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The Fancy Rug Dilemma

epan.land

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Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#51

Post by elmolino89 »

Small thing: keeping old books is a bit like a physical memory palace. Granted, it may be pointless/way to costly to cling to a collection of say outdated books read as an adolescent, but we tend to remember better if we can access at least the visual image of the cover.

So my advice is to take the pictures of book covers you have to get rid of. And organize them be it by the time period you have read them, topic or something else. One day you may be able to fish out memories you didn't think exist anymore.

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#52

Post by smitty1e »

michaelmrose wrote: post #47
pixl97 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the Amish line of thought is instead of randomly and quickly adopting technology/growth a community should take time to understand what the impacts are of using them. Some people think Amish don't use electricity, but that's not true. You'll find quite a few of them with things like solar panels and LED lights. These things tend to have very long lifespans and no grid connections limiting needs from o…

The Amish way is ultimately impractical to practice without being embedded in a society which is much larger and inimical to their own way of thinking as otherwise those willing to both bear the cost of accepting modern ways of and willing to do violence burn your shit and settle on your land. In more peaceful times people may chose only to impoverish your people and buy your lands but the net effect is the same. The…

I don't disagree with your point, which is, I think, that the Amish are essentially freeloading on the security afforded by the surrounding society.

Indeed, the smaller "tribal-esque" approach of the Amish may be considered similar to that of the Native American tribes, and American History seen as a natural experiment of how the Amish would fare if government security were to vanish.

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#53

Post by cma »

supermatt wrote: post #49
yegle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioning the man hours would make sense, if the ones producing the product taking the majority cut from the purchase price. Otherwise, it's more of a strategy to set a higher price tag, and the reseller and all the middleman taking all the extra revenues.

Not really. Irrespective of price, the inherent value of the rug is much greater - it still takes over 100x the labour to produce. That it still costs less than 100x basketball shoes to purchase is more circumstantial, yet further demonstrates the fallacy of the argument.

It takes a long time to make small scale reproductions of movie scenes out of popsicle sticks, the time spent doesn't make them valuable on its own.

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#54

Post by supermatt »

cma wrote: post #53
supermatt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Irrespective of price, the inherent value of the rug is much greater - it still takes over 100x the labour to produce. That it still costs less than 100x basketball shoes to purchase is more circumstantial, yet further demonstrates the fallacy of the argument.

It takes a long time to make small scale reproductions of movie scenes out of popsicle sticks, the time spent doesn't make them valuable on its own.

Yeah, value was a poor choice of word. I probably meant cost, and where I say cost I probably meant price.

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#55

Post by hn_throw_250822 »

pedalpete wrote: post #44

Interesting read, I'm surprised nobody has brought up Pejman Nozad who is the owner of one of the more popular rug shops. https://pear.vc/team/pejman-nozad/ His money doesn't come from the rug shops. He sells rugs, but the rug shop was where he used to meet investors and founders and make investments. I assume the rug shop in Menlo Park has a similar background.

I’m confused. What did this guy do?

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#57

Post by pedalpete »

hn_throw_250822 wrote: post #55
pedalpete wrote: post #44

Interesting read, I'm surprised nobody has brought up Pejman Nozad who is the owner of one of the more popular rug shops. https://pear.vc/team/pejman-nozad/ His money doesn't come from the rug shops. He sells rugs, but the rug shop was where he used to meet investors and founders and make investments. I assume the rug shop in Menlo Park has a similar background.

I’m confused. What did this guy do?

He owned/owns a rug shop. Had an office upstairs he rented to start-ups, and became a central figure in the angel investment community.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2012/03/21/silic...

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#58

Post by mritterhoff »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #46

The idea of rugs as heritage and identity so thoroughly offends every anti-consumerist ideal I have that I find it impossible to take this author seriously. Please tell me this is satire?

I'm no rug expert, heritage or otherwise, but it looks like there are some really expensive rugs out there: this[1] site lists 9 worth over $1M USD. So I'd assume there's a big spread between that and rugs you get at Ikea. So I think he's being genuine, not satirical.

1. https://www.luxxu.net/blog/top-10-most-expensive-rugs-in-the...

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#59

Post by IAmBroom »

decimalenough wrote: post #7
supermatt wrote: post #3

I can’t speak for the rugs you viewed, but some products take literally hundreds of man hours to make. My partner recently picked up some fine crochet bedspreads. These intricate bedspreads each must have consumed multiple weeks of labour. I understand this is also true of hand crafted Chinese and Afghan rugs - around a month per square metre for an Afghan. In contrast, those basketball shoes you collect are mass pro…

Creating a single basketball shoe from an existing template takes three hours. Coming up with that design and all the associated expenses (marketing etc) plus the tooling needed to produce the shoe consumes much more labor and accounts for the vast majority of the shoe's cost. Hand-woven rugs, on the other hand, are largely unique in design and created by a single person.

Even if hand-woven rugs were made on a pattern, they would take hundreds of hours to make.

The innovation in the design is almost icing to the cake, in terms of labor overhead.

Re: The Fancy Rug Dilemma

#60

Post by IAmBroom »

jrmg wrote: post #15
farazbabar wrote: post #10

This is not really Veblen situation. A lot of these are primarily money laundering outfits, the artificially high prices, are simply a means of converting cash into bank deposits. Similar schemes exist in art, sculptures, and jewelry. There are some mom and pop type stores that are legit and some of the money goes to actual artists who make these but the ones in Palo Alto (or similarly unattainable rent neighborhood…

What kind of dirty money do you believe these stores are laundering? What kind of illegal businesses/schemes are the source of it?

Wrong question. There is no reason to link the sort of dirty money with the type of laundering business. The process of laundering, and need thereof, are universal to criminal industries.
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