Musings on the wide world of auctions...
This is mostly about how I've finally taken the plunge and started selling stuff on eBay. I realize this sounds, well, somewhat less than momentous, seeing as how there are probably more than a million people who are already doing exactly that, but this is something that I'd been working up the nerve for for a long time.
As usual, that got me trying to figure out why it was such a big deal to me if everyone's doing it. It's not an aversion to commerce -- despite my socialist leanings, I really enjoy shopping and I'm even quite the proponent of free markets that are actually free as opposed to oligarchical empires with shady purchasing agreements, barriers to entry, and exclusive contracts. It's really the whole idea of setting prices for things that freaks me out. Commerce is a moral issue: I think that if I sell something to someone at a price where it doesn't make their life better to have completed that transaction, I have hurt them and ought to feel badly about it. I don't want to give away everything I own, but I don't want to treat anybody unfairly either, even if it's just by accident.
That implies that maybe the auction system is the right match for me, since it creates a situation where the person buying the thing (assuming that they're a rational adult in control of their higher brain function) isn't paying any more than they think is a fair price. There's not even the garage-sale awkwardness of, "Oh no, I said hello to you and now I don't want your stuff! I am a horrible person and now I must get some random doodad to atone!" (I confess that local businesses often produce this reaction in me.) In theory, every buyer is a responsible adult stranger, and I've not had the opportunity to coerce them into anything they didn't really want to do.
In any case, I've posted a few auctions now, and some of them even have bids. I think that it's going to work out okay with my head weirdnesses, which is good, because I have a metric ton of old computer and electronics stuff to sell off.
Nothing I'm getting rid of is part of the electronics lab or the main collection -- it's just stuff that I don't need any more, saved from the uncaring dumpster, or got as part of larger lots and have no particular use for. And thanks to my dad's retirement, I've got a few thousand floppy disks and boxes of old electronics and computer books that were just going to get chucked otherwise. None of it is any use to anyone if it's buried in a landfill, so it's almost a form of recycling (albeit with a background of diesel fumes from mail trucks, and that part does bother me, and I'm not quite sure how to reconcile myself to it). It's rearranging stuff so that it's with people who want it more than is currently the case, and that feels like not-bad-thing enough so that I'll be able to sleep at night.
[On the other hand, I'm already getting the bizarre e-mails offering side deals, etc. No, I'm not to going risk getting my eBay account suspended by ending an auction five days early to sell the item at half-value to someone with a feedback rating of 5, sorry.]