I like how you equate selling a non-descript laptop for $300 with selling a Sun Blade (with a very well known configuration and price structure) for $20. If someone offered to sell me a $300 laptop then I would need to know more about it to see if it was worth the money. If someone offered me a $20 Sun Blade then I would know something was fishy.
I did it to emhasize the point. Clearly the difference was "only" 75% of the price in the case of the laptop.
You're going to have to do a lot better than that to convince anyone that a $300 laptop is obviously a steal.
If that laptop then successfully sells on eBay (of all places, itself a cheepskate-central) for $1100 it must have been pretty obvious at one glance, specially to a seasoned reseller of such items, as it was the case here.
It sure sounds like you've got an axe to grind based on all your posts calling this guy a fence...
Err.. he sold a stolen laptop and has himself admitted to not taking any precautions or keeping records. That makes him either (by definition) a fence or, I am not sure if that is any better, the thief himself, should the story about the mysterious woman turn untrue.
Take a pick.
Granted, everyone hates thieves, but here in the US - we're actually supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty". Supposed to be anyway...
Quite true, but the evidence (if one is to believe the article) is rather overwhelming.
What the fuck planet do you live on?
Buyers buy at the cheapest price they can. This is economics 101, and pretty much the foundation of capitalism.
Right. So when a man shows up on a corner and offers you a "slightly used" Corvette for $10, you then, being a good "capitalist", buy it real quick with no questions asked, lest someone else get the deal. What planet do you live on?
Never mind that, with an attitude like that, you will soon live in whatever (juvenile, I assume) correctional institution that planet has.
Marketplace operates based on a set of complex relationships, supply/demand and pricing are only some of them (albait the simplest to grasp for feeble minds). There are also wee things like risk/reward ratios and legal consequences some of us adults have to contend with.
What do you do for a living?
I run my own business for a very long time now. Pehreaps that is why I understand how things work in real life instead of that "finder's keepers" fantasy of yours.
Is this such a good deal that someone who looks for great deals for a living would pass it by?
If you are in business, this is simply a warning that there is something potentially wrong with the item. Thus you should assess the risk/profit ratio. A typical, legitimate businessman will shy away because of the uncertainty. Or he will at least take stingent precautions (such as take the item to be evaluated on consignment first etc). A crook will jump at the opportunity to make a quick buck and will look the other way if there is something suspicious about the item.
Is someone who looks for great deals for a living morally compelled to offer fair market value when buying low?
Compelled? No. He is merely well advised, from a business stand point, to do so. If he is a honest, legitimate businessman, that is. Some one-off bargrain hunter might try to get greedy and take the risk but even he should take precautions, such as verifying the sellers identity and keeping records.
Interesting. You can tell all that from the fact that this guy bought a laptop.
... and the fact that it was a stolen one... and that he bought it at 1/4th market price... and that he did so from a "suspicious woman" (his words)... and that he did not ask for her personal information but instead greedily bought the thing with cash... and that he was in "business" of selling such items before... you get the idea.
I think someone needs to lay off the self-rightousness.
Self-rightousness? And here I thought it was mere common sense. Silly me.
likely he thought there was something amiss in the laptop. Flaky circut or an intermittent harddrive issue and something on top of that like the seller was behind in the credit payments and was afraid they would take it in for service and not give it back. Maybe it was just a case of "hopelessly stupid user syndrome" and the seller was a complete idiot about computers and had had enough. Who cares???
No, these are excuses which one makes after the fact. I you were buying a beat-up laptop for spare parts, or to use yourself, I can see your argument. But he was buying to resell. In such a case, if the laptop was busted, it would be in his interest to know how. Otherwise he would keep losing when people sell him busted stuff for full price. Thus he had to be knowledgable enough to determine the condition of the laptop. Which means that he knew that he was buying an under-priced item, which he intended to resell, because that is what he was doing all along. But because of its price, his greed blinded him and made him not ask any questions of the seller. Which nicely backfired.
As a different poster stated, there isn't a main database for stolen laptops. Cops don't care. They don't rouse used dealers and not because they all work online. The only time I ever saw a cop in the stores I worked in was when we called them to kick out a drunk or something. They didn't catch this guy with hard work, they found it by a fluke.
What your really asking is that every sale have a moral pettigree. Ain't no such thing.
All that was needed is a photocopy of her driver's license. Thats it. Not exactly a rocket science, $1 billion computerized national database thing, is it? Had he done that, his ass would be covered. Instead, driven by greed, he made a quick purchase with no questions asked. Say hello to consequences.
