Who taught you this? And why do you think this way?
I have the same problems with trading cards I own from a long time ago that are now expensive, I can keep them for sentimental reasons or sell them to put it towards some bill
If you think its insane to spend that amount of money on it (essentially: it's not worth that much to you), then you holding onto it instead of having $1300 is pretty much the exact same scenario? By holding onto it you're saying it is worth that much to you.
It sounds like believing you hunted down a 'deal' causes you to wildly change how you perceive value at an emotional level.
I would probably do the same thing. It's just funny to see expressed on HN where everybody complains that advertising and marketing are evil/scams and proclaims loudly how rational they are.
On the topic of HN users, is it our collective first day on earth?
If you decline to sell a thing for an easy 1300, doesn't that mean you value it at 1300 or more?
The disease of financialization at work. Money is all that matters to people, everything is converted into money. It's only value is what you could get from selling it, and/or what you spent to acquire it.
Like those weird fuckers who buy $200k supercars so they can sit in a damn garage. (She said, having put 30k miles on a Corvette inside of 3 years)
someone, above: > believing you hunted down a 'deal' causes you to wildly change how you perceive value at an emotional level.
I'm going to quote myself, paraphrased, because i forget the exact phrasing.
"All else equal, which tastes better: ice cream you've paid for; or ice cream that cost you nothing?"
edit: i didn't intend the above to be snark, even though it may read that way.
I mean it's helped by the fact that I can only realistically drive it like 7-8 months out of each year, and it's my fun car, not a commuter. As much as I'd love to drive for fun every day that's just not feasible, lol. That said it's resale value has never once entered my mind. I'm waiting until the loan is paid off at which point I'm planning several modifications to get more power out of it, and probably a lambo-door-hinge kit.
It's burning $5 in gas and $20 in time to go to a store further away and save $25 on a sale item. And then proudly bragging "I'm not like those idiots who pay full price!"
OP didn't find a record...he found a $1300 arbitrage, then decided to spend the proceeds on the record by keeping it.
In other words, this is why selling stuff to consumers is a nightmare.
You have to trick them into believing they "won one over" on everybody else, via discounting and promotions, no matter if ultimately they're the ones losing by spending hours of their time jumping through hoops on a product that they legitimately value at full price.
Everyone who's replied thus far has fallen into the same trap, you saw money and you forgot the value of the actual thing he wanted. Now he has the thing, you're still stuck talking and thinking about the money.
This comment section sees two guys trading a briefcase of dollars bills all day long as a roaring economy. Somehow completely blind to the human.
You’re making a lot of assumptions here in your thinking. The first one is that you can just randomly turn around and sell that record for $1300. Hitting those peaks usually only happens with in person sales or amongst collectors who know each other well. It’s incredibly expensive to get to that point and requires thousands of hours of work. For a normal person without extensive contacts, it’s still a lot of leg work for a fraction of that price. That might yield maybe $30 an hour.
Some people value their time higher than that; it’s really not that deep.
Try raising the value of the record and see what you think about it.
I typed up something, but ended up almost antagonistic. I realize I just feel sad that for some people money is literally the single goal in their life, seemingly nothing else matters.
They didn't say anything about what decision is correct. They just said that the two decisions are equivalent.
Please note the use of the word "insane" is specifically because buildsjets said it was insane.
Emotionally, it feels different. It's fascinating to see downright angry gut reactions!
A few years ago my friend was selling his expensive camera on Kijiji. I asked him to sell it to me for slightly less as a friendly discount. He told me that's the same as just randomly one day giving me a wad of cash, so why would he do that?? I thought he's crazy and was a little bit offended. Actually maybe a fair bit offended!
It took me YEARS to realize that 1. He's absolutely completely Inarguably correct, and 2. People would find me no less crazy if I adopted same perspective.
Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically. But oh boy will people get instantly riled up emotionally :).
>Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically.
They're not the same.
£20 item to buy, I have £100; buying leaves me £80. Either, I have £100; not buying/selling leaves me £100 £20 item I own, I have £100; selling leaves me £120.
In the first case maybe I can't make rent now. In the last case I have more cash, but then I need to spend money if I want entertainment/utility that the item had. In the first case I lose 25% of my cash; in the last I gain 20% (this matters when you're sharing your money across different needs).
