I don’t know if there are other ways eBay could lose money on returns. But my single data point: the very first thing I sold on eBay (a manual lever espresso machine) got returned because the buyer clearly didn’t know how to use it, and claimed it was defective. And because eBay has a money back guarantee, they just reached their hands into my back account and withdrew the earnings from the sale + the shipping costs for the delivery to the buyer + the shipping fees for the return. They even kept their listing fee and the sales tax. So… I don’t think eBay stands to lose money directly from returns. Maybe they risk pissing too many sellers off with an increased rate of this horrific experience?!
eBay needs to focus attention, efforts and resources on this if it's an increasing problem so the alternative uses for those resources is a cost.
If sellers like you get mad and don't list that costs them too.
Like etsy, they long since worked out that most volume is through dropshippers of products mass produced in China. Or a few physical businesses like houseclearers which can manage a high throughput. If you're a random private seller with a single item, you're an inconvenience to them.
"Power Sellers" - there was a statement that your business (for marketplace-type-business) needed to have an avenue to support "mega" suppliers for eventual symbiotic success.
There was a business a while back that was like "pay $50-100 to carpool from SF to LA" and the post-mortem was: "your earning potential was limited, no power-seller support" b/c eventually just turn into a bus-driver/bus company. (Uber is an interesting contra-example).
It's stuck with me as a quick analysis of business-types: how does the power-seller eventually make 10x, or at least 2x median wages?
Thinking a bit more, it would be quite handy to have a "power seller" AI for all my random junk. Spread it out on a table, pan a camera over it, then leave it to the computers until someone's willing to pay an amount for one of those objects that's worth the work of packing and shipping it.
This is a really cool idea. A sort of table where you just leave the stuff that you want to sell. There could be a dedicated tablet / computer where to interact with the AI (adjust prices, receive orders) and a little printer to print the shipping labels.
Until that AI can take the item, take photos, describe the item properly, drop it off a post office - I assure you, dedicated AI will only slow you down.
> There was a business a while back that was like "pay $50-100 to carpool from SF to LA" and the post-mortem was: "your earning potential was limited, no power-seller support" b/c eventually just turn into a bus-driver/bus company. (Uber is an interesting contra-example).
I think Uber would absolutely turn into a bus company if their risk tolerance allowed for this. It did change from "I have a car and free time" to "I'm buying a car to be a full-time Uber driver"
Damn, I thought Etsy was supposed to be handmade, artisanal products from individuals or small businesses. But maybe they did that initially to build a reputation and then transitioned to chinese product dropshippers.
I don't think it's Etsy fault other than allowing it. If someone is selling artisanal wooden cutting boards, someone will see it and think how they can do the same-ish, but with less overhead. Someone will also make "How I make money of etsy" video and sell their courses, probably to double-dip.
Anecdotally, I see a lot of small sellers using FB marketplace. Those are cash/venmo type deals done in person. That might just be because I live in a big enough metro area to support that.
It's about a difference of degrees. If experiences like yours happen very rarely ebay is fine with it but if it become too common then sellers will leave which is obviously a huge loss for ebay.
I only sell stuff on EBay as-is, no returns. I'm not sure if this protects me from their money back guarantee, but it gives me a little peace of mind until I too get bitten.
My listing was as-is, no returns. Didn’t matter. And I tried challenging it. Recorded a video where I opened the returned machine, assembled it, and pulled a perfect shot of espresso. Based on my server’s access logs, nobody at eBay even viewed the video. Whole experience cost me over $200 in shipping fees. Horrible experience.
IANAL: but if a seller misrepresents what they’re selling then “As is” doesn’t help them. If I sell you a Ferrari “as is” but I send you a kit car that looks like a Ferrari, “as is” ain’t gonna help.
Yep. Therein lies the rub. eBay inserts themselves as the middle-man here. But they take 0 responsibility for assessing disputes if a buyer claims an item was not as described. They just arbitrarily refund buyers, and automatically pay for the shipping fees from the sellers' connected bank accounts. To make matters worse, as a seller, as far as I know, you can't limit how much the buyer can spend on shipping. So, e.g., if someone on the other side of the planet buys something from you, pays for shipping, then says "item not as described", you're going to be on the hook for a large sum. I guess this happens rarely enough for most big sellers that it's worth continuing to use ebay. But for average schmo use-cases (like selling old household goods), it's a ridiculous risk.
Selling as is helps a bit but it only covers regret returns. If the item is not as listed such as claiming to be new but the packing is opened, you're still obligated to accept a return
It blows my mind anyone can hold this opinion after 10+ years of Trump very publicly spewing racist garbage. Let's just review a few recent examples:
- Claimed Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors' pets
- Currently claiming Somalian immigrants have setup vast networks of fraudulent daycares
- While he's worked diligently to stop immigration from, what he calls, "shithole countries" like Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan, he's advocated for increased immigration from "nice" or "beautiful" countries like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He also specially carved out a special South African Afrikaner refugee status for white South Africans.
- Repeatedly called SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese virus, "kung-flu", etc.
- Told four congresswomen of color (3 of whom were born in the U.S.) to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". A bipartisan resolution was passed in The House condemning these comments as racist.
