Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: bluegreen23 on May 27, 2013, 12:00 pm
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So, how does a person take into account the differences in price and quality based on location?
some examples to illustrate.
weed in California/BC vs New York.
Cocaine in New Mexico/Miami vs Alaska/Australia
Heroin in Asia vs North America.
etc etc
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Well you may have to pay more for high quality domestically but that's the price you pay for skipping customs, always check out feedback to see what people are saying about the product you want to buy.
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I was more thinking from a seller point of view. For instance I know that cocaine in my area is often heavily cut, difficult to come by, and fairly expensive. However Weed is top quality, a world leader even, and is cheap/plentiful.
How does a seller account for this? I know if I was ever to sell I know that cocaine would be of a lesser quality and even at break even price would most likely cost more than someone from Miami or So Cal. However apart from a few sellers here I believe that weed I could offer a top grade product at minimal cost. But as a seller I would be losing out on income on selling weed at my market value, and would most likely receive horrible reviews for cocaine and not be able to sell it.
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bumping this one above the 11 pages of "spam to 50" because I'm curious how vendors deal with this issue.
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People will pay whatever they are willing to pay, location other than intl/domestic becomes a rather moot point on a site like this. But thats one of the great things about the road, you can get stuff not normally available in your area
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Ideally the market will adapt to this, with the best value goods earning the most money for vendors as they'll get the most sales. The use of forums & reviews means that you can research the goods you are buying and bad quality products will result in less sales for vendors, so they should be more inclined to provide good products at a good price.
Of course, this is somewhat subverted by monopolies due to domestic vs overseas security and the lack of individual testing. Plus good & cheap drugs may be harder to get through customs, so in exchange for security people will go for a lesser quality product, but I'd argue that the better product is the one with less long-term bad effects (possibility of prison due to package interception)
In the end, if you're getting a product that you like, that's all that matters. If you don't like it, don't buy from that person again, simple as that.
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Ideally the market will adapt to this, with the best value goods earning the most money for vendors as they'll get the most sales. The use of forums & reviews means that you can research the goods you are buying and bad quality products will result in less sales for vendors, so they should be more inclined to provide good products at a good price.
Of course, this is somewhat subverted by monopolies due to domestic vs overseas security and the lack of individual testing. Plus good & cheap drugs may be harder to get through customs, so in exchange for security people will go for a lesser quality product, but I'd argue that the better product is the one with less long-term bad effects (possibility of prison due to package interception)
In the end, if you're getting a product that you like, that's all that matters. If you don't like it, don't buy from that person again, simple as that.
Not to seem ungrateful for the thoughts on this but we aren't a cartel. As in product quality isn't always in the vendors control. Not trying to take responsibility off the vendor so let me simply explain with an apple and orange. so I (a hypothetical vendor) buy an apple and an orange locally. The apple is prime, ripe, organic top grade. It has a wonderful taste etcetcetc (you get my point) this apple that costs most people 2 dollars. But because of my location this apple cost me 1 dollar. The orange on the other hand costs most people 2 dollars, and it costs me 1.90. The orange is mediocre. It isn't bad, it's just not good. Nothing special in any way. Satisfactory. Now I have these 2 local products and wish to sell them on SR.
The apple: easily match other vendors here in price and still generate profit. Not only that but there is the possibility I undercut them with a quality product. I can follow the market easily here. if i want a larger market share I can drop my price, or I can up my price for profit as my apple is quality.
The orange: I have little room to drop the price, and my quality will never match the oranges from florida.
now as a vendor I would assume there are 3 options with the weaker quality orange. either stop selling them (not ideal), purchase and resell a higher quality product. or drop the price to make it attractive.
I guess what i'm really asking is.
Are there any other options for the orange ? is there any way to account for this? in a free market are vendors allowed to set up a cartel structure (think gas company, all sell there own product but seem to magically have the same price) ?
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Ideally the market will adapt to this, with the best value goods earning the most money for vendors as they'll get the most sales. The use of forums & reviews means that you can research the goods you are buying and bad quality products will result in less sales for vendors, so they should be more inclined to provide good products at a good price.
Of course, this is somewhat subverted by monopolies due to domestic vs overseas security and the lack of individual testing. Plus good & cheap drugs may be harder to get through customs, so in exchange for security people will go for a lesser quality product, but I'd argue that the better product is the one with less long-term bad effects (possibility of prison due to package interception)
In the end, if you're getting a product that you like, that's all that matters. If you don't like it, don't buy from that person again, simple as that.
Not to seem ungrateful for the thoughts on this but we aren't a cartel. As in product quality isn't always in the vendors control. Not trying to take responsibility off the vendor so let me simply explain with an apple and orange. so I (a hypothetical vendor) buy an apple and an orange locally. The apple is prime, ripe, organic top grade. It has a wonderful taste etcetcetc (you get my point) this apple that costs most people 2 dollars. But because of my location this apple cost me 1 dollar. The orange on the other hand costs most people 2 dollars, and it costs me 1.90. The orange is mediocre. It isn't bad, it's just not good. Nothing special in any way. Satisfactory. Now I have these 2 local products and wish to sell them on SR.
The apple: easily match other vendors here in price and still generate profit. Not only that but there is the possibility I undercut them with a quality product. I can follow the market easily here. if i want a larger market share I can drop my price, or I can up my price for profit as my apple is quality.
The orange: I have little room to drop the price, and my quality will never match the oranges from florida.
now as a vendor I would assume there are 3 options with the weaker quality orange. either stop selling them (not ideal), purchase and resell a higher quality product. or drop the price to make it attractive.
I guess what i'm really asking is.
Are there any other options for the orange ? is there any way to account for this? in a free market are vendors allowed to set up a cartel structure (think gas company, all sell there own product but seem to magically have the same price) ?
No offense taken, I think I get the point you're trying to make and there's no clear answer to be honest. I oversimplified it a bit in my original post by assuming that everyone could get a good quality product regardless of location, so I get what you mean now. Before I go on I should say that I'm nowhere near knowing a lot about economics, so someone could easily come in here and have a proper answer for a question and I could be missing something really obvious.
I suppose that there's no real way to account for the weaker quality orange, and it comes down to a bit of a cost-benefit analysis by the vendor. If you sell the crappy orange at a tiny profit, it's still better than no profit, no? It's unavoidable that some people are going to be able to offer better products at lower costs, and it's up to the vendor to decide if it's worth selling at a little profit, or if their time and money is better invested in what they can do best. If you can spend $10 on oranges and make $1 profit or spend $10 on apples and make $10 profit, surely it's better for you to focus on selling apples? Who cares if you're no longer selling oranges, you're making far more money with your apples.
As for the consumer, this could lead to it being more difficult to get certain products if they can only order what they want from an international source, but then a vendor can justify a higher price if they can supply the same product domestically, as it's more secure for the customer and that security adds to the value of the product.
On a somewhat side note, I'm not sure if a cartel structure is in the best interest of anyone except for vendors, and I'm gonna plant myself on the side of customers in advocating against cartels.
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Just wanted to say thank you for walking through this with me. I figured the options were limited much the same way a mom and pop shop might have trouble competing with walmart or an exotic specialty boutique. I'll have to try and figure this out but as you said perhaps it's better to sell apples. ;D
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Buy cheap off the market...sell good on the streets ;)