Page 6 of 6 FirstFirst ... 456
Results 51 to 57 of 57

Thread: Grey Market

  1. #51

    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Location
    32250
    Posts
    43

    Grey Market

    Kevin's argument is a classic example of the losing side of prisoner's dilemma. As brief as it goes, if police aprehend two suspects but need testimony from one to get at lease one conviction for the suspected crime, the technique is to isolate both of them and offer each the opportunity to go free in exchange for damaging testimony versus their cohort. Thus each suspect is faced with a choice; if both don't talk, both go free. If one talks and the other doesn't, the one who attempted to work as a team goes to jail while the one who attempted to thwart his cohort goes free. Invariably both choose to talk. This applies well to why cartels such as Opec rarely succeed in their efforts to raise the price of the good that they could control with cooperation. If everyone elected to get less for their money and buy as locally as possible on each purchase decision, there would be plenty more (inefficient) jobs available to the populace. That much is certain. But to think that this idea can perpetuate is foolish, and in due time this will be realized by the Kevins of the world as well as all middlemen distributors who seek to maintain their windfall profits per unit. Nonetheless, even I guilty of taking the loser's side of prisoner's dilemma in an effort to be an idealist. I choose not to own a gun nor knowingly maintain a friendship with anyone that does, vainly hoping that if no one had a gun we'd all be safer in the process. Nonetheless, if I'm shot I'm sure my dying thought will be that I'd wished I'd had a gun just before my killer tried to shoot me.

  2. #52

    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Redondo Beach
    Posts
    547

    Grey Market

    Your last thoughts should be commands from your cerebral cortex to your legs to run.
    Jonathan Brewer

    www.imageandartifact.bz

  3. #53
    Kevin Kolosky
    Join Date
    Jun 1999
    Posts
    791

    Grey Market

    Jarrod

    I don't know where you went to Law School. I do know that I went to William Mitchell College of Law and graduated Cum Laude and I have never heard of anything like the concoction you have dreamed up in my 10 years of practicing law. I think you have been watching too much tv and reading too many radical books. One thing is for sure. If your theories were true there would be no retail anymore. That might be good for prices in the sense that there would be no middlemen to mark them up. But without the efficiency of such a system we would have chaos. Moreover, you misunderstand my points. Once again, I do not say it is wrong to try and find the best price. What I do say is that those who do not buy locally should not complain about the disappearance of local services that have to close becasue they are not supported locally. And by the same reasoning they should not complain about losing their job to overseas competition if the price of their labor is too high. I for one want to be able to go down to my local camera store and look at things and be able to buy things that I need right now. In order to do that the store has to be there. In order for that store to be there it has to make a profit. It is as simple as that. Kevin

  4. #54
    Kevin Kolosky
    Join Date
    Jun 1999
    Posts
    791

    Grey Market

    And to Jonathan

    When I was in undergraduate college I took 3 or 4 courses in macro and microeconomics. One things I remember vividly is the theory of the velocity of money. I do not know if that extra money would be spent specifically on a hospital or a road or whatever, but I do know that its velocity ( as the economists call it) would contribute indirectly to all of those things and much more. Kevin

  5. #55

    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Location
    32250
    Posts
    43

    Grey Market

    I didn't go to law school, Kevin. My degree was in geography, the major in the United States that is the least declared by incoming freshmen. This is due to the abundance of space here in the USA; in other less space-endowed countries such as England(where it is the fourth highest declared incoming major) geography has plenty of respect.

    My wife is a practicing attorney and a graduate of Emory University's School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia. She works as a large firm's pro bono specialist, and also will be attending a two-year fellowship for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund's charter office in Atlanta come October.

    I didn't dream up prisoner's dilemma, it was taught to me by a respected geographer from the University of Florida named Grant Thrall. Prisoner's dilemma is taught in many fields ranging from geography to economics to sociology to law-including some classes at Emory's School of Law. Plug the words "prisoner's dilemma theory" into any search engine and be enlightened. It is a primary tenet of cooperation theory worldwide, and frankly I'm suprised you've never heard of it given your educational background.

    In geography, prisoner's dilemma describes why cities without political or geographical constraints suffer from vast urban sprawl and horrible traffic. Consider Atlanta, a city I'm quite familiar with. Atlanta has many municipalities at the fringe of their city limits, and these municipalities are all too happy to give a new housing permit to an individual that works in Atlanta and wishes to live in their town. A prospective new citizen twenty years ago would be faced with an easy choice; live in Atlanta and pay higher prices affected by the value of land that those goods occupy, or buy a new house in a subdivision just outside of Atlanta that has much lower prices and more space in exchange for a relatively small sacrifice of time. If you're the amongst the relative few to make this choice, you benefit greatly from it. The problem is that many others will also make the choice, and in the end your exchange of time for money will become a disadvantage. The same distance takes three times as long to travel at 4:30pm than it does at 4:30am.