I'm not trying to take sides in this, but a lot of businesses that do that, take in a fraction of its worth, do it because they're not sure they can sell it.
Most will do so on consignment then. If the items are hard to sell, their market price suffers accordingly. You know, supply/demand, aka that old thing called the "free market".
Pawn shops have lots of useless inventory. Stuff they'll often have to trash.
But pawn shops are consignment stores. You can get your stuff back should you bring the cash they "lent" you back. And for that reason they are specially prone to being involved in fencing and thus continuously monitored by the cops.
There's value in a guaranteed sale. Ever look at how much a car dealer offers you for a car, compared to what you can get if you sell it yourself? The dealer's offering less because he's also offering the service of a zero-hassle sale.
True, you are paying for the service of the dealer in reselling. But the discount is measured in 5-20% range, at most. Not 75% of the price.
My point is that risk is a major factor in price. A $300 laptop is only worth $1200 if you can sell it. Did this guy even know it was working? A laptop with a flaky LCD is suddenly worth a lot less.
That is why most legitimate businesses wont touch such items, at such low proce, because they would fear precisely such a problem. If they would sell the laptop at $1100 and then get the irate customer screaming back at them, the thing is not worth the hassle. Such low price would raise these and other red flags and would prompt a legitimate dealer to be extra vigilant. The dude did precisely the opposite. He got greedy.
How would you know? Either you are truly duplicitous or are incapable of understanding these simple facts: you yourself claimed to be reselling large amounts of fire-sale priced items with no verification. Thus: volume+suspicious pricing+no checks = very high probability of resale of stolen goods. It is dead simple.
The conceit that you must have to summon in order to make some kind of prediction about the bulk of the thousands and thousands of books I bought and sold...(emhasis mine)
Ah I see, so now in order to be a fence, a bulk of ones sales has to be in stolen goods? Glad to know, I am sure this will be the new defense of every fence in the USA and abroad. "No your Honour! I only sold 20% of dodgy goods! I am innocent!"
Also, quite a nice strawman here, since at no point did I mention "bulk" of anything.
I had no reason to believe that any of those books were stolen. Know why? Because I have myself sold books, when I have needed the money, at 5% of face. Therefore, it happens legally. Therefore, a reasonable man could claim that he didn't know they were stolen, if they were. And they weren't.
This is insane logic. Because, you, once, felt that it was "legitimate" to sell your stuff at 5% value (and some asshole took advantage of you paying you that), therefore, it is happening all the time to everyone. Furthermore, all your "customers" were in such a jam all the time and under no circumstances there could be other possible reasons for such low price to be offered to you, right? And they were all honest and upstanding citizens, you would give your right hand for.... cause they were... err... like from the same school! Yeah, thats it!
As I said, it is near certain that you were at some point or another fencing goods.
Honest businessmen don't buy items at 10% of retail?
Dont try to weasel out now, it is unbecoming. We were discussing 10% of going market value of the items, in their current condition. Not 10% of some hypotetical retail price in an upmarket, exclusive store. In the case of the parent article, the laptop's market value was at $1100 and it was bought at $300, i.e. around 1/4th the going rate. Its retail price, which is utterly irellevant and was not even mentioned was very likely far in excess of $1100.
Are you fucking kidding me? I have to wonder if you have ever bought anything used, sold anything used, or for that matter worked a day in your life... [more rantings at strawmen skipped]... You are an idiot. You are worse than an idiot; you are an idiot who doesn't understand that he's an idiot, despite his appropriate nickname.
Perheaps your pitiful insults would have more sting, had you not managed to make such a complete fool out of yourself by not even being able to comprehend the topic of the discussion which you are attempting to join.
A USED dealer hopes to get maybe half of the original price in the first 18 months after whatever it is came out...I just bought a Sunblade 1000 maxed out w/ 2 gigs mem and dual 750mhz Ultrasparc 3s for $700, the config it's in sold for $3500+ new... etc
What you missed completely is that these items, used, have the average market prices you described. But in the case we are discussing, the laptop was purchased at 1/4th of the going, at that time, market price for such an item, in its used condition. So in your examples: a dude shows up to sell you 100 3 month-old books at 10 cents each. Or he offers you the Sunblade at $20. Etc. And you do not ask any questions, and quickly shell out the money before he changes his mind, right?
Every now and then you run across a/. post so far removed from daily existance that you can't help but wonder who's behind it.... I WANT TO BELIEVE
You might be surprised to hear that most legitimate businesses do precisely what I described (at least around here in Canada). Sure there are crooks but a typical business person is actually afraid to purchase something at such low price because he is concerned that there is something in the items history he is unaware of, and thus he is anxious not to get stung. In most cases the potential profit is simply not worth the exorbitant risk.
