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"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That to me was blatantly taking advantage of a member's good nature and not just "flipping".
(formerly miserneil)
Marx certainly wasn't "dumb". And maybe this is a discussion for somewhere else - but his, admittedly, utopian view was that if people stopped working for their own personal gain and started working for the gain of the greater society, everybody stood to gain rather than the few.
If you remove personal gain then the concept of money and indeed, profit, become an irrelevance. If everybody is provided with everything that they need to thrive then it becomes a beautiful world without the grubbing around for money.
However, Marx was an academic - and didn't factor in the most basic of human frailties... greed. As a result, whilst Das Capital and the Communist Manifesto are amazing ideas set in a utopian world, when you try to apply his philosophy to the real world it doesn't work. As everyone is very keen to point out whenever you mention communism, the old USSR wasn't a happy place and often these regimes are enforced using oppression. However, Marx (and Engles) ideals weren't based on that - it was meant to be a utopian world where nobody went hungry, everybody had what they needed, everyone was equal and they all worked for the common good. That final phrase is the bit that just doesn't seem to sit with folks...
Anyway - enough about Karl Marx, as we've proved he has bog all to do with greedy bedroom guitar dealers.
As you were. :-)
I knew that quoting Marx in any form would wind up Mags though, it always does .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The bit that really pisses me off is the dishonesty. If a guy comes up to me and says 'Hi I want to buy your guitar here is the cash' then once the transaction is done it's none of my business what he does with it and if he can sell it at a profit good for him. (I think this was the concensus of opinion on the recent Guitars4you thread).
However often these type of transactions are plagued with dishonesty such as:
1. pretending to be a normal enthusiastic buyer to build up a relationship and get a deal.
2. Saying things like 'can I have it at a discount as I can only afford X' (unlikely if it's a business venture unless it's a very poor one).
3. Potentially threatening lies like 'it's only worth X' (where x is about 50% of its true worth).
4. Failing to pay the appropriate tax and other business expenses on what is clearly a business.
Personally it's the dishonesty that grates far more than the fact someone made a few quid selling a Guitar I used to own.
Twice that has happened to me, I've been told a pack of lies during the deal, to knock off maybe ten quid from the asking price. This was before I'd got to know the "usual suspects" in the local area. The ones with the same load of overpriced crap on Gumtree and Facebook that they must be holding on to for months, if not years.
I guess there must be *some* money in it, but it seems a big effort for potentially negligible reward. You could always do a day's overtime at work and make the sort of profit that these guys must take months to claw back.
In my experience these guys are generally not good guitar players, just bedroom noodlers. In fact they probably don't like guitars much at all, treating them as tradeable commodities which could just as easily be any other type of good. I have much more respect for people who buy and sell at a fair price instead of gouging the market, and will make a purchase with the primary aim of obtaining a good guitar to play, rather than solely to flip.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2011-PRS-Custom-24-Experience-Limited-Edition-Artist-Grade-Top-DEMO-VIDEO-/282264846534?hash=item41b84bc0c6:g:socAAOSwImRYNEty
http://www.rollysguitars.co.uk/category/electric-guitars/paul-reed-smith-prs/
Telling porkies about your status to eBay and failing to register a business to HMRC are not the same thing!
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