    This is not beneficial to Atlanta itself either, because it negatively affects housing values as well as creates a large population of individuals who earn their income in Atlanta but spend their property taxes out of it. Invariably the end result is worse traffic for everyone as the metropolitan statistical area becomes less and less efficient with its space. Now Atlanta, through no fault of their own, suffers from the worst traffic in the USA outside of Southern California.

    Examples of effective constraints to this end result are a) the Vail valley in Colorado, where the geographical boundaries on either side of the city are ardorous enough to discourage most from commuting b) Disneyworld in Orlando, who wisely purchased a much larger tract of land than they'd need-knowing that at the fringe of that tract would be poorly planned urban sprawl c) European cities in general, who are extremely reluctant to give new housing permits-which thus guarantees a compact city will stay just that.

    You're certainly correct that prisoner's dilemma is currently changing the landscape of the retail industry forever. Quite rapidly, people are being accustomed to the less visceral feeling of online shopping in exchange for great availability and lower prices. So all retail shops that sell items that don't need local representation are as doomed as the station wagon was at the arrival of the minivan in 1984. The end result of this will be that people's expectations of localized service solutions will vanish. Then competition will ensue amongst the sellers that can compete on price to see who can provide the best service. This service costs money, so in the end there will still be at least two alternatives for the consumer: a firm based purely on price and a firm based on relatively low prices and with excellent service. There have always been customers loyal to both, and there always will be.

    Germany effectively competes in the world market despite absurdly high labor costs. They're able to do this by manufacturing goods that depend more on unique traits rather than competing solely based on price. This is the model for an effective transistion of American labor-compete on other elements besides price and you will be effective in surviving. Compete solely on price and you must face the most desperate laborers head to head in a battle that will be lost until your desperation matches theirs.

    But without the efficiency of such a system we would have chaos. You and I have vastly different definitions of "efficiency".




  6. #56
    Kevin Kolosky
    Join Date
    Jun 1999
    Posts
    791

    Grey Market

    Jarrod

    After checking with a local economist concerning your last post, I am told that if anywhere your theory could have evolved it would have evolved in the United States already, and while it may evolve to a degree, it will never be mainstream. Moreover, he tells me that efficiancy and and cheapness in price do not necessarily coincide. I like what some of the other folks have said. If there are people in this country who are offering good deals, then buy from them. If you live in a country other than the U.S and your local guy offers a great deal, buy from them. Kevin

  7. #57

    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Location
    32250
    Posts
    43

    Grey Market

    Kevin

    Once again, prisoner's dilemma isn't my theory, but rather a tried and true explanation to the actions of man done in the singular which profoundly affect the collective. I don't know which historical mind was the first to document this, but it wasn't me.

    As a geographer I look to the spatial aspect of nearly everything, but I'm curious as to why it matters to you where the theory originated. Do you wish to discredit it due to its origin?

    if anywhere your theory could have evolved it would have evolved in the United States already, and while it may evolve to a degree, it will never be mainstream. I completely disagree. The way we buy a greeting card, for example, will not be changed by more cost-efficient methods. Same goes for fresh fish, flowers, gasoline or the other myriad of purchases that have great spatial advantages or requirements. But in the world of urban development, prisoner's dilemma is absolutely, positively the mainstream model for the unchecked evolution of a metropolitan statistical area. Instead of asking an economist, ask a geographer or urban planner. I just picked Atlanta to make the point, as this is perhaps the worst example of its impact.

    In the last few years there has been a cyclical change in housing values in the USA, with a decades- long trend being reversed: People with high incomes are choosing to once again locate within the primary city's limits, generally tearing down an old small house and putting the largest possible house upon this piece of land that the law allows. In geography it has been termed "masionization," and it has occurred because the time sacrifice of living in the bedroom communities has finally outweighed the monetary savings.

Similar Threads

  1. If 18% Grey Is A Midtone ....
    By Scott Fleming in forum Style & Technique
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: 10-Mar-2006, 21:16
  2. Little Hat Trick (Grey card)
    By Castelberg Tom in forum Lenses & Lens Accessories
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 5-Mar-2002, 02:40
  3. How To Make/Buy Pure Grey Paint?
    By Bill Glickman in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 15
    Last Post: 26-Jan-2002, 14:57
  4. Where can i find a grey card?
    By Clark King in forum Style & Technique
    Replies: 19
    Last Post: 27-Aug-2001, 16:58
  5. warranty/grey market
    By Raven Garrow in forum Resources
    Replies: 18
    Last Post: 25-Feb-2000, 19:00

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •