(02-03-2020, 12:02 AM)andrewjs18 Wrote: (02-02-2020, 11:40 PM)jeffm54321 Wrote: (02-02-2020, 11:27 PM)GroomingDept Wrote: Stuff
Stuff
I'm not sure why the wet shaving world is held up on some pedestal....it's a market, where goods and services are traded/sold just like about everything in existence today...whether flipped, traded or sold, who cares? if someone is willing to pay the price for something someone is selling, who is harmed in that transaction? the seller and buyer both benefit, in some way...
Wetshaving is an activity.
Some people have elevated that activity into a hobby.
Some of those hobbyists have formed communities. There is no grand unified wetshaving community to which all of us hobbyists belong.
DFS is a forum for - among other things - discussion of the wetshaving hobby as well as facilitating commerce among wetshaving hobbyists. I don't spend enough time on DFS (as evidenced by my late arrival to this thread) to say whether or not the people who post on this forum also consider themselves a community.
I do spend a fair amount of time on Reddit's r/wetshaving. That forum has a sense of community, albeit a fairly loose-knit community. The associated IRC channel has a strong sense of community.
Flipping - selling hard-to-get items for more than you paid - is perfectly legal. But it isn't always compatible with a sense of community. You find an under-priced rare razor at an antique shop, clean it up, and sell it to a random stranger for fair market value? Great. Nothing wrong with that. Are you part of a hobbyist community? Are you selling to a fellow member of that community? Now community considerations come into play because you may want to weigh your financial rewards from the transaction against how the transaction will be viewed by the community. No moral judgments, just pointing out that when you're acting within a community, you can't avoid some level of community judgment of those actions.
In some wetshaving hobbyist communities, rare gear is often bought/sold/traded among community members at well below market value or even loaned or shared at no cost. This kind of behavior strengthens the sense of community and promotes a positive feedback loop of generosity. If you were a member of such a community and bought a hard-to-get item at below market value within the community and then turned around to sell it at a higher price either within the community or external to the community, you would likely (and, in my opinion, rightly) face significant blowback. Did you do anything illegal? No. Did you harm the community? Yeah, you probably did, you selfish bastard.
Then there's the case of flippers who buy the hard-to-get goods directly from wetshaving artisans with the sole purpose of reselling them for a profit. People who do this should just own the fact that they're chasing dollars and quit trying to spin it as "making hard-to-get stuff easier to get (for hobbyists with a bankroll)". If you're one of these people, you shouldn't be surprised if people don't want you in their communities.
But, like I said, there is no grand unified wetshaving community. At the same time, you should recognize that there are wetshaving hobbyist communities and communities are not required to allow unrestrained capitalism. So, you know, you do you... but don't march up into r/wetshaving IRC and be all "but muh economics!" and don't march up into DFS BST and be all "but flippinz evil!" Exercise appropriate situational awareness and if you do want to be part of a community, be prepared to behave in a way that supports that community.
