I bought an old motorbike for 5 cases of beer this weekend.
This
italics
Spoiler
Main character dies
Boooo
this is
I’ll trade you the motorbike for a red paperclip.
When shipping used goods, tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods, are generally calculated as a percentage of the item’s value and collected at customs clearance in the foreign port.
Anyways enough being pedantic yes you should absolutely buy used locally to avoid these taxes.
I was gonna say, there goes my dream of buying a brand new Honda CB500F. The MSRP is ~$7000 right now. It’s gonna skyrocket.
That is a bit high, but I think it might still be worth it. And Honda’s are well made too, so it will last you a good while.
Hell yeah!
Yes, I will buy secondhand Bell peppers.
Peppers go well from cuttings and sometimes seeds. Sorta secondhand action there
Yeah we do actually do this with peppers from friends that have more room for growing stuff when it’s not -3837473837 degrees outside.
Grow your own ;)
Can always buy fruit and vegetables containing seeds
Don’t know if sterile seeds are legal over there for you americans though
I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure the seeds used to grow commercial produce are patented. I could very easily be wrong though lol
Found some info:
“In 1980, the US supreme court ruled in the case Diamond v Chakrabarty that patent protection can be used for living organisms, including plants. Seeds, which have been openly saved and shared by growers for thousands of years, could now be claimed as an invention.”
Who cares? It’s deeply immoral to patent any living organism. You’re under no moral obligation to obey patently unjust and corrupt laws. And if you’re only “pirating” organisms on a small personal scale, your legal risk is nil. If you start an industrial operation selling patented foodcrops, then you’ll get in legal hot water. But just in your backyard garden? No one is suing you over that unless you create a whole YouTube video series publicly documenting and celebrating your actions.
Fuck evil companies that dare to patent living things. The very concept is an abomination against nature and common decency. It’s not only morally allowable, but a moral obligation to violate these laws whenever it is practical to do so.
I like where your head is at. I’m trying to think of a thought experiment…
A genie is willing to give me a one-million dollar loan and guaranteed instructions on how to genetically modify a seed to better feed 8 billion people - heck, even solve world hunger. That catch is I have to pay the genie back TWO million dollars.
I try to work with the government so the public takes on the (zero) risk and is on the hook for the money, but they don’t play ball.
Is it better for me to reject the deal than patent the seed? (I can ‘sell the patent to public domain’ once I break even!!)
PS: I suppose the genie should just be an investor because that is kind of how our beautiful, perfect, and fair capitalism plays it out
I know we both just want a better system so this experiment is about the status quo
alas my climate lends itself to little now than carrots and potatoes.
Build a greenhouse of out junk!
I will immediately do so on my small narrow balcony. Or did you mean by a house?
Neat life hack. If you need more space, there is a tried and true solution. Simply declare the apartment next to yours as part of your people’s historic homeland. Then proceed to occupy and annex half of your neighbor’s apartment.
Sorry about the Google affiliate there. You can make a pretty good container garden on a south-facing balcony. I even had an ok setup on my north-east facing 5th floor balcony.
As far as buying a house goes, if you are in the US, I would wait. People are going to be underwater on their home soon and will be desperate to sell them…into a market that is saturated and few buyers with the cash to get one. Give it 2 or 3 years is my advice, and you’ll be able to get a better home cheaper.
I bought my house last year, knowing full well that trump could win and would tank the market and make me underwater on my mortgage, but I don’t really care since I don’t see the home as an investment that needs to pay off, I just need to be able to afford it.
This mf over casually talking about buying houses like that’s something I’m ever gonna be able to do. Wow. Some of y’all really live in a bubble.
It is not a casual thing. It took every penny I had, and then some, and then even more from my fam. I’m extremely lucky to be in my own tiny house. Hopefully the market gets to the point where buying a house is an option for you.
Philosophically speaking, the difference between the “haves” and the “have nots” in my parents generation was having a college degree. I think for millennials the defining thing is going to be home ownership, which is why I stretched my budget very thin to get in one. Good luck.
Sorry that stung, feel it
Something odd:
It also feels, perhaps, respectful in a sense: a stranger mentions their small apartment and no one assumes it’s necessarily the same residence they’ll be in forever. Not that it matters either way… not to people who matter. (Obviously having a garden if you want one, more peace and quiet if the neighbors are loud, etc. is still going to be the ideal for any resident)
67.4% of all occupied housing units [are] occupied by the unit’s owner
@[email protected], did you realize the ownership situation of your housing unit matches the majority’s? I don’t know what I would’ve guessed, but definitely less or more than 67%.
🤞 to a fairer future from this optimist
There are indoor grow tents available for $100-400.
I’d probably put one of these in a spare bedroom if I had one, or at the very least next to a window in case I need to manage humidity on a short notice.
