Quote:
Originally Posted by Vintagedeputy
David,
You’ve mentioned ethics a few times now, and that troubles me. What is unethical about giving someone their asking price of 50 cents? Caveat venditor applies as equally as caveat emptor.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just buy and sell collectible’s at what we felt they were worth instead of what everyone else felt that they were worth or what they read out of a price guide?
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you raise a good point; i'm here for it. i think the primary thing we keep bumping up against here is the reality of market value. its something that neither you nor i have any significant influence over. your mantle example is a good point. if i feel that a mickey mantle 52 topps in VG/EX condition is worth 50 cents, and the old woman who is hosting the yard sale also feels the same, we have a theoretical match right?
this is where ethics comes into play. both you and i know that that 52 topps mantle is worth far more than 50 cents. the woman who is hosting the yard sale is 'market unaware', or, in street terms, 'prepared to be taken for a ride'. we both objectively know the real value of a mantle; the reason we know it to be thus is because we live in a market ecosystem of transactions which verify said value.
this is a really interesting point, because it gets us to what constitutes value. i can buy a de kooning right now for hundreds of millions of dollars. insane, right? because objectively to me de kooning paints like absolute shit. but everyone has their opinion. knowing, and having context for this market reality, i can demand my real price that its worth to me, $5. and i may actually in a wild subjective context get that, like a 50 cent 52 mantle at a garage sale.
however -- here's where philosophy of ethics and economics collide -- i am acting in patently bad faith pretending like that de kooning is worth only $5, just as i am pretending that that mantle '52 is only worth 50 cents. it may be worth 50 cents to you because you hate mantle or don't care about baseball cards, but the market does not value it the same way. so you have to ask yourself, in a deep philosophical way, why am i buying this card if its worthless to me?
perhaps, like a rare few, you are simply buying a piece of junk to play with it for awhile then toss it. but if you know that mantle is worth five or even six figures and you buy it from an old woman at a garage sale for 50 cents, you have to ask yourself if you are really standing in good faith. each person is entitled their individual action in a marketplace, including, as we well observe, theft and exploitation which goes unpunished by legal systems around the world. markets survive and thrive because of regular good faith transactions, even among patently exploitative ones, like destroying an ecosystem to prop up a national economy. markets collapse because of regular bad faith transactions -- they erode trust and destroy the concept of collective value -- which philosophically is tied directly to meaning. here, you get to the root of the problem. market value, like meaning in nations and communities -- is collectively constructed. it is a composite of individual beliefs of value. the whole thing, as your question reveals; as i sometimes wish i wasn't so aware of, is constructed entirely of a tapestry of belief -- perceived meaning en masse.
philosophy of ethics and economics -- as above, are intimate bedfellows. to act in 'good faith', here, is to pay the old woman what her mantle is worth -- knowing what we know about the market value of the object itself: even if she doesn't know it; even if we think its only worth 50 cents. otherwise, we're leveraging market knowledge over someone else who is unsuspecting and doesn't know any better. you could call this hoodwinking, exploitation of lack of awareness, et cetera. but it is ultimately the fact that you know the true collectively constructed market value that creates duality here -- this duality being 'good faith' or 'bad faith' transaction. ethics is human conduct with and towards one another. markets are human transactions of goods, services, materials, and knowledge with one another. the two are absolutely, utterly, profoundly inseparable.
i admire your question and willingness to inquire further here. what your question really reveals is the difference between subjective value and objective valuation. its part of why, personally, i enjoy baseball cards so much. that tip top bread 1910 common that everyone passes by is something easily obtainable for me -- because it holds a hotbed of deep historical and philosophical meaning that the market doesn't yet understand or is not yet aware of. is this exploitative? perhaps. and that begs a deeper question about what real value is and how markets understand it and attempt to contextualize it. van gogh sold only a couple paintings in his lifetime; for pennies considering what his work is worth on the global market now. was he swindled out of those paintings (looking back)? definitely. but in and at the time he sold it? they were the bare few paintings he could sell! ethically, without a doubt, all of those transactions would be constituted as in 'good faith'... in fact, they even helped a desperate painter! he lived in a world that thought his paintings were worthless at the time... so much that they couldn't be sold, really, for any amount. if only he could see the way that the collective imagination changed; reconstituted that market value. if i were to buy what i knew to be a van gogh for pennies from an unsuspecting inheritor of one of those paintings he sold in his lifetime... we're in a very different world ethically!
is my 1910 tip top bread common worth more than what the market values it at? i think so -- but this is the depth of questioning into philosophy, ethics, and economics that makes this conversation so provocative and thought-provoking. (i even have to ask myself -- am i imagining that this 1910 tip top bread 1910 common is worth anything at all!!
05-08-2025, 06:32 PM
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