Sea change
I apologize to all my thousands of fans for not posting in such a long time (yes that's a joke, but I've actually got some comments from strangers! I love you Tiffy!). My attitudes are undergoing a sea change for the better, I hope to write soon about what's working for me this time around, but it's big and constantly changing. Don't know if I'll be able to generate the level of spleen that I've been using for entertainment but while I work on it here's a few quick hits.
This is an oldie but goody for me, and I just saw an example around town so I can write about it today. Remember the bumper stickers "If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?" I'm vehemently pro-choice and I HATE those bumper stickers. Fortunately they seem to have mostly disappeared. What I hate about them is the total ignorance of the opposite side's position.
Let me translate that into how I imagine an anti-choice person sees it: "If you can't trust me not to murder my child now, how can you trust me to raise it well?" They see a fetus as the moral equivalent of a 5 (or 50) year old. So let's try it like that: "If you can't trust me not to murder my 5 year old, how can you trust me to raise a 6 year old?" What's the expected response to that? "Oh, ok then, go ahead and murder your 5 year old instead of ruining its life later." Or, "you're right, you're morally reprehensible and it would be better to take any child (read: fetus) you're trusted with as soon as humanly possible and raise it by the state rather than let you raise it."
People, you can't win arguments that way. You've got to understand your enemy.
----------
We bought a new car yesterday, and I'm having slight moral qualms today. You can't screw a car dealer, can you? It's just not possible is it?
We traded in our old van which the mechanic says is on its last legs. It leaks oil, it burns oil, and once in a while when you start off in the morning it spews out a huge embarassing cloud of oil smoke. The mechanic says it's not worth fixing. It's also got a fair share of minor problems that we don't even notice anymore, like a cracked windshield. Tires are not new. We got a decent price out of the dealer, who didn't look that closely at it. He didn't even notice the cracked windshield until after he offered us an amount for the car. He didn't look under the hood to see the oil scum caked in a few places, or the oil cap that got left off one day and fell down and welded itself to the exhaust manifold. I figure it's going to cost them $1000 to get it into sellable condition, and that's if they don't notice the oil problems. If they notice that, they've either got to try to cover it up and offload it on some sucker or take a bath on the car in the auction market (where someone else will buy it to try to offload on some sucker).
To add insult to injury as I was driving the car to the dealer to trade it in and pick up the new one I noticed that the gas tank was empty, the indicator light came on. There's another $50. I didn't plan it that way, but it's $50 out of their pocket.
I do feel a little bad about it - not for the dealer, I could have bargained harder for the new car and squeezed another $1000 out of them that way - but for the poor sucker they foist this thing on. They'll probably still make money on it, and somewhere there's going to be an angry customer fighting with a dealer to get their money's worth.
We ended up spending about $2k below MSRP, about $1k above dealer invoice on the new car, which seems like decent bargaining. When dealers like Saturn talk about "one fixed price" I figure I'd be losing out compared to the average schmo. I'm not a great bargainer, but I think I beat the average, so if I get just average from Saturn I'm probably paying more than I would when I can bargain. Here I think we beat the average and then we got a good price for our soon-to-be-junk old car. So I'm feeling pretty good about it.
And, you can't screw a dealer, can you? It's just not possible.
This is an oldie but goody for me, and I just saw an example around town so I can write about it today. Remember the bumper stickers "If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?" I'm vehemently pro-choice and I HATE those bumper stickers. Fortunately they seem to have mostly disappeared. What I hate about them is the total ignorance of the opposite side's position.
Let me translate that into how I imagine an anti-choice person sees it: "If you can't trust me not to murder my child now, how can you trust me to raise it well?" They see a fetus as the moral equivalent of a 5 (or 50) year old. So let's try it like that: "If you can't trust me not to murder my 5 year old, how can you trust me to raise a 6 year old?" What's the expected response to that? "Oh, ok then, go ahead and murder your 5 year old instead of ruining its life later." Or, "you're right, you're morally reprehensible and it would be better to take any child (read: fetus) you're trusted with as soon as humanly possible and raise it by the state rather than let you raise it."
People, you can't win arguments that way. You've got to understand your enemy.
----------
We bought a new car yesterday, and I'm having slight moral qualms today. You can't screw a car dealer, can you? It's just not possible is it?
We traded in our old van which the mechanic says is on its last legs. It leaks oil, it burns oil, and once in a while when you start off in the morning it spews out a huge embarassing cloud of oil smoke. The mechanic says it's not worth fixing. It's also got a fair share of minor problems that we don't even notice anymore, like a cracked windshield. Tires are not new. We got a decent price out of the dealer, who didn't look that closely at it. He didn't even notice the cracked windshield until after he offered us an amount for the car. He didn't look under the hood to see the oil scum caked in a few places, or the oil cap that got left off one day and fell down and welded itself to the exhaust manifold. I figure it's going to cost them $1000 to get it into sellable condition, and that's if they don't notice the oil problems. If they notice that, they've either got to try to cover it up and offload it on some sucker or take a bath on the car in the auction market (where someone else will buy it to try to offload on some sucker).
To add insult to injury as I was driving the car to the dealer to trade it in and pick up the new one I noticed that the gas tank was empty, the indicator light came on. There's another $50. I didn't plan it that way, but it's $50 out of their pocket.
I do feel a little bad about it - not for the dealer, I could have bargained harder for the new car and squeezed another $1000 out of them that way - but for the poor sucker they foist this thing on. They'll probably still make money on it, and somewhere there's going to be an angry customer fighting with a dealer to get their money's worth.
We ended up spending about $2k below MSRP, about $1k above dealer invoice on the new car, which seems like decent bargaining. When dealers like Saturn talk about "one fixed price" I figure I'd be losing out compared to the average schmo. I'm not a great bargainer, but I think I beat the average, so if I get just average from Saturn I'm probably paying more than I would when I can bargain. Here I think we beat the average and then we got a good price for our soon-to-be-junk old car. So I'm feeling pretty good about it.
And, you can't screw a dealer, can you? It's just not possible.
posted by Swampdog at 10:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home