"Is Getting Screwed Part Of The Hobby"

There was an earlier thread concerning the thieves and scoundrels selling mislabeled stamps. You know a large queen for a small queen, or that "rare" Lincoln ( violet purple shade) and the discussion morphed into what could be done about it.
Recently I bought a used car. The bargains in the used car market are those that need work. The discernment is knowing what is major money wise or not. I have a Taurus with 3 days work into it now and it's great. Total 1500 plus 200 parts, 115K. My other hobby. It was good to find out that all the thieves and scoundrels are all not in the stamp business, a rod knock described as a air pump going bad....PLEASE.

Over the last day or two I have decided that getting screwed is as American as apple pie when it comes to money. Front page yesterday, investment counselor takes clients for 300 mil.

I think the APS or Linns could do a better job, but really the people reading these pubs are not the ones getting screwed. I think it's a matter of personal responsibility.

As a conservative I have always believed in my responsibility for my actions, not just wen it's convenient. (No excuse sir). I bought Scmidts book, Armstrongs book after being told a coil was bad. I knew I didn't know enough to play on ebay so I quit. Last 2 stamps I bought , H Gitner thank you. To get rid of the thieves in stamps you'd probably have to ban ebay, Hip and all the other markets that cast that wide net looking for the pigeons. As a conservative I would disagree, it's personal responsibility. I think getting screwed is as much of the market as honesty is. I thought a lot about this over the last couple of days,, These are some of those
Cheers mark

The world has a balance,
For every positive there's a negative.
It's part of life and will never go away, just my conclusion,
choose to focus on the positive and learn from the negative.
Some will do anything for a dollar!

First, being taken advantage of has ZERO to do with being American. Humans have been taking advantage of each other for eons regardless of country, race, or religion.

So I do not think the issue is not whether or not there will always will be people who take advantage of others, the issue is how we react to it.

One of the life lessons I learned by over the last 8 years of living under a cancer life sentence is that I have little control the inevitable outcome of this disease. I am going to die and cancer will be the reason. But the one thing that I do have some control is how I react to the situation. Do I walk around whining, playing the victim, and spreading negativity to everyone around me? Or do I make the best of the time I have left?

Of course there will always be those take advantage of others, but do we just shrug and whine about it without trying to help? Do we just spread the negativity, accelerate the decline of the hobby, and stand by as people get screwed? Or do we remain positive and productive by trying to educate and help others avoid being taken advantage of?

From my chair, it seems like a no-brainer. Just this week a healthcare worked told me that I was a true inspiration, that she could not believe what I had come through yet had been able to maintain a positive attitude. But because of my attitude, they allow me to work as a patient advocate and talk with other patients, the overwhelming majority do not live for longer than a few months. But I think I can make a difference and have had many thank me for my advocacy.

I do not tell these patients that 'everything is fine' or that they too 'can beat the odds'. I help them face their situation with positivity about the time they have left and what that means to those who they will leave behind. Do they want to be a bitter, angry, and negative person as their last legacy before leaving this earth? Do they want to spread their negativity to those around them? Or do they want to be remembered as being positive, productive, and considerate of how their attitudes are impacting everyone around them?

We do not often have control over the external things that happen to us. But we do have control over our attitudes and our reactions to the external things that happen to us. I recommend that folks try this for a few weeks; when someone asks you how you are say, "I am incredible". If you are vertical and dressed, it is a really great day. And even if you are not vertical and dressed, you can still be positive, productive, and spread happiness. Being positive is not only a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy but it is also contagious.
Don

Getting "screwed" should never be an intrinsic part of any pastime. It sets a pathetically low bar. It is also not an ideological/philosophical issue. That just puts complex humans into silly boxes. "conservative", "liberal", "neoconservative", "progressive" should have zero bearing on whether fraud and dishonesty are accepted as inextricably intertwined in a hobby.

In case no one has noticed I have a decidedly conservative outlook on things. I believe in personal responsibility in one's life. There is no way I can stretch that to accepting fraud or anything that hurts people financially or personally by practicing deliberate deception.

Is it practical to expect no fraud? Of course not. Humans are a messy bunch. But accepting it is not an option.

When someone enters our hobby, they should not have to be "screwed" as a part of a rite of passage. Nor should they have to earn a Master's in Philately to safely purchase stamps. As with any avocation you start at the beginning and work your way forward hopefully learning much in the process. Self-education should be part and parcel of that journey, but it does not alleviate others with more knowledge from calling out shenanigans and trying to affect change. You do not build muscle by sitting on a couch and you do not clean up fraud in philately by accepting it as a cog in the wheel of collecting.

If you see something, say something. Others might learn a great deal from it. If not specifically then at least in a behavioral adjustment to always questioning and having a healthy cynicism.

