It seems like a perfectly respectable profession to me, bringing books from ignored corners of dank bookstores to the hands of those who really want them.
He's doing solitary piecework that requires absolutely nothing from him other than his physical presence. Find the bar code, scan it, save or discard based on the result, over and over again. It's on roughly the same intellectual level as stuffing envelopes for a living.
Were I in his shoes, I wouldn't just feel bad about it, I'd find it soul-destroying.
"solitary piecework that requires absolutely nothing from him other than his physical presence"
Wow, that's not how I see it at all. I mean, if you remove the entire technological aspect with his setup and the gut determinations he makes on book values besides, then I guess oil discovery and drilling is just being there while a machine drills you into riches.
Just because repetition is boring to you doesn't mean the work is worthless or demeaning.
"Were I in his shoes, I wouldn't just feel bad about it, I'd find it soul-destroying."
Soul-destroying to make a living saving a book from going essentially into a landfill? Wouldn't that then apply to all used product sales? Auctioneers like Sotheby's and Christie's are performing soul-destroying work. Actually, they'd be _worse_ than what the book reseller is doing because they do absolutely NO footwork at all. People bring their junk to the auctioneer, and the auctioneer just gives out paddles! Now, THAT sounds soul-destroying!
Monotonous work can be soul-destroying, but it just depends on your level of interest and excitement. Doing monotonous busy-work that you hate day-in and day-out is soul-destroying.
It is perfectly respectable to make the market more efficient, but elements of the marketplace (the elderly man and "No electronic devices allowed" sign) make him feel bad about it.
It's actually of benefit - there is a book out there that I want but it's hidden in a library or garage sale in a city 1000mi away.
This guy makes it available for me to buy at a price I set on Amazon - rather than the book ending up in the trash and me not having what I want.
Depends on perspective, I suppose. It can be a detriment to the local market.
I frequent a local thrift store (Deseret Industries, run by the LDS church), where I always quickly scan all 6 book shelves. Every morning (that I've been there that early), there's one dude that rushes his way to the "new" book shelves (the ones that were just rolled out of the back and not yet sorted onto the shelves), towing a cart, and he proceeds to monopolize the shelves as he roots through all the books and searches them manually on his phone (which I assume it internet-enabled).
I can't help but get a little annoyed by his presence, especially once I figured out what he was doing. He wasn't reading all those books, of course; he was hoping to make a profit on them. I, like many others, look for books to, you know, actually read, and I view this man's actions as rude. Likewise, when I offload a box or two of books to this same store, I am doing so out of a desire to give back to the local community, and it kind of chaps my hide that this asshat with his phone might buy one of my tech-related softbacks for $1 and sell it on Amazon for $5 or more, potentially denying some poor, local kid who may want to better himself by stumbling on that same book I donated.
These days, because of this leech at the thrift store, I'm more inclined to simply shred my books (they make good animal bedding and compost well) than take the effort to load them up into the car and donate them. Sure, that may be viewed as somewhat selfish, but then again, that's exactly how I view that guy who buys all the books to make a quick buck.
it kind of chaps my hide that this asshat with his phone might buy one of my tech-related softbacks for $1 and sell it on Amazon for $5 or more, potentially denying some poor, local kid who may want to better himself by stumbling on that same book I donated.
On the other hand, the copy bought on Amazon for five bucks might wind up in the hands of some poor nonlocal kid who betters himself using this book he really wanted.
I have a bunch of books I bought at garage sales which I never really wanted but picked up because they were cheap (like, one-dollar hardcover biology textbooks) and I thought I might look at them someday. The world would probably be a better place if they had been bought by someone who really wanted them... or alternatively by a middleman who could sell them on.
Of course I could sell them myself, but it's not worth figuring out how to do so in order to make whatever small amount of money is involved.
If you are concerned about that, why not donate one of those book scanner thingies to the thrift store. Then they can set the prices accordingly, and become uninteresting to the book scanners.
