Saturday, November 26, 2011

Consumer Greed Takes Over on Black Friday

We hear all the time about "corporate greed," but not so much about "consumer greed," which is never illustrated more profoundly than on Black Friday, when greedy consumers engage in some pretty extreme shopping behavior to save few dollars.

Some examples from the Drudge Report:  

Exhibit AWoman pepper sprays other Black Friday shoppers 'to gain an upper hand'... 

Exhibit B'Competitive shopping' turns into chaos... 

Exhibit C: 'Girls Punching Each Other' Over Yoga Pants Sale at Victoria's Secret... 

Exhibit DVIDEO: Mayhem over $2 waffle maker... 

Exhibit ETwo women injured in brawl..

9 Comments:

At 11/26/2011 11:36 AM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

Exhibit D Video: Female piranha in a carb induced feeding frenzy over $2.00 waffle makers. Is the image of Wal-Mart(Wal-Mart) now low prices, or screaming fat-assed women pushing around other shoppers?

 
At 11/26/2011 11:41 AM, Blogger Sean said...

Buddy,

Yes to both.

Truly, that kind of behavior is sickening.

 
At 11/26/2011 1:02 PM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

Yes, we also hear about declining real wages.

Yet, we don't hear about government creating inflation.

Firms tend to produce more output with fewer inputs, while government tends to increase both the cost of production and the cost of living.

Firms tend to create deflation and create capital, while government tends to create inflation and destroy capital.

Yet, some actually blame the private sector for declining real wages, perhaps because the private sector sometimes creates too much capital (i.e. profit), instead of creating enough deflation, while they completely ignore the inflation and capital destruction by government.

 
At 11/26/2011 3:29 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Glad to see this adults acted with dignity...

 
At 11/26/2011 5:04 PM, Blogger Robert Kafarski said...

The whole discussion of greed whether corporate or consumer is a moral and philosophical one. A profit making enterprise has a purely selfish and greedy reason for its own existence, to produce profits for its owners. Sermons about greed have worthwhile purpose and value but it is not a as guiding principal in starting and operating a capitalistic enterprise. If someone asked you to invest risk capital in a start up business that holds as part of its business plan the goal of making profits but not too much profits - would you invest ?

 
At 11/26/2011 5:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This sounds snobbish but I'm at a point in my life where I'll spend extra money to avoid the dreck.

 
At 11/26/2011 5:59 PM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

DadIsInTheHouse, value is reflected by price and quality, not just price.

 
At 11/26/2011 6:39 PM, Blogger Evergreen Libertarian said...

These consumers most likely also had the benefits of a public education where they might have been exposed to manners, or not.

 
At 11/30/2011 12:11 AM, Blogger Ian Random said...

My brother does these things and they are rarely worth getting up early for. He went to Fry's and got a great deal once, but it took hours to get through the line at the check-out. I might've tried the 42" LCD for $200 with my brother, but you can get great deals online everyday. I regularly see 32" lcd's for $200 and under brand new. The only deals I want are the $50 1TB hard drives in October, before the Asia floods doubled the price.

 

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