Crapitalism (was No Good Stuff)

From: Glenatacme_at_aol.com <(Glenatacme_at_aol.com)>
Date: Thu Aug 19 00:23:55 1999

In a message dated 08/19/1999 12:48:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com writes:

> Our wholesaler sells cases with (crap) 250 watt power
> >supplies for US$20, 250 watt (crap) power supplies by themselves for $19,
> and
> >(crap) replacement fans for $15.
>
> I believe the technical term for this would be crapitalism.

Thanks for the wonderful term. I'm hereby stealing it, er, adding it to my
vocabulary.

> >Can anyone provide a clue as to why this is so? Basic economics suggests
> >that it costs a *lot* more to produce a case w/psu than a psu alone --
> >likewise for the psu vs. the fan . . .
>
> People who try to sell good fans have to charge $35 - $40 for them. You and
> I might say, "Gee, that's a damn nice fan, here's your $35." but 90% of the
> people walk in and say "Hey man! Why are you tryin to rip me off with this
> fan price, I can buy a whole case including a fan for that price!" To which
> your only response, "Go buy it then and get out of my shop!" Guess what.
> You won't sell enough to stay in business. Its called crapitalism.

We sell cheap stuff for the chintzers and high quality items for our more
discriminating customers. When someone assumes that we are a rip-off outfit
because we sell some expensive (translate: high-quality) items I have no
problem telling them to go to Circuit City. But it's still frustrating
trying to convince some knucklehead that the higher quality component will
probably last longer than *they* will . . .
  
> The weird thing is that sometimes good stuff comes through the pipe. Fry's
> had an $18/case deal that turned out to have a really nice PSU and case
> inside. Didn't last though :-(.

Yeah, we get lucky once in a while, too . . .

Glen Goodwin
0/0
Received on Thu Aug 19 1999 - 00:23:55 BST