Price and value are not the same. The logic of your friend was basically putting a price on how "special" (or not) he saw your relationship versus some rando-buyer online.
That is why people (close to you) get riled up emotionally: they're being treated in a way no different than a complete stranger.
(I do think a slight discount often makes sense just because a friend is probably quicker and easier to deal with. But anything more substantial turns into asking for free stuff, and yes and no are both perfectly fine answers to that.)
Yes dealing with friends is nicer than strangers - but also when you're selling stuff, sometimes it's better to do strangers. Expectations of long term service and support are clearer and have more defined boundaries.
Declining to give you $600 out of the blue because you'd rather have more money is not being indifferent.
Perhaps this is a cultural thing. I routinely buy gifts for friends, pay for their meals, travel and vice versa. Having more money is not some supreme objective that is more important than the people around you. Money is just a tool for enjoying life. I come from an impoverished and deprived background, spent years homeless since I was a teenager, and I still recognize that putting money before friends is a scarcity mindset.
If this isn't your intent, you should reflect on how you've presented your argument.
I have no idea where you got saying no as a matter of principle.
Also if saying no is putting money above friendship then so is the friend asking for money for no reason!
right after this yous say:
> Also if saying no is putting money above friendship then so is the friend asking for money for no reason!
No, it isn't, and the fact that you see it that way perfectly illustrates the point I've been trying to make.
But you haven't explained why you think sometimes saying no is a problem. You said a thing about philosophical principles but I've explicitly told you that's not what I meant. So it's hard for me to make this comparison without knowing what you mean.
You replied, saying "Declining to give you $600 out of the blue because you'd rather have more money is not being indifferent," and so I responded to this and your earlier comment, "If you ask your friend for $100 for no particular reason, just because you want $100, that's an annoying request and "no" is a reasonable response," because I disagree with it as framed.
Since then, you have widened that argument to give it more support, and we can now both certainly agree that there's nothing wrong with saying no to a request for money/gifts from a friend. And we can agree it would be annoying for a friend to constantly ask that, or even to ask a single time in certain contexts without sufficient social capital.
I understand your intended meaning might be different than how it came across to me, and said, "If this isn't your intent, you should reflect on how you've presented your argument."
I mean no ill intent and don't want this to devolve into an actual argument, so it's probably best we wind it down. If I came across as judgemental, I apologize, for my part I was attempting to offer my own perspective on what friendship can mean to different people.
Not wrong, but it is also possible that the $600 'cash equivalent' discount would be considered a birthday or Christmas present, or a form of 'repayment' for the time he helped you out with the Thing with the Guy in the Place. (“I'd never been to Belize.”)
If a stranger walks up to you and asks for $100, you're unlikely to give it to him. If a friend does, there's a more likely probability that you will consider the request.
And depending on the relationship, you may expect for the money to be paid back (eventually), or you may not (considering it a gift). (Often the advice is to consider "loans" to family and friends as gifts in practice, as otherwise the expectation of repayment may sour the relationship.)
I don't know why so many people are acting like I said a "no" is the only acceptable answer.
But I would never sell something expensive to a friend, period. There be dragons.
On the other hand, I wouldn't ask my friend to pay more if selling, so maybe a par price is fair.
If I want a thing gone, for whatever reason I want that to happen, then I want it gone. I never want to see it again.
When I get rid of a thing with eBay or Craigslist or FB Marketplace or whatever this decade's thing is, or with a dumpster, then it is gone from my life. It will never resurface.
But friends have a habit of bringing things back. Whether it's "Hey, remember that camera you gave me?" or "Hey, my old lady is kicking me out -- can I store some shit in your garage [like these four giant rackmount Elo touchscreens that I wouldn't let you bin two years ago]?", things given to friends have a bad habit of coming back 'round.
Sort of. People are being less irrational than it sounds if you account for transaction costs. There's a lot of stuff I might "sell" if I could point a video-game-like pointer at it and right click and hit "sell", and it just instantly disappeared and money was credited to my bank account. Perhaps even more if buying was just as easy and I didn't need to hang on to something like my drill which I don't use very often and I could trivially "rent" it from the market by buying, using it, and selling in mere minutes.
But in practice one-off selling for anything less than $100 or so is a waste of time because there are significant transaction costs for one-off events like that.
An easy end to that line of reasoning for me.
And he doesn't necessarili need thos $1300