NEW O'RIORDAN FOR SALE.

[Brian Lee]

Boy, again, you could be hit with a Mack truck and still not get it. Amazing. Read the thread, my sale was prompted by some factors in my life that are frankly none of your concern, but that prompted the need to sell to the highest bidder. Any who asked were given details OFF list, and if you look, there was one update given. Not several or a minute by minute play by play. This sale was approved by the powers that were at the time.

Still very unclear about what the point is you're trying to make out of all this. PETRUS offered a whistle at a price - admittedly lower than it likely could have gone for elsewhere (like on eBay). Yet now he's some evil capitalist monster. And then we find there are 'camps' in the 'community' here and that everyone should just give stuff away because it's the 'right thing to do'. Right so far? I don't blame the guy for selling that whistle for what he did.

There simply aren't many examples of Pat's work out there, and because of that, the price will be higher. Accept that fact, and if the price is too rich for your blood, buy something else. Simple. Leave the slaggings for November 2 at the polls. :roll:

[Jay-eye]

it's all too sad

[IDAwHOa]

Next thing you know people will be complaining because someone is selling their instruments for too little and pulling the price of something THEY want to sell down too low.

:roll:

[Jeferson]

Norcal, as long as they don't auction it off on the boards to the lowest bidder, it's fine by me.

Jef

[Wanderer]

I'll note that no one has yet offered to sell me their own O'Riordan for Pat's price.

My birthday is 6 days away...there's still time! It could happen

[Wombat]

Next thing you know people will be complaining because someone is selling their instruments for too little and pulling the price of something THEY want to sell down too low.

:roll:

Seriously, have you actually read this thread? I mean carefully, checking to see when people were being misrepresented? ONE person, complained on page one about profiteering, one who has earned the right to the moral high ground by selling O'Riordans at or around cost. Since page one or perhaps two, nobody has been explicitly attacking profiteering. In fact nobody has said anyhting new at all except Jeferson.

What we have been doing is responding to the increasingly provocative posts of a well-known troll whose own board selling practices were at least suspect. He claims to have had the auction cleared and I'm not in a position to dispute this. Well why not say openly in the first post that this had occurred and what he was conducting was an auction? At the very least that would have avoided a lot of bad will. As for eh content of my later posts, I was just repeating myself and trying to avoid raising my voice and abuse level to that of my assailant.

For my part I put the case against profiteering without fully endorsing it in the sense of calling for a ban. I repeatedly make that clear. I was, and remain, disturbed that so many people can't see that there even is a case against profiteering. Laissez faire economic theory isn't written in the heavens. It's based on a psychological theory of human nature which is objectionable and which even its early proponents regarded as actually a vastly oversimplified picture of human nature. Not only is it a vastly oversimplified picutre—ie, it is false—it is an insulting picuture in that it denies the very possibility of altruism. I wasn't attacking anybody for profiteering (in case you still aren't listening), I was simply pointing out what a great many people remark on with gratitude about this community: in general we display a level of communitarian concern for eachother that is heartwarming. I would have been happy to say it once and move on. Then the trolling got going in earnest.

[Lizzie]

Wanderer...if I had known a while back, you could have had mine for Pat's price. I do pratice what I preach.

[Wanderer]

Wanderer...if I had known a while back, you could have had mine for Pat's price. I do pratice what I preach.

That's ok, Lizzie...I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that if I want one, I'll need to pay close to $700 for one.

Actually, I would have been happy to have bought the one for $350..but then I would have been sorely tempted to stick it on ebay straight away and double my money. It would have brought back the heady feeling of internet investing around the year 2000

[rodfish]

Obviously feelings run quite hot on this issue of "profiteering" versus "altruism" on this forum.
I'm saddened to see that some folks feel that they must resort to name calling to get their point across.
But, just to add my 2 cents (which may not even be worth that);

The Merriam Webster's On Line definition of a profiteer is:
"one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency." (italics mine)

The same source defines altruism as:
"1. unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.
2. behavior by an animal (human?) that is not beneficial to or may even be harmful to itself but that beneifits others of its species."

