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Comment by lurker17 | Hacker News Reader

It's low-end Goldman Sachs market-making. Tinman Sachs, maybe. Not extremenly different from panhandling. It's definitely abusive of the Craigslist community.

Blah blah "price discovery is a service in a free market blah blah" does not apply to Craigslist.

There are a few ways a job like this could be ethical and productive, respecting the hippie community culture of Craigslist but improving efficiency in exchange for a share of the profit, instead of merely siphoning gains out of the system:

* Buy items that fail to sell (perhaps because they are geographically remote), and resell them from a more accessible location. http://craigstruck.com is a variation on this model.

* Buy junk, fix it up, resell it. ("Upcycle"/ "speculative repair work"

* Take good stuff that doesn't sell, and re-market it better.

[0] "spec" is a funny auto-antonym: "Speculative" or "to specifictaion"

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> Not extremenly different from panhandling.

I want to say you're wrong, but I'm not even sure how you reached this conclusion.

> It's definitely abusive of the Craigslist community.

How so?

I think the point is that Craigslist itself is supposed to connect buyers and sellers, and he's inserting himself aggressively between them for profit, adding no real value.

I disagree. He does add real value.

1) He retakes clear photos of the merch at a variety of angles - something that many craigslist postings lack

2) He himself has a threshold of quality, and inspects the product before picking it up from the original seller - I would much rather trust a guy who buys 10 cordless drills a week on craigslist to know the drill is bad, than relying on my limited knowledge of cordless drills and their common defects.

I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks for his vetting.

What kind of "value" is added that is secret? Don't you think buyers and sellers alike should know up front what they're paying for?

To the seller: I'm going to make probably $100 on this washer in a couple days by Windexing it and taking some good photos. That's your fee for my pickup and selling "service."

To the buyer: I bought this washer a couple days ago for $100 less. That's your fee for my delivery and vetting "service."

Don't you think buyers and sellers alike should know up front what they're paying for?

I'd like to know how much is e.g. Apple paying Foxconn for each iPhone, doesn't mean I think they're wrong for not telling me.

(Purely hypothetical example, I don't buy stuff from Apple)

There is real value:

People who do not have time to check craigslist's free section around the clock are able to buy items at less than retail price.

As the previous poster observed this is essentially what Goldman-Sachs (and any other investment banker) does. When I squint and ignore scale, I can't see the difference between the two businesses.

For the purchased items I think it's fine, but for the items people are donating, the intent is usually that they be claimed by someone who plans to use them, not someone who plans to flip them. Though it does depend on the item; sometimes people give things away because they just want to get rid of them, especially with hard-to-move things like appliances. You can sometimes tell by the tone of the listing what the intent is, and I suppose it's up to each person's ethics whether they want to respect that.

It's a big controversy in communities like freecycle that attempt to maintain a certain charitable ethos and actively say that flippers aren't welcome, sometimes with exceptions for people who repair things (it's usually considered okay to take something broken free with the intent to repair and sell it, because that isn't pure flipping). Probably less controversial on Craigslist, which is a bit of a free-for-all.

I'm just now leaving an apt and put up stuff on CL. Some of it I'm willing to give for free (donated a bunch to charities, but they won't take everything)

As long as someone takes care of moving out of my place, I'm happy. If it goes to someone like this guy who flips to make a living and support his family, that's cool with me.

for the items people are donating, the intent is usually that they be claimed by someone who plans to use them, not someone who plans to flip them.

If he wasn't flipping the stuff, he'd be looking for donations. That's why he started doing this in the first place.

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