alt Hacker NewsI have an elderly client who sends me links of stuff to buy all the time. One day it's one of these streaming sticks, the next day it's half-price stamps, and I tell her every time, please don't buy this stuff. And yet she does anyway, as if I was almost being mean and saying no just to say no.
So yes, I do want to blame the purchasers of these things, sometimes. To prove her point that her stamps were legitimate, she mailed me a card using one of her half priced (but likely fake) stamps and it made it through!
Replies
What is the world view (aka context) of this little old lady?
Watch the news and see CEO's with golden handshakes after the company is nailed for something. Wall street failures. Companies getting government bailouts. The current US president. It is all about getting away with what you can.
The news - being the news - doesn't show process as per normal. People doing the right thing most of the time.
In this context, fake stamps for the "little person" doesn't even rate a mention. Who the hell is going to raise a moral panic about an old lady with fake stamps...
And so the "little people" will keep buying fake whatevers as long as it stretches their dollar further.
What is your line of work, if I may ask?
Half priced stamps work though, and nobody is going to prosecute grandma for counterfeiting postage stamps.
> half-price stamps
Who is selling half-price stamps?
#1 How big is your potential market? It's people still mailing things from home, who haven't figured out how to do postage on their computer.
#2 Of the population in #1, it's those who find real stamps so expensive that it's worth bothering with discounts.
#3 Of the population in #2, it's those who would want to buy something fraudulant (or not know better) and who would want to risk using it.
#4 Considering the size of the #3 population, how many stamps do they use in a month?
#5 What is your margin on a half-price stamp? You have to pay for advertising, printing (we're talking a profit margin under $1), packaging, and your own time, but at least shipping is free!
Then again I used to torrent everything under the sun and it actually rocks to have every tv show, movie, game ever released for free forever.
So is it greed? Yes, but I did it too so now that its more accessible I cannot really blame people.
Perhaps they grew up in a time/environment where "if it was that bad they wouldn't be allowed to advertise it", and they're still using that old calibration?