Livin' large on Maui

So, I'm thinking about buying an MP3 player, because my iPhone has only 16 gigs and my wife has filled it up with pictures and apps for our grandchildren, leaving no room for me to store music.

An MP3, cost say $25-75, would  be cheaper than swapping for an iPhone with more memory, seems to me; plus it wouldn't use the iPhone battery. And at four-tenths of an ounce (for a Sansa), it wouldn't weigh me down that much.

One thing about living on Maui. When it comes to consumerism, we're waaaay behind.

I stopped at Wal-Mart, because in the past when I was looking for things like fast memory cards, Wal-Mart had it when nobody else on the island did.

Didn't see any MP3s, so I asked the clerk, who led me to an inconspicuous spot, apologizing that, "This is all we have right now."

She was right to apologize. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer had 3 -- count 'em, three -- choices, all Phillips, all with small internal memory and no provision for an SD card.

Any self-respecting small businessman selling electronics, if we still had such a person on Maui, would have 2, 3 or 4 times as many models in stock, from at least 2 manufacturers.

So much for the greater efficiency of rationalized retailing.

It isn't just MP3s. If you were to go to Costco to buy, say, a refrigerator, you would have a choice of low prices on 2 or 3 models, out of hundreds in production.

Karl Marx once lamented about capitalism that Manchester manufacturers offered more than 800 kinds of hammers. So socialism has won. We no longer have 800+ kinds of hammers on the shelf.

Tom and Jerry and me

I have purchased a number of Tom and Jerry DVDs, but M-G-M has been kind of chintzy about releasing all of them in the United States. So, when I noticed an eBay seller offering a complete Tom and Jerry collection, I was interested.

True, the seller was from Asia, home of the DVD pirates. But he claimed to have the original receipt, on request, and he had upwards of 7,400 positives on his seller rating. There could be one honest seller in Asia, nu?

And, as an eBay seller myself, I was aware of its policy against selling "Property taken without authorization from companies or governments."

So, I ordered the set. When it arrived, I was immediately suspicious that it might, in fact, be a bootleg. The tipoff was the big lettering on the box: Merto-Goldwin-Mayer.

It turned out that, if I had inspected the thumbnail with a magnifier, I could have seen that before I ordered, but I hadn't thought to do that.

So, I reported the seller for violation of policy, for which the punishment can be banishment.

Ebay sent back a robo-email saying it would investigate and, if necessary, take action, although because of privacy concerns, it would not tell me what action, if any, it did take.

Well, it wasn't hard to wait a couple of weeks and see whether the seller, gadgetsjapan (which despite its name claims to be in Singapore), was still selling on eBay. It is. In fact, it is still selling the pirated Tom and Jerry cartoons, and you can see the Merto-Goldwin-Mayer lettering on the thumbnail.

It isn't hard to figure why. Despite eBay's first "community value" ("We believe people are basically good"), it's a capitalist business with stock on the exchange. A seller with 7,500 positive ratings must have generated tens of thousands in income for eBay. The company isn't going to say no to that, is it?

Pierre Omidyar talks a lot of talk in Hawaii about civic spirit, but his company doesn't walk the walk.