- And we can go back a long time ago, and remember the Central Park Five, where he relentlessly attacked five innocent black and latino children, calling for the death penalty for them. Even after DNA evidence proved their innocence, Trump never apologized or acknowledged wrongdoing.
Each of these you could try to individually explain away as a misunderstanding or whatever. But there's an abundantly clear pattern of racism, not just with Trump, but much of his administration.
Think about the magnitude you’re talking about here. Every internal combustion engine on earth is emitting CO2. Every volcano, forest fire, coal power plant, etc. The atmosphere is massive. We’ve been, basically, doing our best to pump it full of CO2 for the last 150 years, and this is what we’ve got. Ignoring the chemical challenges with your idea here, the scale is impossibly gargantuan.
If I'm understanding your example correctly, these types of firings are possible thanks to Right-to-work laws. Which political party introduced and continues to advocate for Right-to-work? Which has generally opposed Right-to-work and has supported workers unions, which would protect workers from arbitrary firings?
I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted.
The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
> Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests?
Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate), or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
Edit: if the above are too extreme, another approach would be firm and consistent application
of anti-competitive laws, resurrecting the fairness doctrine, and stop pretending that artificial constructs have human rights.
> or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control.
> Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate)
The reason why this worked is because FDR oversaw the US during a period of incredible change and after the Great Depression. It's not like the tax rate was responsible for his successes.
> > or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
> This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control.
They already do in the US, so this is a non-response.
> > Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate)
> The reason why this worked is because FDR oversaw the US during a period of incredible change and after the Great Depression. It's not like the tax rate was responsible for his successes.
Once again, this is a vacuous response. If the claim was “high taxes caused the change during FDR’s time,” “There was change” is not an alternative explanation to that claim. If we took the counter-factual claim, do you think the period would have been as transformative if the tax rates weren’t high?
> This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control.
Politicians already have political power in every country and political system. The blatantly corrupt ones get the death sentence if their provincial or central committee patron can't save them, and those get culled every decade or so, so you can't go overboard.
That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely.
But theres a balance to be struck there — keep the government too small and weak and it is susceptible to corruptive forces from domestic and foreign enemies alike.
So imho it isn’t enough to simply keep government ‘small’ —it is also important to keep it the size proportionate to other potential threats.
It’s also important to keep in mind that size is but one dimension and is only being used as a proxy for power which is the ultimate factor that matters — a government of one person with control of WMDs can be much more of a threat than a large government without WMDs.
Small government goes against the original and deepest Capitalist thinkers, who all pushed that strong government oversight was a REQUIRED part of Capitalism to keep it healthy and in balance.
That's a solution. Another would be to enshrine in law independent watchdog agencies whose goal is to win trophies for rooting out corruption, reducing waste, preventing or breaking up harmful monopolies, etc.
How valuable are those trophies compared to bribes, or the tacit bribes of cushy "consultancy" roles? How do you stop lobbyists from gutting those regulators - what use is a fiercely independent regulator that has no resources?
Getting money out of politics is the hardest part.
I am not sure how the US will find the political will short of getting burned badly enough for partisans to align on reform. How bad does it have to get?
That's no solution, since once someone has corrupted said small government, the obvious next step is to use the influence to increase its size and power.
Capitalism by it's design, and as outlined by it's original and deepest thought leaders requires strong and decisive government oversight to keep it in check and keep it healthy. Being against strong government oversight is to be against a working, Capitalist system and against traditional Capitalist thought.
Strong and decisive don't mean huge expenditures and picking winners. Our government does so much more than governing. Capitalism needs a government that sets and enforces rules in the face of market failures. It doesn't mean a government that redistributes trillions of dollars.
There's more than one type of government that can resist corruption, since much that drives corruption is extra-governmental (populace education level, media environment, trust in institutions, wealth equality, etc).
So it's unsurprising there are different optimal anti-corruption government types for different combinations of those qualities.
Yes. But, I don’t think a single one of those “least corrupt” top contenders could be described as:
> The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
Which was kind of my point. In reality, the least corruptible types of governments tend to be ones libertarian-skewing Americans would crassly describe as socialist.
Singapore is strange place - aside from being a city-state. You'll get sent to the gulags for being in possession of a joint, but prostitution is legal. I know a guy who once got in a bar fight there, and he immediately packed up and went to the airport.
I wouldn't exactly call it lightweight government.
The graph here can get a bit wonky. And Switzerland is definitely the closest example of “limited government” working, I’d agree. But both of those countries, e.g., have universal healthcare. Switzerland through a more strict version of something like the ACA. Singapore, state-funded. Switzerland has compulsory military service, higher taxes, more gun regulations, etc. than the U.S. I think the U.S. beats these two on having a more conventionally “limited government” design.
I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces.
Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch.
For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D.
These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich?
The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies.
However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen.
Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government.
Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster.
Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care and is corrupt? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent?
I borderline want a conscription-style policy, where young adults are required to live in Boston, Philadelphia, NYC, DC, Seattle, or Chicago, car-free for a year. Americans’ inability to even imagine a world where a car isn’t the way to get around is really a problem.
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