Guitarra China
Image by Leo
posted by Leonard Sadorf at 9:24 p.m.
20060328
About Me
- Name: Leonard Sadorf
- Location: A Nation in Captivity, United States
March wind gonna blow all my troubles away.
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- Domingo
- Cosmopolitan
- Mrs. Wiggins & Friends: A Post for the Pondering Pig
- A Few More
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- Just a Few More Sparks
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7 Comments:
The "Hecho en Mexico" cost far more than what most gringos will part with. That is, except for old Lar. Money? He laughs. He lights his cigars with $20.00 bills.
The colored guitars are muy novela. They don't play and you can't even start to tune them. Es decoracion.
Hey, did I just catch a reference to "Railroad Bill" in your last comment? Very cool!
I am glad you are considering writing a novel about colored guitars. Consider it long and carefully.
Got a thirty eight Special on a forty five frame.
How in the world can I miss him when I got dead aim?
Gorgeous assortment of fantastic colors here, Leo - I really thought those guitars could be played...oh well, they are nice decoraciones in any case.....
Some of the locals were trying to trade hand-made purses to us for greenbacks in the jungle in Ecuador. Some of the people on our team actually tried to barter with them! I was disgusted. Their merchandise was gorgeous and they asked prices lower than Wal-Mart (I hate Wal-Mart) why would you barter?
Stupid Westerners!
STUPID WESTERNERS is right, Brother Spoke.
Most of the street vendors along the border push Chinese made artifacts, not unlike the Wal-Mart, except much cheaper. The jack the price 200% and sell at what they can. There's always a sponsor (pimp) that runs the stall.
The real shops, the authentic native stuff, goes without much dealing. The shopkeepers do it because the "STUPID WESTERNERS" are more than ready to buy if the think they screwed the local chumps. I am glad that, at least in those places, they know the routine and can make some dollares.
Nogales is a big Wal-Mart, geared to the ugly Americans with too much money and no common sense. In Capitalism it's always about buying and owning stuff, rarely about common sense.
The local people, in Nogales anyways, have contempt for the ugly ones. But, if you spend the time talking to people like people, the picture changes. You can sit and talk and relate, if you want to. You stop think about screwing the people and start to understand that they are just like me and you.
They are just like me and you.
Theo is right too. But, the problem is that market value is not actual value.
Actual value is the bottom line plus some. Sure you can mess with the street vendor or the artisans, but what's really going on?
We, the tourist Americans, feel the need to dicker with the peddlers. In pure capitalism, that may be a great thing, an equalizing endeavor.
Why the assumed need to bargain with a poverty stricken third-world vendor and get the bottom price and then just accept the Wal-Mart prices as the lowest because they say so? Because they're Wal-Mart?
What will the market bear? We'll never know it here in America because it's all set up and stilted. It's make believe capitalism.
Face it. If we, the consumer, think it's worth less and want to bargain for it, the vendors laugh and turn their backs. We're screwed. Real capitalism is a joke, a mirage in the world of product. Consumers pay, whether it's equitable or not. If you want it you gotta pay it.
The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it only when they have some say in what they are willing to pay.
When we have to pay what they say with no choice or question, it becomes a pimp's game. Yet, that's what we accept as ok.
We really are full of shit.
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