On the other hand your experience could be dealing exclusively with pawn shops and the like in suspicious neighbourhoods. Of which, around 100% are in the "fence" business.
If it was something that doesn't degenerate in value so quickly with age (and get replaced by those who have money even before it degenerates), I might be suspicious, but with a computer? Not likely. Given that it was eBay, I probably would have written down their information, but I wouldn't have sweated over buying it.
Note that in our story the laptop was sold later for $1100. So what you allude to is not the case here, it must have been of recent manufacture and reasonable quality. If the item was worth only $50 when you resold it, I could see you argument. But we are discussing items which these people resell at 4 times the price after some quick "cleanups". Ergo a dishonest practice.
Yes. That's exactly what happens in the trade of virtually any form of non-durable goods. You sell it to a dealer, who pays you a tiny fraction of its retail value, often as little as 10%. It raises no red flags at all. People need money fast, and sell things to ready buyers for much less than actual value. Happens tens of thousands of times a day every day, without any laws being broken or any stolen moerchandise being exchanged.
Spoken like someone who identifies with dishonest, greedy, slimy fences of the world. Honest businessmen do not buy items at 1/10th price, they buy them at going market rates for such purchases. Slimeball crooks, on the other hand, take advantage of people in need and try to resort to connivery and mis-information to rip the seller off.
I used to buy used books at 5-10% of face value and resell them for as much as ten times what I paid for them. I'd bet that the vast majority of those books were not stolen. It's not my responsibility to`ensure that they aren't even if they were. Joe Student needs fifty bucks to cover the rent and sells me five hundred bucks' worth of paperbacks. No red flags.
Ah yes, the
"I didn't get caught so no laws were broken" approach. I have news for you: they very likely were broken. Even though you are unable to comprehend this fact, your not obtaining personal details of goods whose sell price and origin could indicate they were stolen, and doing so routinely, made you a classic fence. You were very lucky to not have one of these "students" getting caught with someone elses' expensive books and then telling the cops of the vast volumes of stolen crap he fenced through you. Or you would be now enjoying the hospitality of the State.
This is legitimate business.
Self-rightousness and ignorance never go together well. Learn how the real world works before you go off half-cocked, OK?
Given the above, I gotta ask: you are a libertarian, are you not?
There are people who toss out their computers because they're infected with spyware. If I were buying from them instead and tried to tell them I wasn't going to take it because it was too low a price and they could easily re-install, they'd just throw it out instead of selling it to me, letting me do the re-install and making a profit.
Sigh. A conversation with a honest reseller goes like this:
Customer: "Hey I got this junk PC to sell, it is broke, spyware ate it, gimme $50" Buyer: "You should be aware that this PC can be fixed and its worth around $300 for a dealer like me to buy on the market." Customer: "Hey! I had no clue. So will you pay me $300?" Buyer: "Sure. I will need your personal details.".
Following which the dealer re-sells for $450 or whatever reasonable market price is. But if the dealer is a greedy slimeball, he will shell out $50 in cash and be quick about it so that the "idiot" customer does not get wise to him. He will be reluctant to ask personal data as not to sour the rip-off. And thus he is not only a jerk but just became a fence.
I don't know if this guy is a fence or not. But I think there needs to be some sort of provision in the law for people who do not habitually deal in stolen stuff.
A typical fence obtains only a portion of his stuff from thieves. Otheriwse he would not be able to pretend to run a legitimate business, which is the pre-condition of operating as a successful fence. What is a charactertistic, defining feature of a fence is his unscrupulous and dishonest greed, like, say, buying stuff you know is worth 5 times more without making a beep to take advantage of a mis-informed or desperate customer.
Yes, but people do sell stuff for a fraction of it's value on a regular basis. If you need $250 right now to bail your boyfriend out of jail, you might sell a laptop for $250 when you know that you might get $1000 for it on eBay if you listed it now and waited seven days. Or maybe she just has no idea what it's actual value is, and just think `it's an old laptop, can't be worth much.'
In all of these cases it is the buyers fault then if something goes wrong. If you are a businessman who routinely purchases such items, if you are honest, you would notify that person of their error and offer a reasonable price. And you would make damn sure that you knew the item's origin. That tactics would not only guarantee you great reputation and repeat business but also would frighten away all thieves and put your business beyond any suspicion as far as cops are concerned. If you are, on the other hand, a greedy slimeball into taking advantage of people in need... then you get all the lumps that go with that and I, for one, will offer no sympathy to you.
