The crab housing market
-
This post did not contain any content.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Conclusions are in our own interpretations. Here's an example of a cynical take of the same situation:
I just learned that if a hermit crab finds a new shell that is too big, it will wait for other hermit crabs
So a less powerful crab cannot take full advantage of the shell, but recognizes its value to larger more powerful crabs. This is also an argument for scalping. If you find an expensive console or GPU which you can't afford long term, but you know you could carry the debt temporarily, you could buy it yourself then sell it to someone else later who could afford long term and you would personally pocket the profit. It could be argued that thats what the original-large-shell-finding small crab here is doing: scalping.
who need new shells to gather and then they will organize themselves by size and trade shells.
The original smaller crab knows that larger crab will cast off its current shell, which would be substantially better than the shell the smaller crab has, so it can still personally gain from finding the big shell it can't use, but its accepting a hand-me-down cast off only when the larger more powerful crab gets something better.
and I am pissed that the crabs have a better housing market than we do.
So the poster desires a system where larger and stronger crabs should have their pick of the housing market, and less powerful crabs simply have to take whatever smaller, less desirable housing, is left over.
Again, this is just a different interpretation for the meme. I'm not advocating for a position.
-
Conclusions are in our own interpretations. Here's an example of a cynical take of the same situation:
I just learned that if a hermit crab finds a new shell that is too big, it will wait for other hermit crabs
So a less powerful crab cannot take full advantage of the shell, but recognizes its value to larger more powerful crabs. This is also an argument for scalping. If you find an expensive console or GPU which you can't afford long term, but you know you could carry the debt temporarily, you could buy it yourself then sell it to someone else later who could afford long term and you would personally pocket the profit. It could be argued that thats what the original-large-shell-finding small crab here is doing: scalping.
who need new shells to gather and then they will organize themselves by size and trade shells.
The original smaller crab knows that larger crab will cast off its current shell, which would be substantially better than the shell the smaller crab has, so it can still personally gain from finding the big shell it can't use, but its accepting a hand-me-down cast off only when the larger more powerful crab gets something better.
and I am pissed that the crabs have a better housing market than we do.
So the poster desires a system where larger and stronger crabs should have their pick of the housing market, and less powerful crabs simply have to take whatever smaller, less desirable housing, is left over.
Again, this is just a different interpretation for the meme. I'm not advocating for a position.
-
The crab story could just as easily be cynically re-written as an example of capitalism/free-market approach.
-
Conclusions are in our own interpretations. Here's an example of a cynical take of the same situation:
I just learned that if a hermit crab finds a new shell that is too big, it will wait for other hermit crabs
So a less powerful crab cannot take full advantage of the shell, but recognizes its value to larger more powerful crabs. This is also an argument for scalping. If you find an expensive console or GPU which you can't afford long term, but you know you could carry the debt temporarily, you could buy it yourself then sell it to someone else later who could afford long term and you would personally pocket the profit. It could be argued that thats what the original-large-shell-finding small crab here is doing: scalping.
who need new shells to gather and then they will organize themselves by size and trade shells.
The original smaller crab knows that larger crab will cast off its current shell, which would be substantially better than the shell the smaller crab has, so it can still personally gain from finding the big shell it can't use, but its accepting a hand-me-down cast off only when the larger more powerful crab gets something better.
and I am pissed that the crabs have a better housing market than we do.
So the poster desires a system where larger and stronger crabs should have their pick of the housing market, and less powerful crabs simply have to take whatever smaller, less desirable housing, is left over.
Again, this is just a different interpretation for the meme. I'm not advocating for a position.
It's like, the opposite of scalping. You can look at anything through the terms of markets and opportunity costs, but most of it is myths about how the world works
There's no exchange here, there's no loss, only gain. A shell that's too big isn't an investment, it's a danger. The crab that waved the others down doesn't benefit more than any other crab, it's just a mutually beneficial redistribution of shells
-
It's like, the opposite of scalping. You can look at anything through the terms of markets and opportunity costs, but most of it is myths about how the world works
There's no exchange here, there's no loss, only gain. A shell that's too big isn't an investment, it's a danger. The crab that waved the others down doesn't benefit more than any other crab, it's just a mutually beneficial redistribution of shells
Again, I'm playing devils advocate here to highly a cynical take. This isn't my position.
The crab that waved the others down doesn’t benefit more than any other crab, it’s just a mutually beneficial redistribution of shells
You're assuming a perfect distribution of resources equal to the needs of all, but studies show it doesn't always work out that way and there's a hierarchy and a struggle for the prime resources in the hermit crab society.
"In the field, we also occasionally observed 2 or 3 tug-of-war queues radiating out from a single vacant shell, with the largest crabs in each queue struggling to gain controlof the vacant shell. Such tug-of-wars between multiple queues appeared to inhibit vacancy chains as in some cases this situation lasted up to 4h without any crabs moving into the vacant shell. These findings indicate that the formation of hermit crab queues and other linear dominance hierarchies involves more complex social interactions than previously thought(Chaseetal.2002)."
source: Social context of shell acquisition in Coenobita clypeatus hermit crabs.PDF
Once again, I don't have a horse in this race, I'm just participating in the discussion, not advocating policy or reflecting my views on our human society.