11 ms·

Tell the sellers that their product is worth more in returns than on eBay instead of taking advantage of them.

reitanqild 10y ago
A fair risk they will just plan to do it themselves, then forget about it or rather postpone it because they can't find return address or something and then lose everything. I do that kind of thing for friends but not for everyone.
throwanem 10y ago
I'd like to be in a position where such altruism had no downside, but I have one family member who requires round-the-clock care and another being laid off at the end of the year with no meaningful prospect of reemployment. Picking up ten thousand dollars that someone else is leaving on the table would do them a great deal of good right now.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  Ah, yeah, you gotta do that. Sorry for jumping to conclusions -- I shouldn't transmute the moral failings of our economic order into personal immorality so carelessly.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    So I get the impression that you find something generally immoral about capitalizing on unequal distribution of information. I can't help but be reminded of the time years back when an Internet rando told me, in all earnestness, not only that I should not profit from my knowledge of how to write saleable software and the sale of my labor in so doing, but that in a truly equitable society I would not be allowed to do so, because not everyone knows how to do that and it's wrong of me to privilege my own interests over those of people who lack the knowledge I possess. In that case there's a slight difference of detail in the origin of the unequal distribution, but the general concept seems very much the same. I would be interested to hear whether and how you see a meaningful distinction between the cases, and in general to see some expansion on the nature of the moral calculus which moved you to make the comment to which I and several others responded.
ikeboy 10y ago
It's not my job to tell other people how to make money. They all got good prices from me that they were happy with. If I had a model for stock trading that was better than the people I was trading with, is it unethical to use it since I could just tell people the stocks are worth more and they shouldn't sell it to me? I buy products for resale all the time, and I don't need to tell the people I buy from how much more I plan to sell it for. (Plus, some of the product was bought from larger companies that would never have bothered to get the refund themselves. One person I bought around 20 peaks, I'm pretty sure they were selling them on Amazon before they banned the listing and needed to liquidate. Some stuff I bought from Amazon directly, where it would clearly be impractical to tell them.)
EdSharkey 10y ago
I think there might be a culture clash between you and the grandparent. As I understand it, no one is getting taken advantage of by the grandparent. eBay's a marketplace and the seller put their items up for bid. Fair dealing does not require a buyer to tell a seller what their item is worth to someone else. When a buyer gets a bargain, we celebrate. Fair dealing does require sellers to be truthful about the quality of their goods though. Lying about a lemon and pawning it off onto someone then profiting off that lie is a bad deal. I'm speaking as an American, and that's my understanding of how we trade. Your word is your bond, handshake deals are as good as a written contract - that sort of honor code is pervasive. You should mind your own business. I mean that to be taken politely and not as a slam. There's just no better way to say it, so I said it. There is not enough information in your sentence for me to guess at what your thought process was, so I'm going to assume you were just expressing empathy and trying to be nice. I'd like to hear a moral justification for how you came to judge the grandparent.
- throwanem 10y ago
  As would I.

A fair risk they will just plan to do it themselves, then forget about it or rather postpone it because they can't find return address or something and then lose everything. I do that kind of thing for friends but not for everyone.

throwanem 10y ago

I'd like to be in a position where such altruism had no downside, but I have one family member who requires round-the-clock care and another being laid off at the end of the year with no meaningful prospect of reemployment. Picking up ten thousand dollars that someone else is leaving on the table would do them a great deal of good right now.

bertiewhykovich 10y ago
Ah, yeah, you gotta do that. Sorry for jumping to conclusions -- I shouldn't transmute the moral failings of our economic order into personal immorality so carelessly.
- throwanem 10y ago
  So I get the impression that you find something generally immoral about capitalizing on unequal distribution of information. I can't help but be reminded of the time years back when an Internet rando told me, in all earnestness, not only that I should not profit from my knowledge of how to write saleable software and the sale of my labor in so doing, but that in a truly equitable society I would not be allowed to do so, because not everyone knows how to do that and it's wrong of me to privilege my own interests over those of people who lack the knowledge I possess. In that case there's a slight difference of detail in the origin of the unequal distribution, but the general concept seems very much the same. I would be interested to hear whether and how you see a meaningful distinction between the cases, and in general to see some expansion on the nature of the moral calculus which moved you to make the comment to which I and several others responded.

ikeboy 10y ago

It's not my job to tell other people how to make money. They all got good prices from me that they were happy with. If I had a model for stock trading that was better than the people I was trading with, is it unethical to use it since I could just tell people the stocks are worth more and they shouldn't sell it to me? I buy products for resale all the time, and I don't need to tell the people I buy from how much more I plan to sell it for. (Plus, some of the product was bought from larger companies that would never have bothered to get the refund themselves. One person I bought around 20 peaks, I'm pretty sure they were selling them on Amazon before they banned the listing and needed to liquidate. Some stuff I bought from Amazon directly, where it would clearly be impractical to tell them.)

EdSharkey 10y ago

I think there might be a culture clash between you and the grandparent. As I understand it, no one is getting taken advantage of by the grandparent. eBay's a marketplace and the seller put their items up for bid. Fair dealing does not require a buyer to tell a seller what their item is worth to someone else. When a buyer gets a bargain, we celebrate. Fair dealing does require sellers to be truthful about the quality of their goods though. Lying about a lemon and pawning it off onto someone then profiting off that lie is a bad deal. I'm speaking as an American, and that's my understanding of how we trade. Your word is your bond, handshake deals are as good as a written contract - that sort of honor code is pervasive. You should mind your own business. I mean that to be taken politely and not as a slam. There's just no better way to say it, so I said it. There is not enough information in your sentence for me to guess at what your thought process was, so I'm going to assume you were just expressing empathy and trying to be nice. I'd like to hear a moral justification for how you came to judge the grandparent.

throwanem 10y ago
As would I.