Just because something is cheap, that doesn't mean it's stolen. Yes, it should make you consider that as a possiblity, but it's certainly not a given.
Which would, of course, were you a legitimate buyer, make you take her personal details and take other precautions. Unless you do not care, which makes you a fence.
I dunno if them selling it for a couple hundred bucks is suspicious.
It is. A honest businessman would notify the person who is selling of a potential higher value of the equipment, given some service work, and offer a reasonable price. He would also make sure to take personal details of the seller, regardless. It is only because the buyer is a slimey rip-off artist whose morals are non-existant in the fist place, and whose greed is the overriding factor in his actions which leads to him completing such transactions in a hurry as not to "spook" the potential victim. And in the process he becomes a fence as this tactics leads to thieves realizing that he will buy anything, no questions asked, as long as the price is "right".
Some of these people sell at a fairly low price... but a little easy tech-work or just even a reinstall will have it working just spiffy.
And those people frequently want cash and you do not bother making sure they own the stuff because you are busy salivating at the prospect of huge profit after some of that "easy reinstall", right? In other words, your greed blinds you in your mad rush to rip the "sucker" off when buying these items. Tell me, what do you think a thief says to the fence? "Hey Sparky, I swiped this the last night. Fence it." or perheaps "Hey, Sparky, here is another 'busted' laptop, this one from my... err.. other, other cousin, sumtin' wrong with this one too, pay me $200 (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)". The activity of attempting to rip the "sucker" off by paying a fraction of the cost of the goods, without bothering to check their origin is a variant of... fencing.
It's not like there is a list of stolen computers to look out for when you are in that business.
A woman shows up with a laptop worth 4 times the price (in used condition, never mind new) and that would not raise a red flag or two? You would just merilly accept the goods, pay cash and do not bother getting her personal info? Right. Now pull my other leg.
The difference between a fence and a legitimate business is that the fence asks no questions, feigns ignorance and looks the other way when conditions of sale are highly suspicious so that he can make outrageous profit.
Except neither of those are obtaining the goods they sell in used condition from random "suspicious looking, but I will take their word anyways" strangers, who part with the said equipment at 1/5th of the going market rate in cash and disappear, just so that he can innocently, in blissful ignorance of the items' origins, resell them later at 500% profit...
This is a straw-man argument because many people never become seriously ill, and those who do rarely need $200K surgery.
Yes, some of us do not age at all due to the wise use of pixie dust and frequent visits to the magical fountain of youth...
My own parents don't have health insurance, and while I think that is unwise, they were able to pay for some emergency medical treatment my father required a few years ago
Wait till he gets older. I know that it is cruel to burst your bubble but hiding from reality will do no good anyways.
I imagine many of the wealthy do, in fact, not have health insurance because any surgery expensive enough to strap them financially would simply be voted down by the average HMO, regardless.
You missed the point completely. The surgeries are not expensive enough to "strap the wealthy" financially. The insurance is simply a wise investment policy, to amortise risks over long periods of time and thus to make them cheaper, on average, for everyone. The wealthy are well versed in financial risk management techniques, unlike, it appears, you.
Just because a person has no health insurance does not mean they have "no medical care". Most doctors do still accept payment by check and credit card.
You gotta be kidding. You mean to say that people with money prefer to spend 200k for a surgery instead of paying a fraction of that (on average) for an insurance policy? Unless you are a billionaire or a multi-millionaire (a tiny fraction of the US population) this would constitute pure financial insanity. As a matter of fact it is still crazy even then, although one could imagine very rich people throwing money away. Insurance policies exist for a reason.
Instead, 99.9% of that 45 million are too poor to afford any care and are resorting to remedies such as a pair of rusty pliers for dental problems or are bringing their desperately sick kids to an ER to get stablised for a few hours and then take them, stil gravely ill, back home in hopes they somehow miraculously recover.
Have you been living under a rock as not to know this?
Insightful? Err, no. Good try though. Both chip fabs and engineers are part of the cost of manufacturing. The only things which were not included in that number were R&D and marketing. Now if you take into account that with R&D and marketing and what not Intel keeps posting around 50% profit margins each year, to the tune of several billion, your knee jerk answer paints you as someone far too easily satisified by the appeals to the gullible, which all of these big companies make: "But look at our world-saving R&D!!".
This shtick is most popular among big pharma conglomerates who spend 80% of their non-manufacturing expense on advertising, bribing doctors, lobbying efforts and the like while trying to paint themselves as helpless, dewy-eyed fuzzy "we are helping the sick children" cuddlies. Who completely accidentally are spending all of their effort on the next life-style gimmick ala Viagra.
