Ebay Altair

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Wed May 10 14:16:02 2000

Please see my remarks embedded below.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: Carlos Murillo <cem14_at_cornell.edu>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: Ebay Altair


<snip>
>
> Hi, my name is Carlos and I am an eBayer :-) .
>
Hi, Carlos!
>
> Of course, I've bought things that I probably shouldn't have
> bought (I took risks). On the other hand, in teeny isolated Ithaca there
> are no scrapyards and there is only one ham meeting a year (there is
> another one close by, so that makes two hamfests a year).
> My only source of free stuff is the ocassional find at the
> dumpster in the EE department. And I am not going to cut short
> what little family time I have on weekends in order to drive long
> distances to more plentiful lands.
>
That's exactly where the value is added. You add value by hauling the stuff
home from the scap yard or sifting through the stuff in your friend's
driveway. It's like arguing that a diamond found on the ground is no more
valuable than the pebble nest to it. That's evaluating an item's worth on
the labor theory of value, like the communists tried to do for 75 years or
so with little success. If those on this list who embrace that theory would
just send me every $20 bill they find on the ground in the parking lot or
wherever, I'll happily send them one of the many $1 bills I've gotten that
way. Their value is the same, isn't it?

The remainder of Carlos' remarks deserve restatement:
>
> Tim: sniping actually works. You just have to set your limit
> beforehand. If the bids get past that limit, then don't snipe.
> Bidding early does help bring the price up because others have
> more time to convince themselves that they want the same thing.
> Someone pointed out that this has more or less the effect of making the
> auction mechanism more like a sealed bid auction, since snipers
> often don't have the time to submit a second bid.
>
> >From an economic point of view, open bid auctions are biased and
> are not a good indicator of proper market value because the price
> is not allowed to go down. In a rational market, repeated interaction,
> equal visibility and access, and the fact that the price _is_ allowed to
go
> down as well as up is what makes it possible to find the market
equilibrium.
> Thus, not even the average price of many eBay auctions is a good
> indicator of market value, because all samples are biased. Somebody
> already pointed out that eBay is good for sellers. Of course it is
> good; the mechanism is biased in their favor.
>
> Still, for reasons of local scarcity, I am glad that eBay exists.
>
>
Received on Wed May 10 2000 - 14:16:02 BST