I don't actually see either of these "characteristics" being described in this thread. The gentleman who sold his whistle was not selling something essential to our lives during a time of emergeny or distress. To call him a "profiteer" or even to describe him as being "greedy" seems to be, IMHO, less than charitable.

The lady who sold one of those remarkable whistles in the past at auction and gave all the proceeds over what she paid, to charity certainly deserves to be lauded; but she isn't a true altruist. She retained her original cost. She did not suffer any loss. Quite the contrary, she probably experienced great personal satisfaction in doing so; a feeling worth much more (to her and others) than any profit she might have realized from the sale.

I can see honor, honesty and yes even community in both positions.

This is a great forum. I'm thankful we have the freedom to disagree, albeit ever so charitably with one another.

Rod

[jking]

TIME=MONEY.
A 3yr waiting list=time.

Its a simple equation. The chance of not being able to buy one of Pat's whistles anymore from him is in itself a truth. Now people pay everyday to have things more conveniant. Should a courier company for example charge one fee regardless of same day delivery, overnight or 5 business day's? What is the one constant variable. TIME.
We live in a world of instant gratification. That in itself can cost us more than just on a monetary level. Right or wrong it happens. Both parties seem happy with the sale. Question....are they both wrong? One morally for selling it at that price, then equally so the buyer must be for being involved in such an undertaking and perpetuating this type of unfair act. Even though he obviously had the means to pay and feels like he now holds and plays a treasure of a whistle. All seems a bit ludicrous to me. The two parties involved have moved on and seems like we need to do the same.

[Wombat]

Obviously feelings run quite hot on this issue of "profiteering" versus "altruism" on this forum.
I'm saddened to see that some folks feel that they must resort to name calling to get their point across.
But, just to add my 2 cents (which may not even be worth that);

The Merriam Webster's On Line definition of a profiteer is:
"one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency." (italics mine)

The same source defines altruism as:
"1. unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.
2. behavior by an animal (human?) that is not beneficial to or may even be harmful to itself but that beneifits others of its species."

I don't actually see either of these "characteristics" being described in this thread. The gentleman who sold his whistle was not selling something essential to our lives during a time of emergeny or distress. To call him a "profiteer" or even to describe him as being "greedy" seems to be, IMHO, less than charitable.

The lady who sold one of those remarkable whistles in the past at auction and gave all the proceeds over what she paid, to charity certainly deserves to be lauded; but she isn't a true altruist. She retained her original cost. She did not suffer any loss. Quite the contrary, she probably experienced great personal satisfaction in doing so; a feeling worth much more (to her and others) than any profit she might have realized from the sale.

I can see honor, honesty and yes even community in both positions.

This is a great forum. I'm thankful we have the freedom to disagree, albeit ever so charitably with one another.

Rod

Thanks for this thoughtful and subtle comment, Rod. This advances the discussion and would have been welcome a few pages back. Just a couple of comments.

First, although whistles aren't essential, well O'Riordans aren't, a profiteer is still by that definition someone who makes an unreasonable profit. Several people on this board think that the going market price for O'Riordans is unreasonable. With some things, real estate and antiques for example, it is very hard to find a measure of price other than market value. But the fact that Pat is still making and selling whistles gives us another angle on what is reasonable here. So we do have something else to go by. That doesn't establish the case but it does show that there is something real to argue about.

Second, in offering an O'Riordan whistle for sale in the same spirit that Pat offers them, I submit that Lizzie was being altruistic. In forgoing a profit in order to make a whistle available to one who might not otherwise be able to afford it, she clearly displayed unselfish behaviour.

What sort of sickens me about so many posts here is that an economic theory, based on a lie about human nature, is now parroted by people who don't even seem to know where that theory comes from but who assume that its oversimplifications are not only self-evidently true but also virtuous. The assumption that we are all selish profit maximsers was meant initially (at least by the sophisticated) to be a simplification that made quantifiable economics possible. That the real world contains behaviour that doesn't fit the model just means we have to be very cautious in how we apply the model to real world behaviour. Now we get boofheads who think that selfishness is an ideal to be lived up to and anybody who fails is just silly. This has no theoretical foundation at all.

