eBay and Beer Sales

i'm not addressing the larger argument when i say you're confused (though i probably would say something like that if we "got into it"). i'm saying that discounting the role of justification in the secondary market discounts the role of personal responsibility (this is not my opinion, this is the meaning of words here...). cleaving personal responsibility from the market (whether you think it's "relative" or "realistic" or "practical" or not) is to say that the market dominates action, and people don't have a choice.

you may not like this, but this is the literal truth. it's not opinion, it's not ideology. you can hypothesize / stipulate that people are not going to act responsibly and will care only about their short term self-interest or +/- dollar considerations at any given time... but realize that this is what you're doing. we, who continue to talk about morality, are not "making a mistake" about what's practical or what "makes a difference" to the secondary market. either sellers and buyers control their own actions, or they don't.

again, i am only addressing your post about wondering why people "fail to understand" that morality talk can't influence the secondary market. if you really fail to understand that, the reason is your own confusion. people have made it crystal clear that they think ebayers are responsible for their own actions, and that said actions are not justified. it is a sad state of affairs when people don't think whether or not someone's actions are justified is "relevant" to talk of the actions. we're talking about craft beer, not winning a war.

edit: for some clarification if that last sentence was too punchy and vague, if someone thinks i'm being immoral when i, say, break some laws and sell beer online, that's different than if someone thinks i'm being immoral when i, say, punch someone in the face after they've physically attacked me. i may very well be immoral in the latter situation--maybe even moreso than in the former. but most people take those situations and think "well, the fact is, i need this person to stop attacking me, so i punched them. maybe i went too far, but again, understand: i needed this guy to stop attacking me." you don't need to bring 10 mules to a release and sell beer on ebay. if you're that strapped for cash, get a job.

 

1) If brewers wish to price eBay out of the market they have the capacity to do so, that's all I'm saying. If they choose not to, they are unintentionally (or intentionally) creating the factors that lead to an aftermarket. They may be motivated by egalitarian ideals, they may be motivated by cynical marketing desires, they may be motivated by ignorance, it really doesn't matter what their motivation is.

2a) If you're implying (and it really sounds like you are) that brewers definitively DON'T make money on limited release beers as a general rule I think you're wrong, and if you're saying that they CAN'T then you're definitely wrong. Again, all I'm saying is that if brewers wish to raise their prices they clearly CAN. Not to eBay prices, but to some price level higher than what is currently being charged.

2b) You answer your question in the question. Breweries undercharge creating a disparity between cost and value, which is a strong incentive for individuals to take advantage of this. Those who are morally reprehensible or those who are morally fit but see no reprehensibility in taking advantage of this disparity will be particularly inclined to seek out and adopt or create a market so that they can profit. Ergo, the market is not the cause of the behavior, it isn't even the effect of the behavior, it is the tool of the behavior.

2c) I asked you for an example of how scalpers undermine breweries because I honestly can think of none and had yet to see an example provided. You are assuming that 4 out of 5 (or some vast percentage) of purchasers of rare/limited beer are speculators. I would counter that this seems like a gross distortion unsupported by fact or even anecdotal evidence. The number of beers listed for sale or trade of any major release is a small fraction of the total beers sold by the brewery. So unless your suggestion is that most aftermarket is NOT eBay, but in fact some underground market I'm unaware of and that you haven't yet mentioned...

Further, it presupposes that these speculators are doing more massively more harm than good, another assertion I would suggest is untrue. Speculators are selling their beer to SOMEONE, presumably other people interested and excited about this brewery, perhaps the speculators themselves are huge fans of that brewery. The rabid demand and increased difficulty of acquiring the beer are themselves drivers of hype and demand. And the difficulty of rabid fans unable to acquire said beer BECAUSE of speculators seems unlikely to deter those same folk and turn them away from that brewery in any quantity. Speculators may be bad for individuals within the local market, but it does not necessarily follow that they are bad for the brewery.

But more importantly, as long as there are droves of people dying to purchase a product there is a limited quantity there WILL BE an aftermarket. This "assumed inevitability" is indeed a fact, and it does NOT logically follow that this means people are without free will. I'm not even sure how you can make that argument with a straight face, unless you're denying that there is free will yourself or denying that the aftermarket exists. Your assumptions about the morality of those involved in the aftermarket are wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not it is a thing that is real.