What really boggles my mind is that slashdot is, supposedly, a computer geek oriented user base. Software developers should understand implicitly how much money is spent trying to develop products before one is actually profitable.
Err... yes... but, you see, the crowd here must have noticed that Intel keeps posting around 50% bottom line profits. So all that vaunted R&D, free plastic crap toys and blue men ads are not adding up so high as to interfere with several billion of take-home cash for the executives and the shareholders each year...
Canadian healthcare is not "free" any more than the public schools, police, highways, and various pork-barrel projects are free. They are all paid for by taxes
True but it costs 1/3 of the US price per-capita, who even at that exorbitant price still does not manage to cover 45 million of its citizens (the number of uninsured people with no medical care in the US has grown in the last 4 years... again)
Your response to both of my comments was over-the-top and implies a belief that not only was the strip serious,
All political humour has a serious undertone of some sort or another (e.g. overtyping real country names on top of purposefuly fictitios ones in an unrelated cartoon, contrary to what the author intended, is a political statement).
.. but others here (on/. and in the US) all share the same feeling.
Nowhere did I imply that.
Be careful or some might see this as signs of a slight inferiority complex.
Or perheaps a sign of getting annoyed at the sheer volume of such "jokes" I am running into as of late and perheaps my heightened alertness to the seriousness of the mental disturbances of the political landscape which result in such "funnies".
Seriously, it was a joke, and poked as much fun at the US as at Canada. "We could nuke you if we want to. We gots lotsa plutonium."
I found the "joke" in the cartoon not very amusing. Not for the lack of sense of humour but for the obvious, condescending insinuation of "backwardness" of Canada, so popular amongst various neo-con haters of social support systems. I don't think by the way that it is the original caption in that cartoon, someone has changed "Moldovia" (where the water-logged, bearded characters are from) for "Canada".
Slashdot Mirror
I did it to emhasize the point. Clearly the difference was "only" 75% of the price in the case of the laptop.
You're going to have to do a lot better than that to convince anyone that a $300 laptop is obviously a steal.
If that laptop then successfully sells on eBay (of all places, itself a cheepskate-central) for $1100 it must have been pretty obvious at one glance, specially to a seasoned reseller of such items, as it was the case here.
Err.. he sold a stolen laptop and has himself admitted to not taking any precautions or keeping records. That makes him either (by definition) a fence or, I am not sure if that is any better, the thief himself, should the story about the mysterious woman turn untrue.
Take a pick.
Granted, everyone hates thieves, but here in the US - we're actually supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty". Supposed to be anyway...
Quite true, but the evidence (if one is to believe the article) is rather overwhelming.
Right. So when a man shows up on a corner and offers you a "slightly used" Corvette for $10, you then, being a good "capitalist", buy it real quick with no questions asked, lest someone else get the deal. What planet do you live on?
Never mind that, with an attitude like that, you will soon live in whatever (juvenile, I assume) correctional institution that planet has.
Marketplace operates based on a set of complex relationships, supply/demand and pricing are only some of them (albait the simplest to grasp for feeble minds). There are also wee things like risk/reward ratios and legal consequences some of us adults have to contend with.
What do you do for a living?
I run my own business for a very long time now. Pehreaps that is why I understand how things work in real life instead of that "finder's keepers" fantasy of yours.
If you are in business, this is simply a warning that there is something potentially wrong with the item. Thus you should assess the risk/profit ratio. A typical, legitimate businessman will shy away because of the uncertainty. Or he will at least take stingent precautions (such as take the item to be evaluated on consignment first etc). A crook will jump at the opportunity to make a quick buck and will look the other way if there is something suspicious about the item.
Is someone who looks for great deals for a living morally compelled to offer fair market value when buying low?
Compelled? No. He is merely well advised, from a business stand point, to do so. If he is a honest, legitimate businessman, that is. Some one-off bargrain hunter might try to get greedy and take the risk but even he should take precautions, such as verifying the sellers identity and keeping records.
... and the fact that it was a stolen one ... and that he bought it at 1/4th market price ... and that he did so from a "suspicious woman" (his words) ... and that he did not ask for her personal information but instead greedily bought the thing with cash ... and that he was in "business" of selling such items before ... you get the idea.
I think someone needs to lay off the self-rightousness.
Self-rightousness? And here I thought it was mere common sense. Silly me.
