This used book that I bought for 12£ on the internet was apparently previously bought from Oxfam for 1.99£

ElCanut@jlai.lu to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 308 points –
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You chose to buy it at that price. What does it matter what the original price was or how much the seller made? You thought the price was fair, had the choice to not buy it or buy it somewhere else.

This isn't like scalpers buying up items, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices for profit. This is just plain old capitalism.

Presumably the price also included shipping and handling fees, since you bought it online. So in the end the seller probably made just a couple of quid, he deserves to get paid for what he does no?

12£ is just the book, no shipping included.

Making a X10 markup on something you bought from a charity is infuriating imo

And sorry for finding basic capitalism infuriating.

0.0£ at your local library.

Ah yes, libraries. Those mega buildings with every book on Earth inside...

The picture shows ISBN 9781784708276

I search this to get the title: "Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures"

I see £, so I'm going to assume it's the UK. I picked Manchester as a city to search.

I search the book.

Seven 2021 versions, three 2020 versions, and audio book are available.

Which means even if it's not available in OPs local library they could go to their library and get it on an interlibrary loan.

fyi OP said theyre from another country. Not that it makes other points made invalid.

Found two copies in the Municipal Library of Prague. This is not some super-obscure title.

I dont doubt that, but saying that its readily available assuming OP lives in the country where the book comes from is not necesarily true

You're right. Since they don't have every book ever written, why bother even looking?

Lol.

Oh, yes let's let perfection be the enemy of good.

It's a rare thing I can't get from my Library (mostly music and some movies), but anything educational and it's there.

I regularly check out DVD collections from The Teaching Company of university courses - I'm talking Harvard, Columbia, etc. Currently have History of Western Civilization on deck for ripping. It's 40 hours of lectures, the DVD collection would cost $1500 on the open market.

It's one of dozens I've ripped for my own use, and converted to MP3 to listen when at gym or in the car.

Do your libraries not have a system to request books from other libraries? Not trying to be a jerk, I just have looked for some obscure things before and sometimes they had to be requested from other libraries.

https://search.worldcat.org/ is a good inter-library search site. My librarians use it (among other things, I'm sure) to find books/DVDs to acquire for me on ILL, but since the site is public sometimes I just do the search for them and send them a link to what I want when I submit a hold request.

Everytime i have been unable to find a book in the library i have asked the librarian and had it brough in from another library. i dont think there has ever been a book i wanted they didnt have somewhere in the chain

The seller took the time and gas to go and get books from oxfam so that you could have it shipped to your house

I'm curious, why are you putting the £ symbol after the number and not before?

I'm sorry I'm not English so I'm used to Euros, I wasn't sure if the £ was supposed to be before or after