My Pretty Little Thing
So I’ve wanted an MP3 player for quite sometime. After hours of research and interviews in the end I let (fame) marketing (sex) decide (riches) for me and settled on getting an Ipod Mini. No sooner did I choose than the new Minis came out with twice the battery life and the optional 6GB drives. Well I thought to myself, if I wait patiently for a few weeks, the used prices on Craigslist will drop. So I waited, and waited and a month later people were still trying to sell their 1st generation Minis for $180-190. Which was ridiculous because you could get the 1st generations new for that price off Ebay and the second generations for $216 direct from apple.
Rather than bitch to the Craigslist Community about how retarded the prices were (which is in fact much lamer than the prices in the first places and only slightly less lame than playing Magic the Gathering with 12 year-olds) I decided that I would flood the market with low cost virtual Ipods Minis. I placed some postings up and waited. Astonishing myself, I found that within one week the price of the Mini has dropped about $25 bucks
In the end what does this all mean and what have I learned? I think what I did might have been wrong. I was trying to depriving people of their cash in an attempt to benefit myself, by falsely lowering the price of a commodity. The thing is, not one person responded to my ads which would seem to mean no one was buying used Ipod Minis for $180 in the first place. Which is I suppose my rationalization for poor behavior.
I guess in the end mostly I learned nothing, and that folks is something only a Buddhist would strive for. Lucky for me I have a new shiny material object to console me (6GB Mini for $210. It's pink too).
Rather than bitch to the Craigslist Community about how retarded the prices were (which is in fact much lamer than the prices in the first places and only slightly less lame than playing Magic the Gathering with 12 year-olds) I decided that I would flood the market with low cost virtual Ipods Minis. I placed some postings up and waited. Astonishing myself, I found that within one week the price of the Mini has dropped about $25 bucks
In the end what does this all mean and what have I learned? I think what I did might have been wrong. I was trying to depriving people of their cash in an attempt to benefit myself, by falsely lowering the price of a commodity. The thing is, not one person responded to my ads which would seem to mean no one was buying used Ipod Minis for $180 in the first place. Which is I suppose my rationalization for poor behavior.
I guess in the end mostly I learned nothing, and that folks is something only a Buddhist would strive for. Lucky for me I have a new shiny material object to console me (6GB Mini for $210. It's pink too).
posted by Yen at
5:05 PM
2 Comments:
welcome to the future! soon you will wonder how you ever lived without it and when it crashes or the battery dies, it will break your little heart. on the upside, now you can come steal as much of our music as you like!
By
Anonymous, at 8:41 AM
I like this experiment. You can call it the invisible hand of yen.
Travis once told me that when american companies want to hire a foreign labourer the government makes sure there isn't a domestic labourer that could qualify for the position. To determine this, the government posted fake job ads for similar positions.
If the government is doing it, why shouldn't you? Actually, don't answer that. I wouldn't want your trade deficits to get all out of whack.
-reuben
By
Anonymous, at 12:08 PM
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