No, these are excuses which one makes after the fact. I you were buying a beat-up laptop for spare parts, or to use yourself, I can see your argument. But he was buying to resell. In such a case, if the laptop was busted, it would be in his interest to know how. Otherwise he would keep losing when people sell him busted stuff for full price. Thus he had to be knowledgable enough to determine the condition of the laptop. Which means that he knew that he was buying an under-priced item, which he intended to resell, because that is what he was doing all along. But because of its price, his greed blinded him and made him not ask any questions of the seller. Which nicely backfired.
As a different poster stated, there isn't a main database for stolen laptops. Cops don't care. They don't rouse used dealers and not because they all work online. The only time I ever saw a cop in the stores I worked in was when we called them to kick out a drunk or something. They didn't catch this guy with hard work, they found it by a fluke. What your really asking is that every sale have a moral pettigree. Ain't no such thing.
All that was needed is a photocopy of her driver's license. Thats it. Not exactly a rocket science, $1 billion computerized national database thing, is it? Had he done that, his ass would be covered. Instead, driven by greed, he made a quick purchase with no questions asked. Say hello to consequences.
Most will do so on consignment then. If the items are hard to sell, their market price suffers accordingly. You know, supply/demand, aka that old thing called the "free market".
Pawn shops have lots of useless inventory. Stuff they'll often have to trash.
But pawn shops are consignment stores. You can get your stuff back should you bring the cash they "lent" you back. And for that reason they are specially prone to being involved in fencing and thus continuously monitored by the cops.
There's value in a guaranteed sale. Ever look at how much a car dealer offers you for a car, compared to what you can get if you sell it yourself? The dealer's offering less because he's also offering the service of a zero-hassle sale.
True, you are paying for the service of the dealer in reselling. But the discount is measured in 5-20% range, at most. Not 75% of the price.
My point is that risk is a major factor in price. A $300 laptop is only worth $1200 if you can sell it. Did this guy even know it was working? A laptop with a flaky LCD is suddenly worth a lot less.
That is why most legitimate businesses wont touch such items, at such low proce, because they would fear precisely such a problem. If they would sell the laptop at $1100 and then get the irate customer screaming back at them, the thing is not worth the hassle. Such low price would raise these and other red flags and would prompt a legitimate dealer to be extra vigilant. The dude did precisely the opposite. He got greedy.
How would you know? Either you are truly duplicitous or are incapable of understanding these simple facts: you yourself claimed to be reselling large amounts of fire-sale priced items with no verification. Thus: volume+suspicious pricing+no checks = very high probability of resale of stolen goods. It is dead simple.
The conceit that you must have to summon in order to make some kind of prediction about the bulk of the thousands and thousands of books I bought and sold...(emhasis mine)
Ah I see, so now in order to be a fence, a bulk of ones sales has to be in stolen goods? Glad to know, I am sure this will be the new defense of every fence in the USA and abroad. "No your Honour! I only sold 20% of dodgy goods! I am innocent!"
Also, quite a nice strawman here, since at no point did I mention "bulk" of anything.
I had no reason to believe that any of those books were stolen. Know why? Because I have myself sold books, when I have needed the money, at 5% of face. Therefore, it happens legally. Therefore, a reasonable man could claim that he didn't know they were stolen, if they were. And they weren't.
This is insane logic. Because, you, once, felt that it was "legitimate" to sell your stuff at 5% value (and some asshole took advantage of you paying you that), therefore, it is happening all the time to everyone. Furthermore, all your "customers" were in such a jam all the time and under no circumstances there could be other possible reasons for such low price to be offered to you, right? And they were all honest and upstanding citizens, you would give your right hand for .... cause they were ... err ... like from the same school! Yeah, thats it!
As I said, it is near certain that you were at some point or another fencing goods.
Honest businessmen don't buy items at 10% of retail?
Dont try to weasel out now, it is unbecoming. We were discussing 10% of going market value of the items, in their current condition. Not 10% of some hypotetical retail price in an upmarket, exclusive store. In the case of the parent article, the laptop's market value was at $1100 and it was bought at $300, i.e. around 1/4th the going rate. Its retail price, which is utterly irellevant and was not even mentioned was very likely far in excess of $1100.
Are you fucking kidding me? I have to wonder if you have ever bought anything used, sold anything used, or for that matter worked a day in your life ... [more rantings at strawmen skipped] ... You are an idiot. You are worse than an idiot; you are an idiot who doesn't understand that he's an idiot, despite his appropriate nickname.
Perheaps your pitiful insults would have more sting, had you not managed to make such a complete fool out of yourself by not even being able to comprehend the topic of the discussion which you are attempting to join.