Nobody is really a full-on laissez faire theorist—well hardly anybody. If the world really were run on pure supply and demand considerations, why would it be necessary for America to be signing 'free trade' agreements with other countries now? Worse, why would America be not signing some of those agreements? The answer is that we don't have free trade, we never have had, and most of us still don't want it. Subsidies to American, French and Japanese farmers are anti free-trade. Want to see American agriculture go to the wall all you market forces zealots? And what about jobs in manufactutring being lost in the developed world because the same jobs can be done for slave wages in the third world?

The same people who feed you the crass slogans and the comic-strip psychological theory that goes with them are the ones who rush to protect their own interests when they are threatened. I've seen this happen in universities. It was assumed by administraters that if faculties were financed according to what student demand dictated, the arts would whither and the professional courses would get everything. Then they noticed that subjects that were supposed to die, like philosophy for example, were actually doing very well. They then altered the funding model to make philosphy subsidise the subjects they wanted to flourish all along. There is a lot of freemarket rhetoric. But the 'hidden hand of the market' very often belongs not to the statistical fiction it's meant to belong to but to real people engaged in very real manipulation.

[Brian Lee]

Good Lord. It's no wonder so many great contributors have left the boards. There's a separate thread for political discussions. Let the sale rest, and be happy that two people found a mutual agreement on a highly prized and sought after whistle. If you care to make judgements about their character based soley on your admittedly limited knowledge of an agreement between two people you don't know fine, but please spare the rest of us and do so on your own time, and in your own space.

There are plenty of us "trolls" who are cheesed off at the attack on the seller/buyer as it stands already. There's a separate thread for your political views anyway - you may want to stay over there. Thanks.

[Wombat]

Good Lord. It's no wonder so many great contributors have left the boards. There's a separate thread for political discussions. Let the sale rest, and be happy that two people found a mutual agreement on a highly prized and sought after whistle. If you care to make judgements about their character based soley on your admittedly limited knowledge of an agreement between two people you don't know fine, but please spare the rest of us and do so on your own time, and in your own space.

There are plenty of us "trolls" who are cheesed off at the attack on the seller/buyer as it stands already. There's a separate thread for your political views anyway - you may want to stay over there. Thanks.

And you haven't been expressing your views? Right.

[Jens_Hoppe]

So, Petrus, that will teach you not to sell O'Riordans on the chiffboard anymore!

Out of personal curiosity, a few hypothetical questions for those who think Petrus is being a greedy b*stard:

1. If Petrus himself had payed $350 for the whistle in the first place, how much would a fair asking price be when selling it? In other words, is he allowed to sell if for as much as he paid himself?

2. If this had been an auction on eg. eBay with a low reserve, but the bidding had raised the price to $350, would Petrus still be a greedy dude?



Morally confused,
Jens

[Wombat]

So, Petrus, that will teach you not to sell O'Riordans on the chiffboard anymore!

Out of personal curiosity, a few hypothetical questions for those who think Petrus is being a greedy b*stard:

1. If Petrus himself had payed $350 for the whistle in the first place, how much would a fair asking price be when selling it? In other words, is he allowed to sell if for as much as he paid himself?

2. If this had been an auction on eg. eBay with a low reserve, but the bidding had raised the price to $350, would Petrus still be a greedy dude?



Morally confused,
Jens

Jens, I think the situation is genuinely confusing. I didn't express an opinion about Petrus at all. My annoyance is with those who thought it was simple and that that gave them a right to censure and censor Lizzie for holding that view, or more accurately, for regarding it as the default assumption pending clarification. I'll still have a go at your questions though.

1. No, not at all. IMO, he is clearly entitled to ask at or around what he paid according to any reasonable moral theory.

2. This is harder. eBay is a market and operates by the rules of auction. Once he's in an auction then I can't see any reason why he (and everyone else) shouldn't just accept the outcome. Those who would object in this scenario would have to object to his taking it to auction in the first place. Those who object to the price cited on this thread obviously would feel that that is a greedy thing to do. Those who don't, wouldn't. My own view, as of right now, is that he is under no clear moral obligation to sacrifice profit but that it would have been better to offer it here at cost. But that is hardly calling for a lynching. Rather I'm just saying that if someone more altruisitc subsequently calls him greedy, they have earned the right to do so and shouldn't be silenced. That's what I've been saying all along.