I was reading about this person who was making some decent part time money buy simply taking other people’s old belongings that they no longer want, on public sites such as Craigslist, which he would then turn around and simply sell it to others who would want it. The funny thing was reading comments how people thought this was not right since he got it for free and therefore he shouldn’t be reselling them.
When I think about it personally, the guy did essentially do the work in taking other people’s “junk†since they didn’t want it anymore. I think the only time I would consider it wrong is if the person asked for the item in a misleading way such as wanting it for his personal use because he claimed that he couldn’t afford one only to see him sell it for money.
I think the main reason people get upset is mostly due to that “Why didn’t I think of that before†type of scenario. In some ways you can say people save money by just giving it away too as it usually costs money to throw away items that are large or require some special way of disposing it. And hey, odds are most people won’t want to go through the trouble of reselling items. So if you really want to, you could always enter into that kind of a market yourself.
Same thing with those free items that you get from places like trade shows. It’s not uncommon to see people sell them at a garage sale. I have seen people try to collect every single free goods in places like those just to try and sell it to someone who is a die hard enthusiast. Age old supply and demand and in this case it’s almost like the person is running a very low budget retail operation where the supplier gives free stuff for you to sell.