I suspect the thrift store would need to sell on Amazon, with its broader customer base, in order to support itself with higher prices.
Another alternative would be to sell your books on Amazon yourself, at the going rate, and then donate the proceeds to a library or other organization that has local impact.
Given that the writer says he works up to 80 hours a week and "with diligence, someone working alone can make $1,000 per week" (i.e., ~$50k annually) I wouldn't call that a "quick buck".
I've also donated a lot of used technical books to thrift stores and library sales, and if they're picked up and re-sold by guys like this that's fine by me.
As I said, the paper (books, bills, junk mail, printouts etc.) gets shredded and used for animal bedding, which then goes into the compost pile. This kind of localized recycling has all kinds of environmental benefits, including the enrichment of my garden soil, which reduces water used for irrigation and improves my home-grown produce.
Yes, but shredding your books instead of donating them just to spite a reseller seems like sour grapes regardless of the justification.
I agree that there is a temptation to wonder 'what if' about some young starry-eyed dreamer who may stumble upon a book who has instead had that chance snatched from him and will now turn to a life of crime but the reality is the book is far more likely headed for the trash heap than to a loving home. That being the case, it is far preferable to have the book go to a reseller and on to someone who wants it.
This guy doesn't deal in those books. He deals in books with known prices and enough volume that he can be reasonably sure it'll sell in a moderate amount of time.
If nobody else has it on amazon, this guy isn't buying it and putting it up there.
A big deal with this may be due to upbringing and what part of the country/world you come from. While part of me dreams of being able to do this kind of work (I’m the exploration type), I can’t, since I can’t drive, limiting my searching ability. Regardless, my background keeps a nagging sense of impropriety of arbitrage in my mind. To my parents and my childhood role models, it’s not “real work,” since it neither creates anything new or abides by the “sweat of your brow” requirement my more religious acquaintances would demand.
TL;DR: I believe in “work smarter, not harder,” but most people I know/knew believe in the opposite.
It does create something new, it creates value. I'm amazed at the 'arbitrage is bad' comments, I can't remember seeing it anywhere before. Someone who finds a buyer for a thing that couldn't be sold before (i.e., was worthless) creates value by enabling the transaction.
It creates a new opportunity for the seller - those individual books were previously not available online. they were just sitting in a bookshop.
Finding these books, then placing them online, and handling the shipping to the buyer is certainly adding value.
I agree that there's nothing necessarily dishonourable about arbitrage, and I agree that based on his story, this man is doing honourable work.
However, I think that there is a potential problem in some arbitrage. Arbitrage depends on information asymmetry, and I think that labouring to perpetuate information asymmetry is unethical. (I would say that failing to eliminate the asymmetry when you could easily do so is a grey area.) So if you are an arbitrageur in an area where the market is trying to eliminate your advantage, you have a moral hazard.
This perspective was driven by utilitarian ethics, of course.
This example, at least, does not depend on asymmetry of information. It depends on the willingness of the parties to invest extra labor.
The business model of the thrift store requires treating the books as commodities ("all hardcovers $2/ea", etc.), as they don't have the volume to invest time in research. The business model of the used book seller requires knowledge, amortizing the cost of researching each book over a global (or at least national) customer base.
Adam Smith would find this a wonderful example of division of labor.
On purely abstract basis I suppose what he does is not immoral. On practical basis however there is a certain little voice which says but books are for reading, but what of the mystery of that book left there which someone all the sudden stumbles upon and changes his life.
The people on amazon have already found out about these books. They will probably get them somehow at some point in some way. If however there was a perfect market, or even significantly perfected more than it currently is, that novelty of stumbling upon a book might be completely lost.
I am not entirely certain though. I suppose in one way it is not immoral, but in another way you just get the feeling that what he does is not exactly as uncontroversial as what a doctor does or even marketer.
It seems like a perfectly respectable profession to me, bringing books from ignored corners of dank bookstores to the hands of those who really want them.