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Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

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Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#121

Post by eru »

gnaritas wrote: post #102
mynameishere wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An annoying attitude. I spend 2 dollars on a box of crackers. Here's the rough process: 1. Farmer takes out a loan at Wells Fargo. 2. Loan clears, Farmer buys seed, etc. 3. Farmer grows 2000 acres of wheat. 4. Summer passes, farmer harvests wheat, and it travels 1000 miles to be processed. 5. Nabisco (Altria) buys wheat for a pre-agreed price (determined months ago by the Chicago futures exchange--a bunch of speculat…

Where exactly did I say anything about evil? The goal of business is to fleece its customers of their money. Some do it in nicer ways than others but they all do it, poor money management skills on the customers part is always good for business. Our entire consumer economy is based on that fact; we spend all of our excess money rather than saving it like we should.

Why should you save all your money?

Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#122

Post by eru »

ig1 wrote: post #52
time_management wrote: post #4

Reminds me of the old party game, Dollar Auction. Bidding's in 10-cent increments, and the prize is $1. The twist is that the top two bidders pay their bids, but only #1 gets the prize. Bidding will go far past $1 because, even though it's a loss to pay $1.10 for $1, the 90-cent bidder would rather lose 10 cents than 90. I've heard of bidding going up into the $20 range.

It's not just a party game, some auctions are actually run with those rules.

Design competitions for example.

Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#123

Post by owkaye »

paulgb wrote: post #33
qqq wrote: post #18

What's despicable about offering a service people want to use? Isn't this just like offering poker games and other gambling, or selling beer (you pay for something that harms your health, and the only saving grace is that people enjoy it)?

Nothing is inherently despicable about the model. What is despicable is that it is advertised as an auction site, not a gambling game. Also, a lot of these sites (there are many like it) don't have very much transparency, and it would be easy for them to not award a prize at all while still collecting the bidding fees.

"What is despicable is that it is advertised as an auction site, not a gambling game."

If the winner becomes the winner because he bid the highest price, then it's an auction. Since when are auctions considered to be games? Sure, it's an auction in which bidders must pay to bid, but are there laws that ban the charging of fees for participation in an auction?

Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#125

Post by hualibaobao »

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Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#126

Post by hualibaobao »

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Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#127

Post by newsycaccount »

mynameishere wrote: post #70
gnaritas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what most businesses do?

An annoying attitude. I spend 2 dollars on a box of crackers. Here's the rough process: 1. Farmer takes out a loan at Wells Fargo. 2. Loan clears, Farmer buys seed, etc. 3. Farmer grows 2000 acres of wheat. 4. Summer passes, farmer harvests wheat, and it travels 1000 miles to be processed. 5. Nabisco (Altria) buys wheat for a pre-agreed price (determined months ago by the Chicago futures exchange--a bunch of speculat…

>That's "evil" somehow?

The farmer is farms land stolen from Native Americans.

If we go by the odds it isn't some farmer taking out a small loan at Wells Fargo, most wheat is grown by big agribusiness.

The yield on the wheat is so high largely because of government funded fundamental research into agriculture and biology, including genetic modification, which has revolutionized things. Much of this publicly funded research is done by universities under grants from the NSF and such, and they are allowed turn around and sell the resulting patents to the agribusiness conglomerates. Not exactly a free-market miracle.

Wal-mart often demands public subsidies from small towns in order to put their store there, leveraging their massive outside scope and bargaining power with suppliers to be able to make their case to the municipalities.

Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#128

Post by newsycaccount »

owkaye wrote: post #74
utnick wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not an auction if bidding costs money regardless if you win or not. Its more of a raffle.

"Its not an auction if bidding costs money regardless if you win or not. Its more of a raffle." Show me the law that says this and I might begin to believe that you have a point here ... but right now I do not. I don't know much about auction laws, but I've never heard of it being illegal to charge for participation, and if it is in fact illegal then there must be someone online who has complained about it or files a…

Demonstrate how it is different from a raffle.

Re: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal

#129

Post by pg »

gnaritas wrote: post #102
mynameishere wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An annoying attitude. I spend 2 dollars on a box of crackers. Here's the rough process: 1. Farmer takes out a loan at Wells Fargo. 2. Loan clears, Farmer buys seed, etc. 3. Farmer grows 2000 acres of wheat. 4. Summer passes, farmer harvests wheat, and it travels 1000 miles to be processed. 5. Nabisco (Altria) buys wheat for a pre-agreed price (determined months ago by the Chicago futures exchange--a bunch of speculat…

Where exactly did I say anything about evil? The goal of business is to fleece its customers of their money. Some do it in nicer ways than others but they all do it, poor money management skills on the customers part is always good for business. Our entire consumer economy is based on that fact; we spend all of our excess money rather than saving it like we should.

How do you explain machine tools?
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