Ebay assignment 12/22

Write a 1-2 paragraph description of your experience and a 1-2 paragraph analysis that connects your experience of capitalism, through this assignment, to the AWOL.

Well I'm going to be completely honest with my experience : i did not win anything and i got to the point where i didn't want to bid on anything. i was bidding on a pair of Frye [brand] boots that are really expensive in stores so i thought id get a pair on eBay . There was only one available in the style/size i wanted so i bid on it. i had a day and a couple hour and i bid twice , once the night of the assignment and once about a couple hours before it ended. i was planning on bidding once again a couple minutes before the auction ended but the price was too high i wasn't willing to pay that much for USED boots so i gave up .

But i did actually have the pleasure of winning a couple years ago with my sister. it was actually 4 years ago when i first [and last time] bid on something on eBay , my sister and i found this really cute bag that's thousands of dollars in stores for not so much on eBay so we bid and won it . When the bag arrived we realized that they gipped us off and that it was fake and we got pretty pissed and never bought from eBay again :(

There are a couple things i can say about our economy from my two experiences. My first experience reminds me of supply and demand and market prices. It also reminds me of competitiveness of the free market . the fact that there was a free market and that anyone can buy and sell on eBay makes it competitive to get the supply. The reason why i didn't get my supply was because of the other people competing for the same thing. In all situations ,there is the one person who is willing to pay alot of money for the supply while theres always someone (me in this case) who isn't willing to pay above market price and gives up. This experience also reminds me of the WAllmart incident that happened on Black Friday. So many people are fighting for things on sale, they will fight for anything that is cheaper then the original price. So in this case , everyone was fighting for about 70$ off a pair of boots,they where competing for it. While at WAllmart the same thing was happening,everyone was fighting for the items on sale that they even trampled and killed a person!

My second experience made me think of the invisible hand and the free market/competition as well. it reminds me of the invisible hand because the people are selling knockoffs of really expensive brands on eBay and making alot of money off of them . this represents the invisible hand because these people are not even thinking , they automatically think of this strategy to make more money and do it. It also connects to canal street,when there are all the fake purse sellers on the street, it is there automatic actions that leads them to sell fake products to make more profit because they know people wont pay thousands of dollars for something. this also connects to free market because since anyone is allowed to sell and buy in this society , these people are allowed to sell fake products over the internet. Which leads to the competiveness of the "fake purse"sellers online,they all try to do better then one another.THis once again leads to canal street,when you walk down the street you have about 20 chinesse people screaming in your ear to buy a "gucci"bag ,etc.They are all fighting for my attention and competing to get the richest family to buy lots of fake bags.

over all eBay is a good representation of the economy all trapped inside of a computer screen.