I’ve honestly contemplated turning my garage into one but it’s not well insulated so heating would be a challenge but I might give it a go still
How cold are your winter temps? I was looking at building a greenhouse that would connect my garage to my house, it would essentially give me another zone of hardiness for my plants and add a month or so to both ends of my potential growing season. Plus, being able to grow without needing pesticides and herbicides (or at least not nearly as much) is a huge boon on its own.
between 0c (32f) and -20c (-4f)
i think spray foam insulation may be doable since all beams are exposed in my case, it’s a detached garage so it will have it’s own thermal envelope.
I could always try it just to see what the pain points are and work from there to avoid over building.
I’d see about a small stand-alone greenhouse for starters. The look like a rack covered in a clear tarp. Monitor the temps in that, and you can probably expect similar, if not slightly better performance out of a larger GH. That should give you an idea of what you can grow and when.
i keep trying to get secondhand underwear but the upcharge is ridiculous
Secondhand needles, on the other hand, are free. People just leave them lying about!
I would love to see a source for the actual claim that buying used avoids tarrifs, because all I can find says that tarrifs still apply to used products being imported.
I think its meant as in: used products already in the country
Get ready for used goods to cost more than today’s new goods.
Any member of the class of people who toil in the soil are peasants in China. That’s roughly 50% of the population. What’s offensive?
No tariffs at the thrift store.
Don’t give them ideas
Or, better yet, just give the stuff you don’t need to the people interested in getting it, and participate in mutual exchange.
Crush capitalism!
- Posts item for free
- Gets message “how much does this cost?”
- ”Its free”
- ”Can you deliver it to me? (Insert some excuse here)”
put item on sidewalk with sign that says “free!”
Item sits there for months
Remove sign that says free, and replace with one that says “$100 OBO”
Item is gone by morning
“Unfortunately, no. I currently don’t have resources to deliver stuff, but I’ll be happy to see you at my place!”
But yeah, classic on your end :D
Even if you intend to give it away for free, still price it. Once it’s free it will attract a lot of… shady characters. In my experience at least. Even asking a very cheap price will almost eliminate all the weirdos and odd requests. It’s like they only search for stuff that’s free. When it came to my kid’s old toys I ended giving it away for free when they came to pick it up with cash in hand.
Yep! This has worked really well for me! If I list things as free, I tend to get people with tons of questions and excuses, and lots of flakes or scammers. If I post things with a pretty low price, people are usually much more pleasant to deal with.
Even better to donate to a toy library, to make sure it isn’t going to someone who is just going to flip it.
Off Topic: But its the same reason why there are adoption fees on pets. Otherwise there are weirdos trying to hurt kittens.
Free table - sits out for days
Put an 100 dollar sign on the table - stolen in 5 minutes
This is actually a tactic Antoine-Augustin Parmentier used to popularize potatoes in France. He couldn’t get people to accept potatoes, so he placed armed guards to protect the plants, and withdrew them at a certain point in the day so that people could steal them.
That’s when you make them pay the shipping + a bit of extra charge for your time since they did asked for price before.
Sure you can probably get a good value on a bluray player because people are getting rid of them still to go all streaming. But can you get a good price on a used working order 4K TV? Probably not. The prices of even used 2 generation old goods are going to be as high as they were when new before tariffs hit.
Used is not going to be cheaper in a week or a month or 3 months of tariffs, it’s going to be the same amount as new right now or possibly more.
The fact also is these days there are sooo many resellers, flippers, scalpers. People who think it’s a side hustle to go around buying up cheap used stuff and selling it for just below the price of new stuff and pocketing the difference. It’s become so hard.
Gotta look at the right places and be patient
I went to an estate sale and got a bunch of freebies
I also picked up folding mattresses for 10 usd when a new one is 60 ish
My pc is a secondhand for about 600 or so when the parts itself are 1.2k new
Buying secondhand is not the same as just walking into a store and finding what you need at a fixed price.
Sure it’s harder especially for certain things (mostly hobbyist stuff and fashion) but TVs are not hard to find for a reasonable price.
Jesus Christ, every post I open up is just negativity. Go back to Reddit with your well actually. Maybe try standing up for something. Here is a clue: don’t buy a4k TV. I’m pretty much done with this platform
It was just an example. Probably not even a good one. Sorry for the negativity though. Feel badly for lending towards a negative mood but well I had my own reasons, negative experiences. Just the same I’ve edited a little.
This is exactly what he wanted. You are now buying amongst yourselves. Not saying it’s bad advice, but worth pointing out
“Hurr durr I’m going to make up bullshit to male orange cheeto look good by twisting bad things to make them look good”
That’s you, that’s what you sound like by the way
Your god emperor orange cheeto wants to kill people for not being white or being LGBTQ+
Shut the fuck up about how the orange cheeto is doing good because we both know its bullshit
Fasciasts aren’t welcome here
Wait. What? I hate trump. My point wasn’t “hey, look how smart he is”. It was “you might think this is a life hack, but its not. This was the intended outcome”
It certainly was not. The idiot just thought this would be a great way for him and his buddies to rake in money. He never imagined people might stop buying new.
it is almost the intended outcome, and economically is quite similar.
