Great post - and lovely kitty pics 😁
The answer to your question about who loses out; it's not just the buyers who get ripped off because they fall for the hype or don't have the depth of knowledge to buy. It's the honest sellers who get pulled into the assumption that it's all crooked, who lose money because buyers assume that if the whole game is rigged a bit of "online shoplifting" is somehow okay, and who get buried under regulations by authorities keen to be "seen to be doing something" when they don't understand the problem.
I sometimes think that a reset to face-to-face shopping with small businesses, where shopkeepers and customers get to know each other, wouldn't be a bad thing. The "old days" may have had their share of rogues and crooks, but things were simple enough that you had to be exceptionally careless, greedy or dumb to fall for it.
Thank you!
Yes, I think it would be good for a "reset" back to small individual purveyors of goods. We have gotten so far removed from the producers of everything that we barely know the origins of anything, anymore.
And then you pair it up with "throwaway culture" where it's cheaper (and certainly easier) to just buy a new one, than to fix something broken.
I remember many years ago we had a local shop where they could fixe everything from toasters, to hair dryers, to portable air conditioners and lawn mowers. And it usually took less time to get it back in working order than it takes to make a long-distance "warranty claim" in this day and age.
It's one of the reasons we really enjoy our weekly farmer's market here... you actually get to deal with the person who baked the bread and made the cheese and pulled those carrots out of the ground...
=^..^=