[78-L] ebay gripes

[Michael Biel]

Steven C. Barr wrote:
> The effective idea of eBay and its ilk is this: BUY possibly-collectable
> items at yard sales, thrift stores (or simply STEAL them when no one
> is looking...?!) or find them on your local garbage-pick-up day...! Then,
> offer them on eBay (et all) for several hundred times what you paid
> for them...thus enabling one to survive without actually having to WORK
> (aka "expend personal effort"...?!) to finance one's survival!
>   
>

Nobody is FORCING YOU  to buy anything on ebay.  If they are being 
offered for more than anyone wants to pay, then it remains unsold and 
will probably (as I already said) go into their next garage sale or to 
Goodwill.  And although it might offend your sensibilities, there is 
nothing wrong or un-noble in working to sell things on e-bay, any more 
than running a garage sale, or a second-hand store, or a flea market 
booth, or an antique store. 

> Worse yet, eBay has DEvolved into an all-too-typical sample of the
> XXI Jahrhundert...a decade typified by "Gordon Gekko's" "Greed is GOOD!" 
>(an effective slogan of the world's right wing, although they will probably
> deny it...?!).


No, EATING is good.  In today's economy, there is nothing dishonorable 
about being an ebay seller.  I don't think that the amateur 
non-collector who minimum prices something too high is being greedy.  
Since they do not know what it is worth they don't want to take the 
chance of selling something too cheap to a GREEDY COLLECTOR who is able 
to get something valuable cheap on ebay if nobody else notices it.  Kurt 
Nauck and Larry Holdridge know that valuable things won't pass thru 
their catalogs too cheap, but the ebay amateur is just trying to be 
careful, not greedy.

Mike BIel  mbiel at mbiel.com