[cctalk] Re: Another original Apple I sells for an insane amount

Who the hell appointed you "person who determines how much profit other people can make"? Why is making $1 on a $10 item not sleazy, but making $9 on a $10 item sleazy? Who determines how much is sleazy and how much is not? Some Soviet style board of acceptable profits? All of these assertions are bullshit. Capitalism is freedom. Self-appointed nanny's of appropriate profit margins can go screw themselves. If coercion and deception were not involved, there is no amount of profit margin in the world that makes a transaction immoral. Each person concluded their side of the deal in a way they thought was fair, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. If I have a pretty yellow rock that I sell to someone for a dollar and that person later resells it for $2500, because it was a hunk of gold, there is no crime. There is no sleaze. The purchaser is neither legally nor morally required to tell me that my rock is a hunk of gold that is very valuable to others. I once did contract software work for a guy in Houston. When discussing the work, he blurted out $100/hr as a rate. I accepted. Had he said $40/hr I would have accepted. Was it sleazy for me to take his offer instead of talking him down to $40/hr that I was prepared to accept when the conversation started? Of course not. Apple has a ~60% profit margin on iPhones. Do people who want iPhones and buy them feel ripped off? No. To them, having an iPhone is worth more than an iPhone costs, or they wouldn't buy it. The person who bought the iPhone felt they got more than their money's worth and Apple got more than its raw cost of production in selling the phone. It was a win/win transaction. The same is true here. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>