General > General Technical Chat
Would you really sell on ebay ?
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on October 06, 2020, 03:22:26 am ---
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on October 05, 2020, 11:01:35 pm ---(...)It is the "amateur buyers" that are the problem: (...)
--- End quote ---
Not only a lack of understanding but, depending on the culture, people tend to see profit as evil, which lends to the perception they are being taken advantage.
--- End quote ---
It was a revelation to travel in the Middle East when I was young... The culture there is much more free about trading. Sellers are expected to try to get the highest price, and buyers are expected to try to get the lowest price. If you don't play the game, you are seen as an idiot that's giving your money away and they will happily take advantage of you. Once I learned to play, the exchanges became much more pleasant, ending with cups of chai and pleasant chatter!
Sometimes, I feel our Northern / Western culture just doesn't "get" the nature of a market... we have a very suppressed notion of it. Sellers of course try to get the best price, but surreptitiously... our sellers display a "fixed price" that you are just expected to accept, the buyer's only choice is whether to buy or not. Only if enough people don't buy, will seller lower the price. It is normally not acceptable for Northern/Western buyers to haggle about the displayed price, you instead have to reject that seller completely and find a different seller.
The result is that the West is full of naive buyers, in particular, that distort the market prices for everything. For example, would housing prices be as high as they are if it wasn't for masses of folks whose only limit to what they are willing to pay is what the bank is willing to lend them? Similarly, would the average price of a new car in the US really be north of $36,000 if people weren't bending over too far?
People have the sense that they are being taken advantage of, and they are right - what they don't see, is that it is their own fault! Don't play the game if it is rigged against you... Say no to going into debt for 5 years for a $36,000 car. Don't buy a shitty 2 room apartment for lottery level money. It isn't so hard! :D
james_s:
For the most part I hate haggling, just price the thing fairly and if it's worth it to me I will buy it.
Cars cost as much as they do because they are bloated. Features that once would have been considered extravagant luxury items are now standard on even the cheapest models and on top of that there is a massive and ever growing bucket list of mandated features it must have. Take as an example the 1982 VW Rabbit a friend of mine has, it's a very basic vehicle, no frills, no fancy tech, pretty close to the bare minimum that is needed for a reasonably comfortable car, costing only a few thousand dollars when new but here we are almost 40 years later and it's still going. You couldn't sell a new car like that now, it would have to have to be completely redesigned, it would need thousands of dollars in safety equipment, thousands more in electronics for engine management, buyers would (ostensibly) expect power windows, power seats, power mirrors, power locks, power moonroof, climate control, heated seats, 8 speaker sound system, infotainment, bluetooth, etc adding hundreds or even thousands of pounds of weight and many thousands of dollars to the price. There's just no way to offer a low cost basic car anymore even if many people would be happy to buy one. At least there is still the option of a motorcycle to circumvent much of this.
There is also something to the people spending as much as the bank will loan them thing you mention. I have encountered a shocking number of people who make purchase decisions not on the total amount they will pay for an item but the amount that the purchase will add to their monthly credit card payments. If not for mortgages there is no way the average house price around here would be pushing up towards $1M, I suspect the situation would be greatly advantageous to people like myself who think long term and are able to save up money.
SilverSolder:
I would argue that cars are bloated in an attempt to justify why they need to cost so much! - so the "naive consumer" thinks they are getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of advanced gear, when any engineer knows that these "features" don't actually cost very much to implement in a mass production environment.
I'm not against cars becoming more comfortable, safer, and better equipped... but $36K average price, seriously?? Especially when you consider that many of the models are sold world wide, in some markets at a much lower price... guess what, the car makers ALWAYS make money, even when they sell at low prices!
A lot of the safety features are just purely carving up the market, like DVD Regions! E.g. is a Canadian car really unsafe in the USA and vice versa? "The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has advised that vehicles made in Canada for the Canadian market, U.S. manufactured vehicles originally intended for the Canadian market, or other foreign made vehicles available for the Canadian market may not meet the requirements of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (and the policies and regulations adopted as a result of this Act) and EPA emission standards." - according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. This may be technically true, but if you think there is any real and significant difference between the cars I have a bridge I'd like to sell you! :D
All it is, is a ready made excuse for cars being much, much cheaper in other markets... and so, we end up with the highest price that a penned-off market of naive buyers will bear!
rsjsouza:
From the places I know and lived, cars (just like gasoline) are dirt cheap in the US. Used cars are even cheaper.
james_s:
I once bought a car for $500 and drove it for 17 years. I'd still be driving it today if not for a semi truck rear ending me and totaling it. I bought the wagon version to replace it, this time costing me $2500 but still a lot cheaper than a new car. I'd buy every one I could get my hands on if I had a place to store them because I really love the station wagon format and that seems to have been completely replaced by the stupid crossover design. It's the spork of vehicles, replacing sedans, wagons and small SUVs with something that tries to be everything at once. They're much taller and bulkier on the exterior and yet manage to have less interior space and roughly the same ground clearance as my wagon. I don't see myself ever buying a brand new car, I'm happy to let some other person take the $25k depreciation hit and break it in for me.
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