Soaring Eagle 666
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- Sep 24, 2017
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Yes, that kind of competition is harmful. Simply using a greater reserve of money to sell the same things for less profit does hurt the economy by driving out the legitimate businesses while contributing nothing of value.mastermind.... said:Soaring Eagle 666 [JG said:" post_id=364981 time=1654882021 user_id=346]Well, it sure does work... Look at any cheap product on Amazon, like a USB drive of a certain size, and you'll see that the cheapest one (by a good brand) has at least 10x more reviews. Why? Because people, myself included, will simply sort the list by price and pick the cheapest good one.
Say what you will, but the facts speak for themselves. Cutting prices to compete works, and successful businesses do it all the time. (Yes, gradually lowering price is the way it happens, but the end result is the same.)
It's better that people specialize in their niche rather than compete.
Lets say that in your country there are ten IT companies that specialize in making apps. Is it better that they all work at making ten apps that are basically the same app but rebranded and then compete, or ten completely different apps?
What kind of structure will deliver the most happiness to people?
Likewise, if there are ten vehicle manufacturers, do you make them all manufacture cars? Wouldn't it be better if one makes cars, another makes bikes, another makes tractors, etc. ?
Competition for the sake of competition is stupid and harmful.
Imagine that you invest a lot of money to create a product. It fails. Then you invest money to create another. It fails. And another. It fails. After ten failures, one is a success. You price it at $100, it's durable, it sells well, gives you a nice profit margin and the buyers are happy. Then some jew from china makes a cheap copy for $10, with almost no profit margin. It's not durable and on top of that it's designed to break after a year. He sells just long enough for you to shut your business down and fire your employees. Then he increases the price to $50 and makes the product even worse, as there is no competition any longer. The buyers will be almost forced to buy after a year since their unit will most certainly break.
My father used to have a bakery right next to a major road. A group of jews (literally) opened a bakery in front of his and they started selling at such low prices that they were losing money on every sale. People were throwing insults at him, how he was exploiting people and being greedy for having such high (which in fact were normal) prices. After he shut down and fired the well paid employees, guess what happened? The jews increased the price and made the product worse while keeping the employees on a slave wage.
Competition for the sake of competition is parasitism. It's inefficient, harmful and destroys the economy.
Competition is good when it drives innovation. If I invent a more efficient process for manufacturing computer chips, then I could make the same products as my competitors for less, because it actually costs me less. That's great motivation for people to invent, and it does contribute to the economy because less labor will be done to create the same value, thus leaving more labor available for other tasks. It also advances science.
Specializing in a niche is also good. Both are healthy for the economy. Successful companies usually do both. They have their niches, and they compete directly on innovation, like AMD vs Intel, for example.
However it's done, proper haggling involves labor from the customer. You have to argue to get the best price, otherwise it would just be based on some social credit system of how much the store thinks you're worth, which would surely turn into an oppressive dystopia. Offering lower Internet prices to poorer countries works because their economic value is less. The same labor there produces less money here. If you tried this at a supermarket, you'd get unethical situations where a rich person pays 10x as much for the same produce as a poor person. This not fair because their money is of equal value because they're both in the same economy (assuming they go to the same supermarket). Whether you define money as good deeds or productive labor, this problem happens if haggling is done without labor.mastermind.... said:Soaring Eagle 666 [JG said:" post_id=364981 time=1654882021 user_id=346]
Is the price unique to each customer? No. (That would be very impractical.) Therefore the price is a reflection of what they are willing to pay, (an average as a group). Even if you start high and go low, at any given time, the price still reflects groups of customers, not individually. So, the money will still not be a reflection of good deeds, which is the problem with your idea.
We certainly have the technology to implement individual pricing solutions. Many internet subscription companies do it already by offering a lower price to poorer countries. We can certainly create some tech to allow for individuals to haggle over every single item in the grocery store.
So, after dispensing with the case of laborless haggling, that leaves normal haggling. (Not sure which you meant, so I'll cover both.)
I believe most customers enjoy not having to do the extra labor of haggling when buying cheap necessities. Forced haggling is also a waste of time and labor, which is bad for the economy. The customer could be spending that time doing productive work, instead of haggling over an orange or something.