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Posted

Ethics of Arbitrage

At work we had in interesting discussion about my noble act of arbitrage. Buying cheap and selling dear.  Recent activity includes buying keying tracking device TracR or £2.50 and sell them for £14.99. The most extreme case was a book I bought for £12.00 and sold  £500, is squeezed him down from a score to £11.00.  May workmates find it hard to believe that I am doing Gods work by providing value.

I would like to mention that I also work for Local Authority doing the Nobel service of being admin assistant to Waste Operations , and supporting the front line  staff and have  Long Service Award certificate from them. Over 20 years of service.

Any honest comments welcome, I am not easily offended.

 

Kind regards.  

Posted

Arbitrage can only be considered wrong in an unfree market whereby the seller isn't allowed to freely sell or not sell to whomever they desire, that is they are forced by the government to sell to people that they don't want to sell to, thus they may be forced to sell to a manipulative purchaser instead of a wider customer base who help the seller more by using and spreading the product in a more desirable fashion and may form a more reliable customer base than a single 'exploitive' customer who would reduce the 'good vibes' the seller wishes to create around their product by selling it for a reasonable price (as opposed to a heavily marked up price by someone in the arbitrage business). The market is full of 'middle men' when it comes to selling items. They operate stores and naturally mark up the prices of the product so they can make enough profit to sustain the business. I see no issue with taking on the risk of buying an item to resell it so long as it was freely sold to the person or people performing arbitrage. If the product is worth more why didn't the original person want to sell it for more? That's a fair question and where the middle person comes into the equation providing some potential value.

 

On another note I don't believe you're doing God's work either, but that's just because I'm an atheist and don't think anyone is doing God's work.

Posted

A lot of manipulative language here. Noble, god's work, supporting the front line, talking about possibly being offended. None of which have any bearing on whether two people are trading voluntarily or not.

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Posted

A lot of manipulative language here. Noble, god's work, supporting the front line, talking about possibly being offended. None of which have any bearing on whether two people are trading voluntarily or not.

 Yeah. If the OP is looking for rational ethics then whether or not it's "God's work", whatever made up definition that has, has no place in the conversation frankly. If you're looking for 'religious ethics', that is, made up ethical standards which aren't really ethics, but social standards in a religious group, then you've come to the wrong place I think. So which is it? If you want false religious ethics I'm sure there is some religious person who can manipulate the text in a satisfactory way. Religious people are all about looking to deceive themselves with false ethics, they just need something that 'sounds good', which is enough to enable them to pretend what they're doing has a legitimate basis. Faith is pretending to believe in god and religious ethics is pretending to be good and finding someone who can manipulate the words of the bible (or whatever texts) to satisfy their particularly needed obfuscation and level of deprivation of truth and meaning from words.

Posted

 I used the word gods work meaning all things good. At work most folks are Christian the rest are either not strongly Christian or accepting of Christianity. In this forum I wouldn't have used the G word.

Posted

 I used the word gods work meaning all things good. At work most folks are Christian the rest are either not strongly Christian or accepting of Christianity. In this forum I wouldn't have used the G word.

In what way does "obey my arbitrary and contradictory demands or I will set you on fire for eternity" fall under all things good I wonder?

 

Are you saying that a transaction has to be "good" in order to be voluntary? Good according to whom? If good is subjective, how would we measure whether or not a transaction is voluntary if "good" is a requisite?

Posted

In what way does "obey my arbitrary and contradictory demands or I will set you on fire for eternity" fall under all things good I wonder?

 

Are you saying that a transaction has to be "good" in order to be voluntary? Good according to whom? If good is subjective, how would we measure whether or not a transaction is voluntary if "good" is a requisite?

Because the government is a consensus of the people and democracy, they will regulate what is good, ja? We was having a discussion how government helps to prevent discrimination by mean of laws and regulation.  If someone refused to sell me goods because he thought I was ugly, or didn't sell good to blacks.  What is your thoughts on this.      

Posted

Because the government is a consensus of the people and democracy

Democracy is incompatible with consensus. If all people chose something identically, there would be no reason to vote, nor any reason to coerce them. Nobody in any government is beholden to anybody, including their own job description.

 

Don't forget that gang rape is democracy in practice.

Posted

If someone refused to sell me goods because he thought I was ugly, or didn't sell good to blacks.  What is your thoughts on this.      

While acting ethically, what could you do in reaction to such an event?

 

I ask, because, although many here can tell you their thoughts, I think this question is a better way to reach an answer that is already in your thoughts.

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