Has a greedflator ripped at your bike bit buying!?

hawkinspeter wrote:

Ultimately, it's down to the consumer to decide if they are prepared to pay for the goods at the price specified. Competition is often broken in markets as there's nearly always a benefit to being the biggest player and information is often hidden from customers, so the idea of a "free market" is somewhat of a myth.

We consumers do, in a fashion, decide to buy or not to. However, the nature of this decision doesn't seem to be the "acting in my best & rational interests" sort of decision that neolibs love to imagine but rather an impulse from the deep unconscious serving some  inchoate lust induced in us by the psycho-tricks of advertsing, fashion, peer-pressure and all those other things affecting buys that tend to the irrational.

People will pay the most ridiculous prices for things they momentarily lust for, even when their other usual habit of sticking it in a cupboard with the other 67 examples of a near identical thing revolves them rapidly from "satisfied consumer" to "once more avid seeker of the next consuming thrill".

As to the notion of "a free market", this is indeed a complete myth, as you say. Markets are highly refined and very particular sets of law and enforcements that tend to favour one small class over all the others. Sometimes "the others" are duped into thinking they're free in these markets by the minimal dollops of goods and services allowed them by the aristocracy who own everything, including the law-makers. .......

Often, the dollops of good and services are shrunk, as the aristocrats wax greedy and tweak the market to award themselves more whilst forcing the market to a zero-sum game as a punishment upon "the undeserving poor" who the aristos like to employ as a fine excuse for being greedy themselves. ("I deserve more because I'm successful and I'm successful because I can 'earn' more" - The Protestant Ethic for capitalists).

mark1a wrote:

Good lunch was it?

Yis. I had kedgereeee with fresh tumeric and coriander in it; and a piece of pear & ginger cake just out the ladywife's oven. Also a large cup of freshly ground and filtered Pensivito coffee.

The grog-supping you imply is not required as I'm already drunk on the sound of me own typing. 

perce wrote:

That cake sounds nice

The ladywife is a cake-pusher. She also grows her own. I yam not the only addict hereabouts, neever.

The cakes are good post-bikeride. However, if they're regarded as pre- the next bike ride, they are not good as I am not as svelte, narrow or gossamer-like as I might otherwise be.  And this in the land of West Wales, where there is only 500 yards of flat road (the sum of all the little bits at the top of hills and at the bottoms between the hills).

Fifteen minutes grinding up a hill, say; what seems like 30 seconds to go down to the bottom of the next 'un.

I would carry cake with me on the bike but there's no point as I'd only get it out and eat it after about 50 yards cycling. Why waste time wrapping it up and stowing it away just to unwrap it a minute later?

perce wrote:

Actually we were in Aberystwyth last week - by golly it's just one hill after another! And the roads are so windy as well. I was going to hire a bike but didn't get round to it. Don't know if I could have coped with those hills, so much respect to anyone who does.

Before moving to West Wales, I cycled all about the lovely landscapes around Lancaster - Lakes, Dales, Bowland Fells, Howgills, Pennines ..... But despite the many and often savage hills of that district there was also the pan-flat Fylde as well as many routes going up essentially flat roads following river valleys.

In West Wales there is never any respite from hills. Even the river valley roads undulate constantly with some serious pitches. In our now many wanderings down every back road in a 25km radius from the Welsh abode, we've only discovered one truly flat stretch of road in the Cothi valley going NE out of Llansawel .... for a whole 2km before it begins to rear up & doon again.

After three years of grovelling & suffering on the ladywife's e-bike back wheel, I sucumbed and got one meself. I tries reet-hard not to switch the motor on but when she sails off up a black arrow, I can have a bit of e to avoid death-by-brain-blott in attempting to keep up with the rascal.

Out by myself, it's the un-e'd bike still. .... Unless I fancy a seriously hilly route. (There are many possibilities of 1000M ascent per 50km). Having an e-bike means no road-hill is forbidden me, even at 3/4 of a century old. 

perce wrote:

''Your talk is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand''

Well think on, lad.