Buying some old shirts =/= restoring the manufacturing sector of the United States.
Is this true? Buying second hand doesn’t add to gross economic output, and doesn’t add anymore jobs. I only buy smartphones second hand because the market for them is so evil, with all these throwaway landfill devices. Its one of the only boycotts I can do in this smartphone dependent world.
if reported creatively enough it could boost GDP, and increase the number of “independent businesses” which can be assumed to have at least one employee (the owner/ person wearing /selling clothes)
you aren’t thinking about cooking the books hard enough.
Are you sure that’s how it works? Seems like a huge loophole to avoid the tariffs
It’s not a loophole. And it’s not quite the tariff hack it’s made out to be here. There’s no tariffs sure. But tariffs will undoubtedly increase the price of the item when it is bought the first time which means it will then cost more in the secondary market. Still, buying things second hand is fantastic and is highly, highly underutilized in the current climate.
Tariffs are a fee you pay to import something. The assumption of the meme is that you’re buying something second hand that was imported before the tariffs (or after, it doesn’t matter, you’re not importing it).
I mean, 99% of the time you’re not the one doing the importing anyway so you don’t actually pay the tariff but the company you’re buying from will, and will almost certainly increase the price to make up for the higher cost to supply.
99% of the time you’re not the one doing the importing anyway so you don’t actually pay the tariff but the company you’re buying from will, and will almost certainly increase the price to make up for the higher cost to supply.
This is a contradiction. Yes, the end consumer may not be directly be responsible for paying the tariffs, but we’re still paying it when a company passes on the costs to us.
…
It’s absolutely not a contradiction, it’s a technicality. You as a person will almost certainly not ever pay a tariff in your life. And there’s a very small chance that a supplier might partially or entirely cover the tariff, either to retain customers during what they might hope is a temporary policy, or to undercut competitors.
I get why you want to say what you’re saying though.
I feel like this could easily devolve into a circular debate. I see you as on the side of “technically correct”, while I’m looking at it from an “all roads lead to Rome” aspect.
Regardless, the end result is the same: people like me and you are the ones who are paying higher prices.
God you two are both idiots you’re saying the same thing you’re just arguing for arguing sake.
Myself and @[email protected] are not the enemy here. There is absolutely no reason to attack each other. If you want to get angry at someone, get angry at the oligarchs.
You will never pay a tariff, but you will pay more (about exactly the cost of the tariff if not a little more for a bit of extra profiteering) is a distinction without a difference. It’s not even meaningfully pedantic.
I import wine. The entirety of the tariff is not being assigned to all products equally so that wine we want to hit the shelf at $12 isn’t getting a massive increase as we will take the hit to move the product. What we won’t do is bring that wine back again because next time it can’t be $12 and it isn’t worth $15-17.
There’s an example of the customer not paying the tariff and the business
If I want to buy wine from you it will now cost $15-17 if I wanted to get that wine and if you wanted to supply it. How is that cost not being passed directly to the consumer and ultimately being paid by the consumer? If you paid the tariff price and kept the retail price the same then that would be a whole different situation, but that isn’t going to happen. The end customer will pay the excess.
We are eating the tariff on the boat that’s in the water and refusing to carry it after that.
We are specifically discussing the situation in which it makes a significant difference: items which were already imported. Someone asked a question if second hand items were somehow a loophole which indicated they needed an actual understanding of how tariffs are applied, not your vibes-based fluff.
Yeah on second hand goods, I’m not disputing the point. “You will never pay a tariff in your life” is not qualified by this discussion.
You will (probably) not pay a tariff in your life in much the same way that will not pay the Suez Canal fee, carbon tax, employers tax or municipal rates.
We get it, you’re very clever and have figured out the absolutely bare minimum of economics that higher costs lead to higher prices. The original commenter was asking a technical question about a loophole and it’s been answered. You don’t actually have to contribute if you don’t have anything relevant to say.
Corporate sellers are going to add tariffs prices regardless of whether that product was impacted by a tariff or not whenever they possibly can.
The guy from craigslist is not paying taxes, sorry for the convenience.
You’ll never believe how it effects sales tax (if you’re not buying from a second hand store).
Or just don’t buy at all.
That’s the reduce part
But I want a bigger bike :(
OK buy secondhand. Or buy junked parts and build it. It’s not just eco friendly, it’s also fun
build it yourself after that build it for others. eventually later start a new BiggerBike company. profit … retire.
