (or three) cent’s worth:
A free-market economy enables sellers to seek profits if they so choose, and auctions enable those sellers to seek the most profit that the market will bear. If someone is willing to pay a price for an item that they desire (as opposed to something that they might need, like food, water, shelter, medicine, emergency health care, etc.), then who are we to judge? A buyer is not forced to pay a price any higher than the price they are willing to pay, and likewise, a seller is not forced to sell at a price lower than the price at which they’re willing to sell. We’re all here according to our own free will. Nothing happens, and a value is not established, until a buyer buys. It’s up to the buyer to make the decision to buy or to decline to buy. In that respect the MARKET determines the value according to the law of Supply and Demand.
To force a seller to sell at a low price, regardless of that which is determined by the market, is Communism. At that point, wealth would be being distributed regardless of the free market value of an individual’s productivity.
I don’t begrudge anyone for making a profit, but I do have a problem with disingenuous people misrepresenting a product or failing to disclose flaws or shortcomings, i.e. swindling (bilking, committing fraud, cheating – call it what you will). People have been cheating others for so long that there is even a phrase in Latin – a long dead language – that warns buyer’s to beware: Caveat Emptor, (from Google’s English Dictionary) “the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made”.
In the investing world, people speak of the Greater Fool Theory, which basically states that if you think you were foolish to pay a high price for an investment, don’t worry too much because sooner or later a greater fool (one more foolish than you) will come along and buy it from you, whether or not it is already overvalued, and of course depending on your salesmanship abilities, although taking advantage of fools implies (IMHO) that such a seller will misrepresent the product and fail to disclose shortcomings.
I’m not jealous of those whose net worth is above mine, and if they choose to pay what I consider to be an exorbitant price for an item, I don’t consider them foolish (assuming the sale was done honestly with full disclosure); nor do I pity those whose net worth is below mine to the extent that they cannot afford an item that they desire (again, as opposed to that which they need), and if ANYbody, rich or poor, can score a bargain, then I consider them to be fortunate, although the seller, rich or poor, who gives away a bargain may well be in a position of need, which is unfortunate.
We’re all here because we WANT to be here, and for various reasons. There are some individuals who are here solely to make a profit, and I don’t mind because it gives me an opportunity to buy things that I want.
That said, there was a guy on here a while back who was a real wheeler-dealer. I don’t want to mention any names, so let’s just call him “Charlatan”. Charlatan knew that I liked elevated chainstay bikes so I would frequently get messages from him telling me that he had an e-stay for sale. The first few times Charlatan contacted me with a bike for sale, I turned him down because I already had a version of the type of bike that he was selling (Haro Extreme, Nishiki Cascade, Alpinestars Cro-Mega, etc. – all fairly common as e-stays go). Then one time Charlatan contacted me with a “bike for sale”, described the bike, stated his asking price, and even had pics to back it up HOWEVER, I happened to know that the bike he was trying to sell to me was already for sale here on Retrobike for about $150 less than what he was asking from me. He even used the original seller’s photos!
I quickly realized that this was Charlatan’s main technique for selling bikes – his modus operandi for turning a profit; find something for sale, sell it to someone else for more then the original seller’s asking price, buy from the original seller, and make a profit as the middleman. Not only that, but as a buyer, Charlatan would tell the actual sellers to ship the bike to his new buyer’s residence, so he therefore didn’t even need to sully his hands with packing and shipping any bikes at all. In my case, I’m convinced that the name and address that he gave the actual seller was mine so that when the original seller shipped, it would have arrived at my house addressed to me. The actual seller would think that Charlatan was the buyer, and the actual buyer would think that Charlatan was the seller. The whole process was somewhat ingenious, actually. One time the bike for sale was in another country overseas, and Charlatan went so far as to tell me that he was on vacation at his “other residence” in that overseas country and that he would ship the bike from there. On the internet, nobody knows who you are, where you are, or what you are.
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In effect, Charlatan was selling bikes that he did not own, and this “world traveler” was “shipping” the bikes from wherever the actual seller was located. As shady as this may seem, people do this with real estate ALL THE TIME by getting a property under contract to buy, and then advertising for a buyer, and then closing 2 deals and making a profit as a middleman, and (at least in the USA) it’s perfectly legal, so no matter what my initial opinion was when I realized Charlatan’s plan, I realized that I could not begrudge an individual for trying to make a profit in a legal manner.
That said, however, and going forward from that moment, whenever Charlatan contacted me with a bike for sale, I
immediately set to searching for that same bike on the internet, and EVERY TIME I found the exact bike that he was trying to sell to me (and I usually found it within seconds, thanks to Google’s search engine), only I found it for sale from another individual for far less money and I bought it directly from the actual seller! I did this 3 or 4 times, and I never told Charlatan that I was onto his game. It was great because it was just like getting notifications for a bike for sale that I wanted without having to spend a lot of time searching for it!
I was able to determine that Charlatan lived in a major US City and I got the strongest impression that he was approximately 15 years old and living with a family unit as a dependent because after awhile he got frustrated that I wasn’t buying anything from him and he threw an immature tantrum (via email) that one would expect from a 15-year-old, telling me things like I “used to be cool”, etc, trying to shame me into doing a deal. Oddly enough, a couple of years later, Charlatan was selling bike frames on eBay for good prices, and I bought several of them.
Another time (I’m almost done, really) I was at a convention in a hotel and a lot of us convention goers had just received a special convention giveaway collectible doohickey (OK, it was a special collectible convention-only Hot Wheels car given only to those who attended a dinner event at that convention, and it was at a Mattel Hot Wheels convention in Los Angeles……I hear you snickering!). Anyway, some of us got into the elevator on the ground floor, and when the door opened on the 2nd floor, a guy boarded it and said “I’ll give you $20 for that car!”, and I said “sure”, which meant a quick $20 for me for something that I had received just moments before for free. When the elevator door opened on the 3rd floor, another guy boarded the elevator, and the same guy that had just bought from me held up a bunch of these cars like a drug-dealer selling bags of…um…contraband
and told the next guy “I’ll sell you as many of these as you want for $40 apiece”, and the 2nd guy agreed because it was a collectible that he didn’t have, that he wanted, and that he’d probably have to go on eBay within the next week or so and compete with other buyers for, but here it was in front of his face at that moment, and he made an impulse buy. This all happened in mere seconds between two floors of a building in an elevator ride! I was stunned, then amused, and I actually admired the first guy’s initiative and resourcefulness. Naturally I thought “Wow! I could have had $40 instead of $20, but then again, I wasn’t the enterprising individual who was wheeling and dealing, and besides, I should be happy that I even made $20.
And that’s the real message with a successful transaction in a free-market economy: Everyone was happy! The buyer got what he wanted, the seller got what he wanted, and the middleman who put forth the effort got what he wanted as well…….and they lived happily ever after. The end. Now, go to sleep!