What you missed completely is that these items, used, have the average market prices you described. But in the case we are discussing, the laptop was purchased at 1/4th of the going, at that time, market price for such an item, in its used condition. So in your examples: a dude shows up to sell you 100 3 month-old books at 10 cents each. Or he offers you the Sunblade at $20. Etc. And you do not ask any questions, and quickly shell out the money before he changes his mind, right?
You might be surprised to hear that most legitimate businesses do precisely what I described (at least around here in Canada). Sure there are crooks but a typical business person is actually afraid to purchase something at such low price because he is concerned that there is something in the items history he is unaware of, and thus he is anxious not to get stung. In most cases the potential profit is simply not worth the exorbitant risk.
On the other hand your experience could be dealing exclusively with pawn shops and the like in suspicious neighbourhoods. Of which, around 100% are in the "fence" business.
Note that in our story the laptop was sold later for $1100. So what you allude to is not the case here, it must have been of recent manufacture and reasonable quality. If the item was worth only $50 when you resold it, I could see you argument. But we are discussing items which these people resell at 4 times the price after some quick "cleanups". Ergo a dishonest practice.
Spoken like someone who identifies with dishonest, greedy, slimy fences of the world. Honest businessmen do not buy items at 1/10th price, they buy them at going market rates for such purchases. Slimeball crooks, on the other hand, take advantage of people in need and try to resort to connivery and mis-information to rip the seller off.
I used to buy used books at 5-10% of face value and resell them for as much as ten times what I paid for them. I'd bet that the vast majority of those books were not stolen. It's not my responsibility to`ensure that they aren't even if they were. Joe Student needs fifty bucks to cover the rent and sells me five hundred bucks' worth of paperbacks. No red flags.
Ah yes, the "I didn't get caught so no laws were broken" approach. I have news for you: they very likely were broken. Even though you are unable to comprehend this fact, your not obtaining personal details of goods whose sell price and origin could indicate they were stolen, and doing so routinely, made you a classic fence. You were very lucky to not have one of these "students" getting caught with someone elses' expensive books and then telling the cops of the vast volumes of stolen crap he fenced through you. Or you would be now enjoying the hospitality of the State.
This is legitimate business. Self-rightousness and ignorance never go together well. Learn how the real world works before you go off half-cocked, OK?
Given the above, I gotta ask: you are a libertarian, are you not?
Sigh. A conversation with a honest reseller goes like this:
Following which the dealer re-sells for $450 or whatever reasonable market price is. But if the dealer is a greedy slimeball, he will shell out $50 in cash and be quick about it so that the "idiot" customer does not get wise to him. He will be reluctant to ask personal data as not to sour the rip-off. And thus he is not only a jerk but just became a fence.I don't know if this guy is a fence or not. But I think there needs to be some sort of provision in the law for people who do not habitually deal in stolen stuff.
A typical fence obtains only a portion of his stuff from thieves. Otheriwse he would not be able to pretend to run a legitimate business, which is the pre-condition of operating as a successful fence. What is a charactertistic, defining feature of a fence is his unscrupulous and dishonest greed, like, say, buying stuff you know is worth 5 times more without making a beep to take advantage of a mis-informed or desperate customer.
In all of these cases it is the buyers fault then if something goes wrong. If you are a businessman who routinely purchases such items, if you are honest, you would notify that person of their error and offer a reasonable price. And you would make damn sure that you knew the item's origin. That tactics would not only guarantee you great reputation and repeat business but also would frighten away all thieves and put your business beyond any suspicion as far as cops are concerned. If you are, on the other hand, a greedy slimeball into taking advantage of people in need ... then you get all the lumps that go with that and I, for one, will offer no sympathy to you.
Just because something is cheap, that doesn't mean it's stolen. Yes, it should make you consider that as a possiblity, but it's certainly not a given.
Which would, of course, were you a legitimate buyer, make you take her personal details and take other precautions. Unless you do not care, which makes you a fence.
It is. A honest businessman would notify the person who is selling of a potential higher value of the equipment, given some service work, and offer a reasonable price. He would also make sure to take personal details of the seller, regardless. It is only because the buyer is a slimey rip-off artist whose morals are non-existant in the fist place, and whose greed is the overriding factor in his actions which leads to him completing such transactions in a hurry as not to "spook" the potential victim. And in the process he becomes a fence as this tactics leads to thieves realizing that he will buy anything, no questions asked, as long as the price is "right".
