No I’m talking about making profit by acquiring something for less than it’s worth (the proof of this being that you are able to find someone who will pay more for it, during a short enough time frame that it is worth your time to do so)
People are quick to shit on real estate “investors”, this is kinda the same thing.
I moved recently and instead of dealing with the hassle of having to haggle, I decided to post on an internal company channel and give away all my stuff to coworkers. Since I was going to get charged for disposal, having a random unknown coworker (presumably a trusted person) come to my place and take away stuff for me for free was actually saving me money. Plus I don’t have to deal with actual strangers from Facebook who would probably try and haggle last minute. I got value out of that transaction.
But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable? What if someone decided to have their entire income be based off flipping furniture like this?
And if you’re OK with all of that, why not keep going and flip houses? It’s the same shit. You are not improving the product in any way (and sometimes house flippers do renovate). Or do things magically change because of the Barrier to entry?
But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable?
If you’re going to bring honor into it, yeah it can be pretty dishonorable. Your worker would be using his privileged position of access to people who are in a financial position to just discard valuable goods, and if he’s then reselling those at market rate rather than cost plus, then he’s not so much compensating himself for the work of reselling the products as he is exploiting the ignorance of his customers to maximize profit.
And if we understand honor be rooted in transparency, honesty, fairness, etc (which is what we immediately think of when we think of an “honorable” fight or dual, for example), then yes that can be very dishonorable.
So it’s the seller’s responsibility to say “BTW I got this for free so you should pay me less” even if the product is of objective X quality?
All these comment chains are bonkers, yo.
Back to the main article, the entire point was supposed to be that the guy was making money by being a middle man that spent their time handling logistics in a way that made it worthwhile to acquire a thing and sell it to someone who felt they were getting a good deal. That’s much more value than “herp deep I’m a landlord, where’s my rent”.
“Using their privilege of being a coworker of someone who is in a position where it’s more valuable to them to give away furniture cuz it’s more annoying to sell it” is kind of a stretch. Not that it should matter but the vast majority of my shit was IKEA garbage from 11 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, this is among the least offensive iterations of the phenomen, but middlemen can be pretty shitty in any transaction.
Sometimes they provide a useful service, acting as a sort of external sales and marketing department for producers who for whatever reason don’t have the mechanisms in place to get their products out to their would-be consumers.
But who likes a scalper? Who believes that a guy with an automated purchasing script is adding value to Taylor Swift tickets? Or that the people buying multiple PS5s during the early days just to resell them were providing a useful intermediary service? No one.
And likewise taking something you don’t want off of Craigslist before someone who actually wants it can get it, only to flip it on another site, doesn’t add value or provide a useful service.
No I’m talking about making profit by acquiring something for less than it’s worth (the proof of this being that you are able to find someone who will pay more for it, during a short enough time frame that it is worth your time to do so)
People are quick to shit on real estate “investors”, this is kinda the same thing.
I moved recently and instead of dealing with the hassle of having to haggle, I decided to post on an internal company channel and give away all my stuff to coworkers. Since I was going to get charged for disposal, having a random unknown coworker (presumably a trusted person) come to my place and take away stuff for me for free was actually saving me money. Plus I don’t have to deal with actual strangers from Facebook who would probably try and haggle last minute. I got value out of that transaction.
But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable? What if someone decided to have their entire income be based off flipping furniture like this?
And if you’re OK with all of that, why not keep going and flip houses? It’s the same shit. You are not improving the product in any way (and sometimes house flippers do renovate). Or do things magically change because of the Barrier to entry?
If you’re going to bring honor into it, yeah it can be pretty dishonorable. Your worker would be using his privileged position of access to people who are in a financial position to just discard valuable goods, and if he’s then reselling those at market rate rather than cost plus, then he’s not so much compensating himself for the work of reselling the products as he is exploiting the ignorance of his customers to maximize profit.
And if we understand honor be rooted in transparency, honesty, fairness, etc (which is what we immediately think of when we think of an “honorable” fight or dual, for example), then yes that can be very dishonorable.
So it’s the seller’s responsibility to say “BTW I got this for free so you should pay me less” even if the product is of objective X quality?
All these comment chains are bonkers, yo.
Back to the main article, the entire point was supposed to be that the guy was making money by being a middle man that spent their time handling logistics in a way that made it worthwhile to acquire a thing and sell it to someone who felt they were getting a good deal. That’s much more value than “herp deep I’m a landlord, where’s my rent”.
“Using their privilege of being a coworker of someone who is in a position where it’s more valuable to them to give away furniture cuz it’s more annoying to sell it” is kind of a stretch. Not that it should matter but the vast majority of my shit was IKEA garbage from 11 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, this is among the least offensive iterations of the phenomen, but middlemen can be pretty shitty in any transaction.
Sometimes they provide a useful service, acting as a sort of external sales and marketing department for producers who for whatever reason don’t have the mechanisms in place to get their products out to their would-be consumers.
But who likes a scalper? Who believes that a guy with an automated purchasing script is adding value to Taylor Swift tickets? Or that the people buying multiple PS5s during the early days just to resell them were providing a useful intermediary service? No one.
And likewise taking something you don’t want off of Craigslist before someone who actually wants it can get it, only to flip it on another site, doesn’t add value or provide a useful service.