eBay vrs42?

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005, vrs wrote:

> > Would you also claim that this is unfair to the seller and the auction
> > house?  This actually is known to happen in the Real World (tm), and
> > I've never heard anyone there complain that it is unethical, or that
> > it constitutes "manipulating the price".
>
> If, as a consequence, the Rembrandt goes for $1 (or any other rediculous
> price), I would say that was clearly unfair to the seller.

Unfair?  It depends on what side you're on.  Unethical or illegal?  Not at
all.

> > I think a big part of the problem with the interpretation of bidder
> > cooperation as "manipulating the price" is that you're trying to
> > claim that an action one of the bidders DOES NOT PERFORM is the
> > one that is unethical.  Yet all bids are voluntary; if it were to
> > be otherwise, something *very* unethical must be going on.
>
> No, it was the getting together of a monopoly consortium of the bidders that
> was the problem.

If this practice was unethical then everything we buy today would cost
about a million times more than it does.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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