Dishonest Collectors
Michael Edward Marotta
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE THIRD SIDE OF THE COIN |
| (c) Copyright 2000 by mer...@well.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
THE MORALITY OF CAPITALISM by Michael E. Marotta
One of the reasons that numismatics survives as a hobby is that
Ayn Rand explained why capitalism is the only moral social
system. She made virtues of selfishness and greed 20 years
before the popular press caught on to the "Me Generation."
Ayn Rand made the Ferengi possible. (Literally. Armin Shimerman
told me that he always liked The Fountainhead.) We coin
collectors revel in our materialism because we understand that
the unity of theory and practice makes the moral practical.
Ludwig von Mises was a capitalist philosopher who avoided the
idea of "morality." Moral values, he wrote in HUMAN ACTION, are
subjective. We each have our own values and we each seek our own
goals and no one can call another's goals "wrong" except at the
most basic levels of social interaction. It is wrong to initiate
force. It is not wrong to like rock and roll music. (Rand said
it was wrong, anti-capitalist, anti-reason and anti-life.) For
von Mises and the other "Austrian" economists who posit
praxeology as a replacement for sociology, every uncoerced
transaction is acceptable.
One of Ayn Rand's students was Alan Greenspan. In his essay,
"The Assault on Integrity" for Rand's book CAPITALISM: THE
UNKNOWN IDEAL, Greenspan showed that the free market impels all
traders toward the highest standards of moral conduct. However,
for the Austrians, this assertion is like arguing the "color" of
mathematics. It makes no sense. Once we accept that a
transaction is freely entered into, whether or not someone gets
"cheated" is irrelevant. All transactions are bilateral
simultaneous buys and sells. The so-called "coin collector" is
actually SELLING Federal Reserve Notes and expressing a
preference for old coins.
Like other commodities, old coins are graded. To offer a Very
Fine coin and not deliver it is the same as offering Number 2
White Pine and delivering some other grade of pine. The matter
is one of fact, not "morality." If a trader becomes known to be
hard pressed to correctly identify his material, the markets
react to that. The trader then faces some personal choices.
It is at this point that the Objectivists claim that the market
impels towards the highest standards of moral conduct. The
Austrians maintain that the trader adjusts his actions to meet
the needs of the marketplace as the markets reciprocally adjust
themselves around the trader.
Part of the challenge in discussing the numismatic markets is
that most of us have had our minds warped by public and parochial
schools. Neither Woodrow Roosevelt High nor Bleeding Heart
Academy can teach capitalism. This is why B-schools bring in
real entrepreneurs for special seminars: MBAs are hopelessly
ignorant of the realities of capitalism. Here in collecting, we
claim that dealers have a special burden of knowledge and ethics
that does not apply to collectors, who deserve to be protected
from their ignorance. An Objectivist would call that a
mysticist-altruist fallacy. An Austrian would say only that such
a collector has not come to understand that he is a SELLER of
Federal Reserve Notes expressing a preference for old coins.
We say time and time again BUY THE BOOK BEFORE YOU BUY THE COIN
and time and again, people with excess Federal Reserve Notes
express preferences for goods and services that fail to meet
their ultimate needs. Who is to blame? The Objectivist might
blame the collector for being an idiot. The Austrian would blame
no one, asserting only that the FRNs and the coins both found
themselves at appropriate price levels.
As one numismatic editor told me: "I hate dishonest collectors.
You know what I mean by that? A dishonest collector is someone
who attempts to cherry pick a dealer, gets home, finds he bought
the wrong coin and is not even grateful to the dealer for the
lesson! That's a dishonest collector."
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE THIRD SIDE OF THE COIN by Michael E. Marotta |
| (c) Copyright 2000 mer...@well.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
Jorg Lueke
If you sold me a one pound platinum bar that was actually silver and
stamped with fake markings and I then tracked you down, hit you over the
head with the bar, and re-claimed my money would I really be in the
wrong?
Michael Edward Marotta wrote:
--
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
"Albert Einstein"
Tim
>I'd add to the maxim "Buy the book before you buy the coin" this:
>"Read this newsgroup before you buy the coin." You don't have to spend
>a nickel.
And, you can ask questions from experienced collectors who don't have a slant
for or against the coin or price.
-- Dobac
Bob Peterson
>If you sold me a one pound platinum bar that was actually silver and
>stamped with fake markings and I then tracked you down, hit you over the
>head with the bar, and re-claimed my money would I really be in the
>wrong?
>
In this case, you would have other options before taking the actions you
specified including:
-reporting the loss and getting reimbursed by your insurance company
-suing the culprit in court if you are uninsured
You really have no right to enforce the law on your own in the manner
described, when you have chosen not to avail yourself of the legal options you
do have available.
Bob Peterson
CM#1412 ANA#R-182415 WINS#1
World Internet Numismatic Society
www.winsociety.org
Fred A. Murphy
On 10-Dec-2000, Reid Goldsborough <reid...@netaxs.com> wrote:
> I think we both agree that knowledge is power. Though it apparently
> isn't helping much in California these days...
If knowledge is power, California must have imported a lot of people from
states where inbreeding is the norm.
--
If you're interested in discussing possible creation of a new online
auction newsgroup, please see the thread entitled "RFD: misc.business.
online-auctions.discuss", currently posted in news.groups. Thank you!
It also appears in RCC and alt.marketing.online.ebay
Longnine
then he/she finds out whether they really want to be collectors
or not. They must decide if they are willing to expend time and
money to learn numismatics. If they find that they are not willing
to do that, then, perhaps the cheat facilitated their awareness
that they might not want to be coin collectors after all.
This is not to say that cheating new collectors is okay
only that it's probably happened to everyone. The ones who
stick it and decide to learn enough so that they won't be cheated in
the future are closer to being true collectors than those who don't.
Those who don't want to bother to learn anything are probably just
"investors" and perhaps it is best that they leave while they still
]have some butt left.
Michael Edward Marotta <mer...@well.com> wrote in message
news:_VMY5.2730$6V5.1...@news.wenet.net...
VVALHALLA
>states where inbreeding is the norm.
>
As a matter of fact there are plenty of former Ahians here but we don't point
at them or anything.
dendude
Tom Rea
>
> On 10-Dec-2000, Reid Goldsborough <reid...@netaxs.com> wrote:
>
> > I think we both agree that knowledge is power. Though it apparently
> > isn't helping much in California these days...
>
> If knowledge is power, California must have imported a lot of people from
> states where inbreeding is the norm.
>
--
and all the nuts eventually roll to southern California.
--Tom Rea
"You need to understand the rules so you can break them
intelligently," the Dalai Lama
reply to: tom...@ccrtc.com (primary)
tom...@caves.org (secondary)
coint...@my-deja.com
jlu...@mn.mediaone.net wrote:
> Why is wrong to intiate force?
> If you sold me a one pound platinum bar that was actually silver and
> stamped with fake markings and I then tracked you down, hit you over
the
> head with the bar, and re-claimed my money would I really be in the
> wrong?
>
only if you had paid 'silver' money for it.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Fred A. Murphy
On 11-Dec-2000, vval...@aol.com (VVALHALLA) wrote:
> As a matter of fact there are plenty of former Ahians here but we don't
> point
> at them or anything.
Mebbe so, but we keep our Christmas trees lit. Even the ones with Bud cans
as ornaments. :^)
Aram H. Haroutunian
BTW, I missed the California dis thread. wassup?
================================