Monday Ramble: "Bottom Fishing," and Other Realities of Free Markets and Capitalist Life

As many of you probably have gathered by now, I derive a substantial portion of my income from trading "this, that and the other" on eBay and other online marketplaces.

I've been doing so for somewhat over 20 years... and regularly pause to have gratitude for being able to get some semblance of a minimal living from doing so.

But it is not getting any easier, as there seems to be an ongoing trend of people wanting more for less.

Red fall leaf

Bottom Fishing

"Bottom fishing" seems to be a pervasive part of a free market system. Doesn't really matter what you are selling nor where you are selling... the moment something hits the "for sale" listing, there's a horde of bottom fishers who show up and offer you next-to-nothing for whatever it is you are offering... goods and services alike.

Mrs. Denmarkguy and I are selling some old "stuff" that came from our respective (now deceased) parents' houses and some of it is pretty decent stuff.

No sooner is a listing up for a paid of 1750's Chinese Export Porcelain plates with an opening bid of $295 and an immediate sale price of $750... than I get several messages from people asking "will you take $50?" and "I can offer you $100 for these!"

What planet are you from? Why are you wasting my time?

Not a made-up story. These are real and seriously antique plates...

It Must Be Working... Or?

The commonly offered truism — whether it comes to lowball offers or annoying SPAM offers in your email — is that "it must be working, or they wouldn't DO it!"

Makes me pause to ponder whether or not that is really so?

A fellow online trader once offered the explanation that there really are people so desperate to make a sale that they will take almost any offer, if only they get money now. A bit like taking your grandfather's $2000 gold watch to a pawn shop to get $150.

In turn, this made me pause again and consider the whole construct we call "Capitalism," and how lots of apologists for the Capitalist system like to point out that it is a "FREE" market system, and that it is an "efficient" market system because buyers and sellers are free to set the market price.

Something smells a little "off" about that...

Purple irises in close-up

Fairness... or Desperation?

Whereas it is definitely true that the market sets the price, and that you can both charge and oay however much or little you want, people tend to overlook the reality that the actual POINT of market making occurs only at the point where the most desperate seller intersects with the most urgent buyer.

Everybody else is just a bystander.

The fact that I need to sell my apples for $2.00 a pound in order to make a living doesn't amount to a hill of beans in a market where the most starving and need-to-feed-my-children seller is selling apples for 75 cents a pound. Meaning, that the "market price" is — effectively — the point of no profit.

Consider this simple illustration of the market for Steem, snagged as a screen shot from the Bittrex trading platform:

Screen shot of the Steem market on Bittrex, from this morning. Active trading is ONLY happening inside the yellow circle...

We'd like to think this represents "the market," but that market is actually only happening in the circled area. Everyone else is not transacting! All those people over to the left? They are starving because they are not offering enough. All those people over on the right? They are starving because they are asking too much.

You See! It's WORKING! That's Great for the Buyer!

Many will of course argue that this is precisely what keeps us — as consumers — from having to overpay for goods and services, due to greedy monopolists engaging in price inflation.

Really? I don't think so!

The reason we have the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon... and they are pretty much putting individual entrepreneurs out of business is precisely that they grow monopolistically large by employing automated economies of scale individual operators simply cannot compete with.

Now, we like to call that market efficiency, but we tend to overlook the simple fact that someone has to be able to buy those things at the intersection of greed and desperation: But when people are not earning enough to be able to afford to buy things, the wheels start to fall off the carriage!

Another golden fall leaf

It's a very simple "Catch-22 Closed Loop:" I don't make enough to pay a fair price for someone's labor because I can't sell my own labor for a fair price.

Wait what?

OK, let me put it in super simple terms. I am "told" that I should buy "home grown and organic." Well, whereas I love that idea, a dozen home grown organic eggs are $5. A dozen factory eggs at the superstore are $0.89. I only have a dollar, because I can't make any more with my own stuff, because I have to sell it for damned cheap. So I end up buying the $0.89 eggs simply in order to avoid starving... thereby actually becoming part of the problem.

It's a strange world in which we live... and I am not sure where it will end.

But I am going to end this missive now, because I have a therapy appointment to go to.

Thanks for reading!

(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 191007 13:18 PDT
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