Bargains on ebay?

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Originally Posted by Mr Kipling

Having used up my data allowance for this month I can't stream the link provided.

Simple greed is all I'm getting at.

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That's a shame because the videos is about the issue of greed. Pop it in your favourites for next month :)

Friedman points out the fundamental truth that greed is the human condition. Anyone who thinks that the people in Socialist states who make the decisions aren't driven by greed are deluding themselves. As Gordon Gekko famously said, "greed is good" when the system works, it defeats inefficiency and makes everyone better off. The caveat is that for the sytem to work, Government or Business shouldn't be able to make choices for individuals.

There's another Friedman video which explains this in more depth. Essentially there are 4 types of economic decision:

• I make a choice for myself
• I make a choice for someone else
• Someone else makes a choice for me
• Someone else makes a choice for another person

The best, most efficient system is the one that maximises the first option.

Lawrence

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Originally Posted by synsei

What is sadly lacking in society today is a sense of empathy.

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It was never there, Dave, in any age.

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Originally Posted by MartinT

Spot on, Lawrence. Milton Friedman knows what he's talking about.

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He didn't really say much there though... he certainly led the audience well and was even getting the audience to side and laugh with him BEFORE making the point..

I don't know much about Milton Friedman but from the clip, it came accross as making simplistic 'common sense' points that people find to be obviously true and then using them to 'proove' a more complex point via a massive leap in logic.

Hopefully, in writing his thoughts are more intellectually set out!

Here's a good clip of Friedman defending Ford's considered decision to NOT install a $13 part in a car that would have prevented the petrol tank from exploding and had been known to kill about 200 people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg

Sounds like he advocates economic principles over empathy... I wonder how much he would have valued those principles if he'd ever found himself screaming for help to save his own life.

UPDATE: I do however respect Steve Keen (an economic academic who's economic models predicted the current crisis) and if he puts down Friedman's work then I would go along with that..

http://peterschiffchannel.blogspot.c...ustralian.html - is a 30 min video from a lecture.

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Originally Posted by Macca

Personally I do not see anything morally wrong with buying and selling Hi-Fi equipment for profit and I find it baffling that some people seem to think it should be different from any other commodity.

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That's fine if you are offering a service on top (refurbing etc) or even if you are buying at a below average price and selling at the high end of average - you're making something out of your ability to find under-priced items or getting lucky with auctions or being rewarded from taking risks on dodgy looking auctions that others stay away from, or bothering to pick up in person on collection only items. In any of those, you are changing the same from one that people don't want, to one that they do want (have confidence in etc).

That's not what I was talking about and I don't think Mr Kipling was either.

What I was talking about - and this applies to any other commodity or resource - is making something artificially scarce in order to then falsely convince people that they MUST spend loads in order to obtain that item. Or to artificially raise the price so that there is price propoganda through repetition (you only ever see the over-priced item and then 'learn' that it's value is the high one through repetition).

That is akin to someone placing a dam upstream of a river and telling the villagers downstream they must pay more for their now scarce water and have it delivered by tanker from the resevoir created behind the dam..

Maybe you feel that is just a 'free market' doing its job?

In the end, the greed does actually harm the seller....

What happens is that they hang on to the item and refuse to sell at a more reasonable price, therefore it takes them a long while to realise any profit and have the original outlay tied up in the item in the meantime.

If they had a higher throughput of sales by lower pricing and therefore quicker realisation of profits and also re-invested those profits into new stock, they would multiply their profits over the long term via compound percentages.

I feel some sellers get hooked on the idea of larger profits on the one item which means they don't have to do so much work (buying and selling) and think only in the short term. It's an emotional response, perhaps greed, that makes them feel like they have done something special and achieved these great profits in their head. Then to face reality is too much, they can't let go of the idea of this high price ...

Note that when a high price is made on ebay for something, a load of sales of the same item will suddenly switch to Buy It Now at around that new high price.. they never sell. Then follows the auctions with high reserves and people saying 'it's worth xxx ' and then eventually they sell without reserve and they get the same average price just as before. Their eyes widened when they saw the freak high price and got greedy - they just wasted their time and tied up their money for longer, sometimes for months with particular sellers (most annoying when you offer them the average price, they refuse, and months later you find you miss their final listing ending at a lower price than you offered..).

May I suggest that this discussion be moved to its own thread as it has far outgrown the post that seeded it?

You can suggest.....

I'd rather stick to things on eBay and agree to differ.

9hs left but heres a well price little system:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ruark-spea...-/330846848211

My brief research and adding up makes this about a £650 - £700 system for £500 assuming no-one else bids.

Nice Ortofon mono cartridge

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3707216173...84.m1438.l2649

The seller seems to pick up a fairly eclectic mix of items from France judging from some of the other items he's listing