3) But those 10 bottles did return value to the brewery... the price of those bottles.

 

The essential problem to what?

I believe in personal responsibility, morality and respect and despite this I disagree that eBay hurts individual brewers.

 

getting a bit tired finally, so i'll try to let things stand as they are. two small responses,

2c) you've not heard horror stories about line cutting and muling? note that trade-hoarding is included along with ebay in my complaint above.

re: free will, i think the reason it seems absurd to you is that you find it ridiculous that someone would fail to buy $30 beer and sell it for $100 or whatever... which, again, simply assumes that someone has to do it. i'm not sure what else to tell you... the reason free will and inevitability are brought up are to counter the accusation that inevitability entails no license to judge sellers/buyers. but there really isn't any inevitability. if buying/selling is morally neutral, there's no inevitability, and if buying/selling is morally loaded, there's no inevitability--regardless of what's incentivized. people control their actions... sorry i can't make this more cogent, but it's such a direct thing to begin with that it's hard to write a multi-sentence thing about it without hand-waving back at the point, repeatedly.

if we wanted to, we could all agree to never buy craft beer again. "what, not buy beer!? but i love beer!" great. i love smoking cigarettes. however, various reasons have convinced me to stop doing it. if i found buying craft beer to be morally reprehensible, i would stop doing it, and so could you. "but i want it!" okay. "but people are going to buy it anyway!" sure. but they could stop if they wanted to.

3) that's obviously not the value they're looking for.

 

No one is discounting the role of justification in the secondary market. Literally no one.

People, however, have NOT made it crystal clear that they think eBayers actions are unjustified. In fact, it's this crucial reality that you consistently side-step.

 

you're covered in round 1 then (the "don't see how it hurts brewers" camp). also, some of our back-and-forth could highlight that you don't quite believe in responsibility and respect as much as you think you do, which could be influencing your opinion on whether or not ebaying hurts individual brewers.

 

you're in bad form here. the person i quoted *directly* said that this discussion needs to stop being about justification.

also, i'm assuming you mean the reality we sidestep is that we don't make it crystal clear WHY ebayer actions are unjustified. if you really meant THAT (which is what you have to mean to disagree with me), think it over again. are you actually not convinced that i find ebayer action unjustified?

 

2c) Of course I have. I responded to it in my post. For the reasons I previously described I think you're vastly overstating the negative impact. Further, if you absolve brewers from any responsibility to act economically rationally and instead place the burden on all other people to act in the ethical manner you prescribe... you get our current situation. What, then, is the solution? Because "everyone modifies their moral code to match yours" is not an option that's on the table. Practically, what do you suggest?

You make some strange logical leaps, man.

First of all, no one, least of all me, said that "inevitability entails no license to judge sellers/buyers."

The moral relevancy (neutral or otherwise) is irrelevant to the inevitability of an aftermarket. This is proved by the fact that there is indeed an aftermarket. The mere existence of a thriving trade market and re-selling market (on eBay most prominently but elsewhere as well) shows this to be true. You can make as many circular arguments as you'd like, but in the world we live in if there is a product that is available for less than its value there will be someone else turning around and selling it for closer to that value. Should doesn't enter into it. People ARE controlling their actions and this is what they're doing with them. The fact that they are performing actions you disagree with is in fact the entire point of our discussion, is it not (they're selling beers on eBay which you detest)?

Last, NO ONE has ever stated that you are not without free will. Literally no one. At any time. Ever. In this entire argument. It hasn't been implied, it hasn't been said. People are perfectly able to stop re-selling beer on eBay if they'd like. They can. I agree. Totally have that power. However... they don't want to. They don't agree that it's morally reprehensible or they do but are awful people and do things they find morally reprehensible. Either way, there is an aftermarket on eBay. This is so. Unless you believe the following things to be true, an aftermarket is indeed an inevitability:

All people who currently believe re-selling beer is ok will change their minds and stop.
AND
All people who currently re-sell beer even though they don't think it's ok will stop.

You are arguing, I believe, that because everyone has the conceivable free will to do precisely that it is not inevitable that people re-sell beer.

I am arguing, simply, that in our world there ARE people who believe re-selling beer is ok as well as people who are morally iffy about it but do it anyway and therefore re-selling beer is inevitable as long as there is a profit to be made.

You believe, I think, that I am arguing that for a given individual it is inevitable that if they meet with a market force they will follow a proscriptive outcome. That is not what I am arguing. I actually agree with you entirely if we're talking about a person or small group.

I am saying that it is an economic inevitability that on a macro scale this thing will happen because there are these realities.

 

Our respective opinions are indeed shaped on our respective understanding of responsibility and respect (and ethics and morals). I didn't realize this needed to be stated.

 

This entire argument seems to simply have been you thinking I'm arguing inevitability re: an individual and I think you were arguing inevitability re: a group when in fact the reverse was true.

What a waste of my existence.

 

lol'd at that one. sorry, no, the existence of something does not prove its inevitability. are we arguing about leibniz and spinoza now or are we talking about ebay?

as for the rest of the post, you're talking yourself away from understanding me.

you state that the aftermarket is inevitable (because people disagree with me about morality), then state that the aftermarket would stop if people agreed with me about morality.

when i put it like that, do you understand why i find it ridiculous? of course, i understand that it's "inevitable" (it's not, but you're using it as some sort of figurative way of saying "it's going to happen") that an aftermarket will exist if, say, everyone benefits from it and no one thinks it's morally bad. the whole point of arguing about it is to convince people it's morally bad, and highlight that it's not inevitable (the latter part you agree with, even though you're doing weird equivocation that borders on non-comprehension with the word 'inevitable').

---

edit: sorry this is in the form of an edit and you'll probably miss it, but i'm not making another post on this tonight (this morning).

no, we aren't disagreeing about macro/micro, at least not in the way you think. macro inevitability cannot happen without micro inevitability. maybe your statistics or economics teacher told you otherwise, but s/he was wrong. actions are carried out by people, and those actions are only inevitable if people can't but do them. "no, the point is it's inevitable that SOME person will do it!" yeah, that means that *that* person, *whoever s/he is* can't but do it. there is no escaping this. changing the focus doesn't turn necessary into possible and back.

 

that has literally nothing to do with the post of mine you quoted. i simply explained to you that travMI13 said justification wasn't part of the discussion (he doesn't see why people like me "fail to understand it,"), and i also pointed out that you obviously don't mean "people don't make it clear that they think ebaying is unjustified."

if you're this bad at being corrected, you really are wasting your existence. don't just argue to fight; use your brain.

 

you're just kind of rambling now. it's becoming unpleasant to talk to you.

i said that the "problem" (ie why we all argue... from my perspective, ie the ebay is bad perspective, which--surprise--i believe) is

1) some people don't see how it hurts brewers, and
2) some people don't believe in personal responsibility, etc.

i suggested that your being in (1) (and you ARE in (1)! you claim it yourself!!) might be because you're more (2) than you realize. the prissy "i didn't realize this had to be stated thing" you wrote is out of nowhere... are you thinking that "pahn doesn't understand me; i didn't realize i had to state these obvious things to avoid being so woefully misunderstood"? if so... why are you getting that from the (1) (2) stuff here?

i think you need to stop. you were making sense before, but now you are just throwing out strange irrelevancies.

final post about this:

at least about this barrage of posts, this is getting really obnoxious--not to me, particularly, but surely to anyone else reading it. if you want to do more of it, please do it via private message. we're cluttering up the thread with too much back and forth that is no longer topical but just to do with our own communication.

feel free to clutter up the thread more with a final round of explanation-or-irrelevance, but i'll only respond via PM at this point.

 

"the whole point of arguing about it is to convince people it's morally bad, and highlight that it's not inevitable (the latter part you agree with, even though you're doing weird equivocation that borders on non-comprehension with the word 'inevitable')."

You are saying that since it is not inevitable that a particular individual MUST act in a particular way it cannot therefore follow that it is inevitable that a group WILL act in a certain way. This is not a logical conclusion to make. In fact, the first statement precludes the possibility of the second entirely.

It is not inevitable that an individual will re-sell beer, however, concurrently, it is ALSO not inevitable that an individual will NOT re-sell beer. Therefore, inevitably, some individuals will re-sell beer and others will not.

