I find the ease with which people can be manipulated to be fascinating. This individual was far too trusting and lacked adequate discernment or awareness.
I buy things based on one tenant: don't trust anyone who attempts to take your money, ever. All commerce is done based on an imbalance of value, and the ability for one party to unilaterally leverage that gulf to make money. Moreover, the customer is diametrically opposed to the salesman. Their goals are antithetical to one another and their objectives are mutually exclusive. The seller wants to take the buyer's money and give them as little value as possible, yielding more lucrative margins; the buyer wants to acquire as much of a commodity as they can for as little money as possible, heightening returned value.
A capitalistic society is just a myriad of people trying to take whatever they can from everyone else. Sometimes we forget that.
All commerce is done based on an imbalance of value, and the ability for one party to unilaterally leverage that gulf to make money.
Many people on HN will tell you that the imbalance of value means that if I'm paying $100 for skin products, they must be worth more than $100 to me.
There's both a certain element of truth and a certain element of circular reasoning in that. Your comment, though not exactly incorrect, reads tendentiously incomplete to me.
I buy things based on one tenant: don't trust anyone who attempts to take your money, ever. All commerce is done based on an imbalance of value, and the ability for one party to unilaterally leverage that gulf to make money. Moreover, the customer is diametrically opposed to the salesman. Their goals are antithetical to one another and their objectives are mutually exclusive. The seller wants to take the buyer's money and give them as little value as possible, yielding more lucrative margins; the buyer wants to acquire as much of a commodity as they can for as little money as possible, heightening returned value.
A capitalistic society is just a myriad of people trying to take whatever they can from everyone else. Sometimes we forget that.