Bargains on ebay?

[Macca]

Doesn't it just go to show how greedy and opportunist people can be - given the chance? What did such individuals do before the advent of eBay? Recently I saw a turntable sell and was listed by the buyer a few days later with a 50% increase in price for which he had bought it for. Wasn't it Maggie Thatcher who suggested the marketplace was all that mattered and that a social conscience was an irrelevence? Sellers insist on using the word 'rare' in their description when quite often it doesn't apply.

You are thinking of the fabled 'no such thing as society' quote I imagine - here it is in its full context:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Makes perfect sense to me...

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.

[losenotaminute]

Doesn't it just go to show how greedy and opportunist people can be - given the chance? What did such individuals do before the advent of eBay? Recently I saw a turntable sell and was listed by the buyer a few days later with a 50% increase in price for which he had bought it for. Wasn't it Maggie Thatcher who suggested the marketplace was all that mattered and that a social conscience was an irrelevence? Sellers insist on using the word 'rare' in their description when quite often it doesn't apply.

Yes I agree, it would be much fairer if everything was allocated by the State, why should people be allowed to spend their resources as they wish.

[MartinT]

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Makes perfect sense to me...

Makes perfect sense to me, too.

[Mr Kipling]

Fair enough. I'm all for a sense of fairness and equality - but that's just me. Individuals asking £500 for a Garrard SP25 MK IV or £250 for a rusty carcass of a valve amp that has been found in a garden shed and only fit for the bin, just seems like opportunist greed, to me.

Earlier in the year I watched an item on BBC 1 looking at how people were coping in the aftermath of the banking collapse in the US. One aging female fashion designer had lost everything and was now living in a tent in a wood where a whole community was sprouting up with others in the same predicament. Others were living by the sides of highways. Some were living in the drainage area under a hotel intended for flash floods. A nurse had lost her job and couldn't pay the morgage and her and the three kids were living in their car. She could not see any way out of her plight and the desperation on her face was quite painful to watch. Luckilly, she was parked not far from a church and at some point later a total stranger saw their plight and took them in.

It's 2012 and this is how people are existing in a so-called christian and civilized (and rich) country.

Last month there was a series on poverty on BBC 4 In the USA there is now said to be 43 million classed as poor, and the gulf between the rich and poor is ever-widening growing exponentialally. But it's not simply the fact that the rich are getting rich, their moral base is said to be shifting. The elite rich are buying political power (nothing new I suppose) and with it goes tax cuts to the already rich with the less well-off paying for them. Any sort of measure to curtail their wealth amassment is seen as a threat, and has to be dealt with.

I found it quite depressing and just showed what greed leads to. Look at Apple. How much does an i-phone cost? Then look at the absolute (absolute) pittance they pay their Chinese workers.

[Rare Bird]

Makes perfect sense to me, too.

+1

[losenotaminute]

Fair enough. I'm all for a sense of fairness and equality - but that's just me. Individuals asking £500 for a Garrard SP25 MK IV or £250 for a rusty carcass of a valve amp that has been found in a garden shed and only fit for the bin, just seems like opportunist greed, to me.

Earlier in the year I watched an item on BBC 1 looking at how people were coping in the aftermath of the banking collapse in the US. One aging female fashion designer had lost everything and was now living in a tent in a wood where a whole community was sprouting up with others in the same predicament. Others were living by the sides of highways. Some were living in the drainage area under a hotel intended for flash floods. A nurse had lost her job and couldn't pay the morgage and her and the three kids were living in their car. She could not see any way out of her plight and the desperation on her face was quite painful to watch. Luckilly, she was parked not far from a church and at some point later a total stranger saw their plight and took them in.

It's 2012 and this is how people are existing in a so-called christian and civilized (and rich) country.

Last month there was a series on poverty on BBC 4 In the USA there is now said to be 43 million classed as poor, and the gulf between the rich and poor is ever-widening growing exponentialally. But it's not simply the fact that the rich are getting rich, their moral base is said to be shifting. The elite rich are buying political power (nothing new I suppose) and with it goes tax cuts to the already rich with the less well-off paying for them. Any sort of measure to curtail their wealth amassment is seen as a threat, and has to be dealt with.

I found it quite depressing and just showed what greed leads to. Look at Apple. How much does an i-phone cost? Then look at the absolute (absolute) pittance they pay their Chinese workers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

[MartinT]

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

[synsei]

Fair enough. I'm all for a sense of fairness and equality - but that's just me. Individuals asking £500 for a Garrard SP25 MK IV or £250 for a rusty carcass of a valve amp that has been found in a garden shed and only fit for the bin, just seems like opportunist greed, to me.

Earlier in the year I watched an item on BBC 1 looking at how people were coping in the aftermath of the banking collapse in the US. One aging female fashion designer had lost everything and was now living in a tent in a wood where a whole community was sprouting up with others in the same predicament. Others were living by the sides of highways. Some were living in the drainage area under a hotel intended for flash floods. A nurse had lost her job and couldn't pay the morgage and her and the three kids were living in their car. She could not see any way out of her plight and the desperation on her face was quite painful to watch. Luckilly, she was parked not far from a church and at some point later a total stranger saw their plight and took them in.

It's 2012 and this is how people are existing in a so-called christian and civilized (and rich) country.

Last month there was a series on poverty on BBC 4 In the USA there is now said to be 43 million classed as poor, and the gulf between the rich and poor is ever-widening growing exponentialally. But it's not simply the fact that the rich are getting rich, their moral base is said to be shifting. The elite rich are buying political power (nothing new I suppose) and with it goes tax cuts to the already rich with the less well-off paying for them. Any sort of measure to curtail their wealth amassment is seen as a threat, and has to be dealt with.

I found it quite depressing and just showed what greed leads to. Look at Apple. How much does an i-phone cost? Then look at the absolute (absolute) pittance they pay their Chinese workers.

I can't see the relevance between ebay pricing and the amoral state of the financial sector but I generally agree with what you have written above Stephen.

What is sadly lacking in society today is a sense of empathy. Increasingly, when discussing everyday issues with people on the street and online, I come across more and more people who are only interested in 'Number One' and sleight those less fortunate than themselves. More often than not I want to punch their lights out but I realise it won't solve a sodding thing. Generally they have been brought up in a material world by parents who gave them whatever the hell they wanted and who told their little Tarquin that money is God. Until people start caring again then sadly this is the world we have to survive in...

[losenotaminute]

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

I totally agree, he an an intellectual powerhouse compared to everyone else - the Christopher Hitchens of economics.

[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.