And those people frequently want cash and you do not bother making sure they own the stuff because you are busy salivating at the prospect of huge profit after some of that "easy reinstall", right? In other words, your greed blinds you in your mad rush to rip the "sucker" off when buying these items. Tell me, what do you think a thief says to the fence? "Hey Sparky, I swiped this the last night. Fence it." or perheaps "Hey, Sparky, here is another 'busted' laptop, this one from my ... err.. other, other cousin, sumtin' wrong with this one too, pay me $200 (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)". The activity of attempting to rip the "sucker" off by paying a fraction of the cost of the goods, without bothering to check their origin is a variant of ... fencing.
A woman shows up with a laptop worth 4 times the price (in used condition, never mind new) and that would not raise a red flag or two? You would just merilly accept the goods, pay cash and do not bother getting her personal info? Right. Now pull my other leg.
The difference between a fence and a legitimate business is that the fence asks no questions, feigns ignorance and looks the other way when conditions of sale are highly suspicious so that he can make outrageous profit.
Except neither of those are obtaining the goods they sell in used condition from random "suspicious looking, but I will take their word anyways" strangers, who part with the said equipment at 1/5th of the going market rate in cash and disappear, just so that he can innocently, in blissful ignorance of the items' origins, resell them later at 500% profit ...
Erhm. He is a fence.
Yes, some of us do not age at all due to the wise use of pixie dust and frequent visits to the magical fountain of youth...
My own parents don't have health insurance, and while I think that is unwise, they were able to pay for some emergency medical treatment my father required a few years ago
Wait till he gets older. I know that it is cruel to burst your bubble but hiding from reality will do no good anyways.
I imagine many of the wealthy do, in fact, not have health insurance because any surgery expensive enough to strap them financially would simply be voted down by the average HMO, regardless.
You missed the point completely. The surgeries are not expensive enough to "strap the wealthy" financially. The insurance is simply a wise investment policy, to amortise risks over long periods of time and thus to make them cheaper, on average, for everyone. The wealthy are well versed in financial risk management techniques, unlike, it appears, you.
You gotta be kidding. You mean to say that people with money prefer to spend 200k for a surgery instead of paying a fraction of that (on average) for an insurance policy? Unless you are a billionaire or a multi-millionaire (a tiny fraction of the US population) this would constitute pure financial insanity. As a matter of fact it is still crazy even then, although one could imagine very rich people throwing money away. Insurance policies exist for a reason.
Instead, 99.9% of that 45 million are too poor to afford any care and are resorting to remedies such as a pair of rusty pliers for dental problems or are bringing their desperately sick kids to an ER to get stablised for a few hours and then take them, stil gravely ill, back home in hopes they somehow miraculously recover.
Have you been living under a rock as not to know this?
Insightful? Err, no. Good try though. Both chip fabs and engineers are part of the cost of manufacturing. The only things which were not included in that number were R&D and marketing. Now if you take into account that with R&D and marketing and what not Intel keeps posting around 50% profit margins each year, to the tune of several billion, your knee jerk answer paints you as someone far too easily satisified by the appeals to the gullible, which all of these big companies make: "But look at our world-saving R&D!!".
This shtick is most popular among big pharma conglomerates who spend 80% of their non-manufacturing expense on advertising, bribing doctors, lobbying efforts and the like while trying to paint themselves as helpless, dewy-eyed fuzzy "we are helping the sick children" cuddlies. Who completely accidentally are spending all of their effort on the next life-style gimmick ala Viagra.
Err... yes... but, you see, the crowd here must have noticed that Intel keeps posting around 50% bottom line profits. So all that vaunted R&D, free plastic crap toys and blue men ads are not adding up so high as to interfere with several billion of take-home cash for the executives and the shareholders each year...
True but it costs 1/3 of the US price per-capita, who even at that exorbitant price still does not manage to cover 45 million of its citizens (the number of uninsured people with no medical care in the US has grown in the last 4 years ... again)
All political humour has a serious undertone of some sort or another (e.g. overtyping real country names on top of purposefuly fictitios ones in an unrelated cartoon, contrary to what the author intended, is a political statement).
Nowhere did I imply that.
Be careful or some might see this as signs of a slight inferiority complex.
Or perheaps a sign of getting annoyed at the sheer volume of such "jokes" I am running into as of late and perheaps my heightened alertness to the seriousness of the mental disturbances of the political landscape which result in such "funnies".
I found the "joke" in the cartoon not very amusing. Not for the lack of sense of humour but for the obvious, condescending insinuation of "backwardness" of Canada, so popular amongst various neo-con haters of social support systems. I don't think by the way that it is the original caption in that cartoon, someone has changed "Moldovia" (where the water-logged, bearded characters are from) for "Canada".