You can do the wrong thing and admit you’ve fallen short of the ideal ethical response. But the overall vibe I’m getting is that most people are convinced that they would not have done anything wrong by just taking the boxes and moving on with their lives. I haven’t found any of the reasons or rationalizations provided very compelling. I personally at the very least would feel a bit of shame for taking $20k from someone because a mistake a child made. But the general response here is completely shameless.
My understanding of the story is that adult children sold boxes owned by their aging father. Not that this resolves anything, but it certainly would look even worse on the buyers if actual children sold it to them.
Resealed case is fraud. Very different scenario.
A more comparable case would be seller listed a genuine rocket box at a price that is significantly higher than market value. If someone bought it and had buyer’s remorse, too bad for him.
Fraud typically requires intent. What if the seller just didn’t know?
The actual situation is also not clear-cut as you are trying to make it because you are buying the boxes from someone that really had no business selling them in the first place.
Ok , serious response: I’d return it. The profits from the box wouldn’t be worth the baggage on my conscience, but that’s more so because I’m in an ok spot right now financially. If I was broke and incapable of making money some other way, I would admittedly probably keep it.
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If we go into the realm of ‘what if’, the debate might be pointless because we can always find a ‘what if’ scenario that suits our argument.
What if the buyer really thought $30 is the market price and sold to another person at $30 too? What if the $10 bill used to pay for the box is a rare error note worth more than $20k?
The what-ifs are not pointless at all. That’s how you explore the moral landscape and probe our moral intuitions. The goal is not to argue, just to reach some sort of idea of what we collectively lean towards as either appropriate or inappropriate behaviour.
For example, the answer I’m trying to get at is whether the obligations of the seller are stronger than the buyer in terms of “doing the right thing”. If so, why?
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Money isn’t worth it for a life time of regret
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I’d throw down $30 faster than you can blink.
I’d return it if I found out it wasn’t theirs to sell.
If it was just a seller that later discovered they sold it way too cheap, then sorry. Should have done your homework first.
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100% of e4 members have sniped an incredible deal on eBay or related platforms where the seller didn’t know what they had.
The part that makes this scenario more troubling is that the seller did not personally own the items and did not have permission to sell them. For some on here, this doesn’t matter.
It is what it is. No need to delve further and get into moral superiority.
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No one is claiming moral superiority and no one is obligated to participate in this conversation if they aren’t interested.
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I dont know about you but none of my deals have been anything remotely close to 30 dollars on a 20k product. Maybe at best I got something for like 50% of market value and thats usually just because it was an auction. Its also much different on ebay where if you dont buy an insane deal, someone else will a second later vs being in person and being able to explain to the person what they have right then and there and they can immediately decide what to do. If someone posts an insanely good deal on ebay, by the time I could message them about it and they log on to ebay to read it, the items already sold to someone else.
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If I had found that for $30 I’d assume it was fake but I would probably take the risk and purchase it and do more research on my own time.
I think if I later found out it had been sold without someone’s knowledge, I’d like to think I would return it but unless I’m in that situation I really couldn’t say.
I wouldn’t think any less of someone for making a different decision to me.
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who/what determines what value is the limit for acceptable profit? Is it morally okay to purchase a $100 card buy it now from eBay when previous sales are $200?
this value will be totally subjective and differ between people who have different life experiences or are in different financial circumstances.
it is short sighted to condemn anyone’s moral compass without delving deeper into it.
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Are you saying that people are OK that the seller has been “ripped off” but would not be OK if it were the buyer?
It’s no ‘gotcha’ for me, because people buying Team Rocket boxes for $20,000 at flea markets should do their own due diligence. If they think the seller is an idiot and they know better, then they need to do their investigation before they fork over the money. Once it’s done, too bad.
And for the sake of your hypothetical, the person with more information is the buyer in each case not the seller, so the buyer can’t demand a refund if they are wiser than the seller. It’s their own fault.
Maybe people are all using a different scenario. If it were an actual kid, I wouldn’t. This is an adult woman. You wouldn’t expect the former to be informed but you would the latter.
Perhaps also acknowledging that it’s a collectible, which is basically one person’s trash is another’s treasure is different from whether you just find $20,000 lying in a briefcase on the street. Everything can be valuable to someone for whatever reason but useless to another or in the case of collectibles, the 99% of the world.
Moral institutions and ‘what are the right things to do’ are subjective based on personal upbringing and values. We will not be able to reach a consensus.
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I feel like this thread has provided such varying view points. It’s refreshing
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I purposely avoided the word consensus. There’s entirely fields of philosophy devoted to discussions like this. Surely there’s some value in a discussion even if we don’t all agree?
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This is why I created this thread. I was curious on what others would and wouldn’t do. The responses were interesting and I appreciate everyone’s perspective.
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