Therefore, since since SOME individuals will re-sell beer, a market will inevitably be created.

Unless you are arguing that it is inevitable that once heard your argument on moral grounds is so powerful that all individuals will convert to your perspective, and that it is inevitable that all people who currently believe it to be ok to re-sell beer will hear that argument (and be converted), there will remain a quantity of people who wish to re-sell beer (and therefore, there will be a market to do so, and all the economic realities you've acknowledged will play their role).

 

You are assuming that if someone disagrees with you about the "hurt" that re-selling beers they are not "seeing" that hurt (i.e.: you are assuming that the hurt is real and the disagreement stems from a lack of awareness) and/or that the person who disagrees with you has some fundamental lack in their sense of personal responsibility.

I don't agree with either of those assertions.

 

please stop. 1) that's not what 'inevitable' means, and 2) i've private messaged you. you are going to get the thread locked.

 

Inevitable means certain to happen, unavoidable. That is precisely what I'm describing.

 

LOL @ This thread.

But for reals, eBay locking down beer sales is great. Now whenever someone tries to gouge me on KBS for $20/bottle because "that's the price on eBay", I can tell them to eat even more shit because eBay doesn't do it anymore, asshole!

</rant>

 

Interesting, as this thread progresses it does retain some compelling reading, even if points tend to get restated hundreds of times.

I believe your central theme is that even if economic forces make ebay a compelling option for a beer owner, "morality" should compel the "scumbags" (your words) to do the "right thing" and not use it.

Or perhaps, like many in this thread, you believe they should be FORCED not to use it, by ebay shutting down beer sales. The justification being that your view is "morally" superior; therefore, people should be forced to comply with it.

I believe the reason those who cling to economic logic do so is that it's measurable and repeatable, market forces tend to behave reasonably the same across many cultures.

Morality is a completely personal and highly variable concept. In fact, while many people in various societies have "like morals", I would venture to say that few have "identical morals". Argument is often (if not always) driven by differences in "morals". We see this in our own country with regard to issues much larger than beer, where both sides claim "moral superiority". We see this between nations, during wars it seems that each participant routinely claims some form of "moral superiority". "Morality" is not homogenous across cultures.

So when you argue "morals" you're always in for a divisive haul.

I will restate my central complaint:

Taking away someone’s rights because they disagree with me is something I find repugnant. With the obvious exception of the "falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre" example, life and death issues of which there are many contentious items which could be put on or left off such a list.

I really don't put beer selling/trading in that group of life or death issues which mandate restriction of rights, do you?

(Again, I acknowledge that ebay is a private company not a government agency, etc. etc.; however, my argument is focused on principle)

 

no, i don't think people should be forced to not resell beer, at least not in some absolute way. i'm glad ebay enforces its own rules and makes reselling beer harder, but that's not my overarching point. prohibition is a silly goal.

i think people should realize what a thriving aftermarket does to the community, and work to inhibit it. one way is by not being a scumbag. another way is by shaming people who make the community worse. an additional way is by punishing people for ebaying (reporting them, etc).

----

as for your larger point about moral disagreements, ehhhhh. it's a tricky subject. what you have to understand to get an introductory grasp of it (which is probably about all i have) is that a lot of people are ignorant. and not stupid, but just we all have a limited and varied grasp of the world around us. as such, it's hard to really say with confidence that it's a full-on Moral disagreement between two people. [and what's REALLY complicated is that when we try to compare our ignorances and come closer to some kind of mutually available truth, we get emotional and defensive--not to mention we act out on strategic propaganda that other people have barraged us with in our past]

for example, as you might infer from some of what i've written, i'm pretty far to the left. in conversation with people who consider themselves pretty far to the right, it often becomes apparent to me that my interlocutor and i share the same basic value: we do not want to be coerced by a large force into doing things against our will, nor do we want other people to have this happen to them. i would (of course) argue that you can't consistently hold that view and not be far left, but obviously my interlocutor would disagree. still, i think it's very very very likely that the disagreement between me and said far right person lies in either a difference of known facts about the world, or understanding of systems and how they work, rather than in a moral thing. another difference would be who we place faith in, what kind of evidence we find compelling, etc. but in the end, we do both love freedom.