I have a friend who runs a small vintage clothing store, she sells at what she considers fair prices, and will also put in tons of physical labor to actually repair stuff with period accurate materials and such.
She’s got local highschool kids coming into her shop now to buy up random things then selling them at a 500% markup online. She doesn’t want to ban them, and she doesn’t want to raise prices and participate in the scam, but it sucks for everyone.
I don’t like it when thrift store prices start climbing, so I’m going to agree with you.
But since I’m a commie I must begrudgingly point out that “gentrification” and price rises are the result of income inequality and not because <insert group> are assholes (they’re taking advantage, and not the primary cause).
Band-T-lords
When I was like 19 someone told me “You should try dropshipping its how I make my money and its great!” and I was like “Wtf is that it sounds like a word some scammer would make up.” And they explained it and I said “Oh. I was right you are scamming people.”
If it just referred to moving your base in Starcraft, the world would be a better place
if im not wrong profit is not a problem for the individual, it only becomes a problem when capitalists steal that surplus from the workers. if you spend hours through clothes and sell from for a (REASONABLE !!!) profit thats not the issue. you probably have to spend money on transportation and spend time going through things, washing them etc. thats not effortless and takes some work.
i think it also depends on the individual. a genuinely broke teenager doing this for some pocket change is not evil. somebody who doesnt need to do it selling shein for $50+ dollars? thats not ok.
i don’t really think merchandising is productive labour, it is more like becoming a mini petite bourgeois no? the line can be blurry about what i find “acceptable” but it is profit seeking at the end of the day
petite bourgeoisie
I think there’s some nuance to it, mainly based off how well off the person doing it is, but overall I’m opposed because it drives up thrift store prices. Maybe it’s just my area but all the thrift stores have been going downhill/gentrify-ing for the past decade. Was Macklemore’s Thrift Shop to blame? In part probably, yea.
I still thrift because that’s how you find old stuff that’s well made and not just plastic crap but the prices have been climbing.
It probably varies by region but the resellers at my local goodwill are all like young moms and fresh immigrants who spend hours sifting through piles of garbage to make the smallest profit ever. I’ve never really understood why I’m supposed to hate these people when they engage in the mildest form of arbitrage around. Like 95% of it is going to end up in a landfill anyway, who cares?
In my area its mainly well-off yuppies doing it as a “side hustle”.
If they’re so well off then why are they doing it
it’s a hobby for a lot of people
Some things are easier to do as a side job than as a main job if you have enough money to live on to start with. Any amount of variability or risk is automatically cushioned until you hit profitability.
Or not. I’ve seen idiots play big business boy before and come out way negative and they keep going. It’s not a side hustle for them, it’s a hobby pretending to be a side hustle the way they do it.
One could ask the same about billionaires
I don’t see billionaires at the thrift shop (I assume)
These apples aren’t orange!
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
And also recycled clothes
Thrift stores increasing their prices due to people flipping stuff from them is so fucking depressing lol
I worked at a thrift store. The amount of brainworms all those old volunteers have are incredible. “The right buyer will pay 20$ for this” SHARON WE HAVE TO THROW OUT THREE DUMPSTERS WORTH OF CLOTHES EVERY DAY BECAUSE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SPACE ON THE RACKS WE CANNOT HAVE THE 17TH GLASS JUG ON THE SHELVES FOR FUCKS SAKE
Not to mention that we have no way of contacting “the right buyer”. Clothes is one thing, but furniture, instruments, art, pottery, games, electronics, and everything else? Yeah you can make a living finding stuff like that and reselling it, but WE ARE A THRIFT STORE WE DO NOT HAVE THE CONTACTS NECESSARY TO DO THAT SO YOURE JUST WAITING AND HOPING FOR SOME RANDO TO WALK IN THE DOOR WILLING TO PAY 200$ FOR A COUCH BECAUSE GOOGLE TOLD YOU IT RETAILS FOR 1000$ I HAVE THROWN OUT 17 COUCHES TODAY FUCK OFF
Did y’all just throw clothes away in a dumpster right near you? That seems like a neat way to get clothes for very very cheap
I worked at a second-hand store attached to a garbage dump/recycling centre. The clothes we couldnt put on racks or sort through would just go to get torn to shreds in order to be reused as textiles. Depressed me a lot.
I think part of the deal of accepting donations to resell should be that you’re barely allowed to evaluate quality and pricing.
Thrift stores should have categorical prices. T shirts are $5, dress shirts are $8, shoes are $15, and so on. It doesn’t matter if the shirt is from Walmart or Gucci, a t shirt is $5.
There are whole computer programs for evaluating thrift quality and pricing.
Is this Project Cybersyn?The people who wrote those programs should go to prison
Landlords operate on a very real scarcity, and gouge out 40-70% of people’s incomes every month.
Thrifted clothes are really cheap in comparison, and are a much more elastic product. I mean, yeah, you can’t really live without clothes (naked people have little to no influence in society), but an item of clothing will last you years if not decades.
If we’re going by use value, it’s still really cheap, thanks to the overproduction in the fashion industry that has been ongoing for over 50 years.
Idk, if thrift stores in your location are running short on clothes due to resellers, it sounds like the problem could be better solved by incentivizing people to drop clothes off at the thrift store instead of in the trash.
naked people have little to no influence in society
Look I’m working on it okay?
Mark Twain said “Clothes make the man”, but he didn’t say anything about whether that holds for enbies.
kill the buyer, the seller
Retail is a really fascinating concept to me because it does produce value in the sense that the retailer is connecting the consumer with a product that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Retail is probably the oldest trade and has been essential to the development of civilization. It’s an incredibly fine line between that and rent seeking though. Ideally the surplus created by socialized production and industrialization should do away with retail and to a limited extent it has, but instead private ownership has flipped it totally on its head so the whole thing is marketing and rent seeking now.
that sounds similar to scalping
scalpers have an appropriate name to what we totally won’t do to them
It’s fine they can cover up the damage with those Metallica tickets they bought that I didn’t
My niche case where I’m 100% fine and I don’t blink with this is themed or specialty resellers that list at acceptable prices.
Takes fucking FOREVER to go through racks for a renfaire costumes so having a concented storefront helps. But if they just double the tag they bought it at for pricing and call it a day may the devil take them. You need to price it based on what it’s worth duggie.