I think getting fleeced is part of capitalism. And I know I have been fleeced.
Some say "caveat emptor" which is cautionary but too many enjoy it.
In terms of commemorative stamps, it is pretty much an honest market.
The problem lies in definitive...varieties, shades, watermarks, perforations, overprints.
I would never ever buy anything like that on ebay.
My perception is that most ebay dealers are "shady" wheelers and dealers. And probably that's also the case with dealers generally.
I am a collector. Most people are.
Few really have the expertise to be philatelist.
Few of us are mechanics and savvy enough to buy a used car without it being looked at by a friend who knows what's under the hood.

Likewise would we really have the expertise to know "overprinted in carmine" from "overprinted in red".

When capitalism is overthrown, it will all be wonderful.
I am doing my best.

Yes, I also cannot wait for a socialist paradise to be established on earth in which the typically ultra-efficient government runs everything, everyone is rich, no one gets fleeced, and every service that one could possibly want is absolutely free. What can I do to help?

For clarification Rogdcam, I used "conservative" in the dictionary sense of the word, not the political sense. Think risk adverse, think traditional values, think individual not political.
mark

I know.

FYI - I believe that there are regular flights to Venezuela.

Oracle,
Efficiency is very over-rated.

Fraud is a part of human activity, including the collecting of desirable items. The more desirable the item, the more you can expect those who practice deception to be involved, especially if the offer is "too good to be true". Anyone can be deceived, but the uneducated/naive are most at risk. Specialists who overestimate their knowledge are not immune to fraud. They should take note that reliable expertizers only examine material of a limited range.

Yes but bigger than that, getting screwed is a part of life. In fact the "screwers" are given a pass in many cases by enough folks that the "screwed victims" have no chance.

Until a society is willing to prevent a screwer from ever screwing again, screwed victims will grow in numbers. For now our American society is backwards in as much as the focus is coming up with ways to defend and excuse screwing as well and define some screwing as necessary and appropriate thus to be fully excused. In short, the feelings and needs of the screwer trump the feelings and loss of the screwed victims to the point that the screwed victims brought the screwing on to themselves.

The duplicity is best shown by the dichotomy of, "Please enforce the rules against those who screw except not against me or my family members."

Or, in hobby terms, "Look at those auction prices, we the sellers are must be getting screwed for those high prices." NEVER, "look at those auction prices, wow we are getting fantastic deals, and boy did those stupid sellers get screwed."

Get the perpetual motion machines up and running to power that society.

I think that perception of what is right and wrong can partly be a cultural thing, though it is more to do with an individuals own sense of right and wrong.When we get something that is not as described do we consider does the seller understand what they are describing. I once met a Stamp dealer who showed me a sg43/44 plate 77 I agreed with him that it certainly looked genuine to me (there are about 6 known specimens in existence) I consider that dealer as honest because he said that he wasn't going to sell it because he couldn't bring himself to beleive he actually had such a stamp, he couldn't identify it as forged or "wrong" but he couldn't believe it could really be what it appeared.The same dealer being a small time trader might very well genuinely misidentify a stamp and unintentionally miss sell a stamp. Has he screwed me, if I am the victim of his ignorance? I believe the guy would give a full refund if you found out something was wrong. He sometimes sold me Machin collections at what I thought was a bargain price because as he said I hate Machins they are so difficult to identify. If I told him he had sold something at a low price he would say that this was the price I paid he had made a profit and that was the end of the matter. It would have been very easy for him to betray my trust. Once I sold him a dozen stamps for £24.00, he then literally sold one of them to the guy stood right next to me for £42.00 He hadn't screwed me he had merely been able to match his purchase to a buyer in a way I couldn't.
I think we all need to identify when we are being cheated and when we have taken a gamble and lost. If I buy an old Album of stamps I expect some will have been misidentified that is my risk. If the seller says look this stamp has 5 perfect penny blacks, and the penny blacks have been heavily cleaned patched and repaired then the seller is cheating. if the seller said they appear to be good stamps, but I am not an expert then assuming he isn't lying then it is my responsibility to identify the condition of the stamps it is all about trust. Right and Wrong, Moral and Immoral. Greed versus Honesty. To throw a real hand grenade into this discussion I will say I don't trust US citizens as much as a Canadian when it comes to business and money. something done in Friendship fine Americans are great, but in business I count my fingers after shaking hands. This might be pure prejudice, but a friend who has to conduct business as part of a sales team agrees that Americans have a slightly different attitude to straight dealing in business to some other nations. I hasten to add that Stamp community all count as friends so far.

As has been stated before, humans have been screwing other humans for many thousands of years, and will continue to do so for as long as humans exist. Nothing anyone does will change that from a collective standpoint. Individually, knowledge is the only answer to the problem. It has been written "the wise man knows what he knows, and also what he doesn't know". As long as people do not let greed move them beyond that, the chances of being seriously screwed diminish significantly.