Does anyone else notice this or have this issue?
Making people who need your stuff pay you in stories or "gratitude" does not appeal to me anyway. Even if I have a $5 item to give away and someone just flips it for profit, that is time they spent and I did not, so the item is still gone from my home and someone who actually wants it gets it. The fact that one other person also benefitted doesn't bother me.
Not that there is anything wrong with people that are of course. Different folks have different priorities.
So I'll give it away and if anyone thinks it's worth the time and effort to sell it, that's not for me to decide. Once it is out of my hands, it is no longer mine.
It seems that the human neocortex has evolved mostly for social group formation, and the theory of money is that an economic actor can be nearly basal in their pursuit of it and still produce a functional society. This is a remarkable starting point toward higher levels of organization, but fundamentally proven incorrect. Money does not produce positive results when introduced to cultures without pre-existing large-scale social cooperation based on things like morality. Even in these groups money creates prosperity but makes them vulnerable to extremely profitable forms of parasitism, which ultimately lead to collapse.
Money is a good thing, but it has failure modes that exploit the human emotions it was meant to replace, and we haven’t evolved past that point. When I look at the economy, I don’t see hard-nosed rationality maximizing progress toward human achievement. I see 99.99% irrational human emotions or rational exploit of the same, with maybe a few people out there spending a bit of their time on progress.
(Smaller items I give to Goodwill as it can be hard to see what they are on a drive by)
I also ask directly in the listing that people let me know approximately where they are without me having to ask, and I ignore anyone who doesn't - this weeds out the people who just mash "can I have this" or "is this still available" without actually reading the listing, who are most likely to be time wasters in my experience.
For higher value items in the current C19 climate, insisting I deliver locally also stops people taking unnecessary journies between risk areas, and puts me in more control of my risk profile.
Are you sure these people aren't collecting all the free stuff in the neighbourhood, then selling anything of value and hoarding the rest?
Those hoarded items are usually unsellable in their current form, but with a bit of restoration could become sellable. Some items are faulty, but are still hoarded for parts to help repair other items.
Overall this behaviour is probably very good for the planet - many items end up seeing far more use than they would otherwise.
It's questionable if its good economic use of these people's time though. Is it worth them spending all day collecting and repairing a $150 TV, when they could have gone to work in a factory that can turn out a new TV every 30 seconds for far fewer dollars?
It may not be, but the problem usually is that the market can't make a better use of those people's time. I don't think many people would work such high effort, low pay tasks if they could actually get a better job.
The collection continues, however. I have to catch myself in some areas doing the same thing.
Personally, it hadn't even occurred to me that this is any of my business.
If you’re just giving it away as a free disposal service, then sure it doesn’t matter.
For my wife and me it's not just free disposal (I can handle my free disposal by going downstairs and dumping it by the side of the trash container). It's about ensuring a working item doesn't get trashed, but will continue being useful for someone else.
In all my wife's giveaways, there's one or two people out there who are regular, repeat "customers". But we can't tell whether they're hoarders, or whether they just happen to need all the stuff they get from us, or whether they pass that stuff on to their family and friends. Or hell, maybe they resell it. Doesn't matter, as long as we're somewhat confident someone will make use of it - because that's someone who saved their money, and that's one less item being bought.
I guess we could debate it either way. It comes down to personal preference.
We've got a hoarder couple 3 doors down who have been running a yard sale for about 5 years straight now.
I can't say I particularly care who gets the stuff we're giving away, but my wife and I definitely roll our eyes at each other when they see the hoarders attempting to sell something we left out for free.
It's also a good way of introducing them to tech that they wouldn't normally get for themselves. The best example is mechanical keyboards; most people don't think they want one until they've used it regularly. And kindles.