Crapitalism (was No Good Stuff) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

18 Aug 1999

In a message dated 08/19/1999 12:48:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com writes:

...
  Our wholesaler sells cases with (crap) 250 watt power

 supplies for US$20, 250 watt (crap) power supplies
by themselves for $19,   and 
 (crap) replacement fans for $15.   
  I believe the technical term for this would be crapitalism. 
Thanks for the wonderful term.  I'm hereby stealing it, er, adding it to my 
vocabulary.

...
  Can anyone
provide a clue as to why this is so?  Basic economics suggests 
that it costs a *lot* more to produce a case w/psu than a psu alone -- 
likewise for the psu vs. the fan . . .   
  People who try to sell good fans have to charge $35 - $40 for them. You and
  I might say, "Gee, that's a damn nice fan, here's your $35." but 90%
of the
  people walk in and say "Hey man! Why are you tryin to rip me off with this
  fan price, I can buy a whole case including a fan for that price!" To which
  your only response, "Go buy it then and get out of my shop!" Guess what.
  You won't sell enough to stay in business. Its called crapitalism.  
We sell cheap stuff for the chintzers and high quality items for our more 
discriminating customers.  When someone assumes that we are a rip-off outfit 
because we sell some expensive (translate: high-quality) items I have no 
problem telling them to go to Circuit City.  But it's still frustrating 
trying to convince some knucklehead that the higher quality component will 
probably last longer than *they*  will . . .

...
   The weird thing is that sometimes good stuff comes
through the pipe. Fry's
  had an $18/case deal that turned out to have a really nice PSU and case
  inside. Didn't last though :-(. 
Yeah, we get lucky once in a while, too . . .

Glen Goodwin
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