Hacker News Reader

Comment by herbetdangerbri | Hacker News Reader

> they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone else

I don't understand what it means 'to take advantage of someone else' in the context of this thread.

Is Starbucks taking advantage of me when I want a coffee by selling me a coffee?

Is Elton John taking advantage of my desire to see him play live at my party and the fact that there is only one of him by charging me a million dollars to appear?

Are the bus companies taking advantage of my need to get to work when they sell me a ticket?

I don't get where normal economic transactions and supply and demand becoming 'taking advantage' or 'exploitation'.

View on HN

Well that's pretty easy.

The most obvious form comes from the good old (bs) saying that 'the real price is what the buyer is ready to pay' (feel free to correct me here as to actual form of that).

Hiking up price to a drug (the shkreli story) would be an exploitation and not a 'normal economic transaction'.

So would be buying time of some poor workers in China for a dime. And then selling what they make on a 10x margin and pocketing it. There's nothing economic about that, its plain old theft (or deceit, whatever you want to call it).

There are more subtle forms, like apple spreading bs about their products being 'the best' and them having a 'vision' and then some uninformed fella buying stuff they make when its sometimes twice the price for objectively comparative product. Like always the devil is in the details.

This is all highly endorsed by the 'greed is good' model and it won't stop until we denounce it. No amount of government regulations can change it, snakes will always find a way. It's all in people's heads.

But the decision to buy this overpriced shit is made by the people and not buy the companys. This seams like bad decisions if you have not that much money or want to spent it better.

The real problem are systems where rich people doen't have to buy so much taxes of automated productions or property.

It's theoretically trivial: most transactions have a surplus. How is the surplus divided between the seller and buyer? More lopsided, more exploitative.

Some transactions leave one side even worse off, but they execute due to ignorance, stupidity, or force. Those are obviously exploitative.

This is a fantastic point. It's just another transaction, like the hundreds of other ones you do every month. You can almost always find somewhere cheaper to live. Can't find a house/apartment to rent in your price range? Get some roommates, or see about renting a room in a house, it'll be much cheaper.

People tend to get seriously up in arms about renting, when in reality it's not nearly as bad a deal as they make it out to be. A lot of times it can be a better financial choice than owning.

Some food for thought: http://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/02/23/rent-v-owning-your-home-op...

I'm with you. I think it just means "They are bad people. Not like us. Do it this way and you will be good."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com