You might want to consider this the stock market is down but who do you think will take advantage of that I can tell you it won't be your average man in the street it will be those who are like vultures and they will be more than happy to do it. Not everything is about Coronavirus the highest flu deaths worldwide were in 2008 in the last 20 years .
That time the stock market crashed and the rich got very rich of the back of the poor and the same system will repeat itself.
"Not my thing to profit from other peoples misery, sickens and death...
Nor should it be yours!"
I respect your point.. but not telling someone they should not. is silly
opportunity is always on the opposite of crisis
money is never lost only transferred.. just need to be the one that is on the positive side more than not
It is NOT Silly. It is EVIL.
Whether the person is offering a Service OR product/ OR NOT taking advantage, as long as he or she is PROFITING from this CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, you are WORSE than an ANIMAL. I pity your parents giving birth you. Seriously, IF someone from your family is in the hospital, would you be thinking of how to make money on this ?
WAKE UP your mind, there are many ways to make money online !
I don't know that I'd call someone a "customer" (in the real sense of the word) in a pandemic.
Yes, they are buying something but in a critical situation where people's health and product scarcity is involved, it's more than that.
There is no good reason for people to hoard supplies that everybody needs simply because they can. Except for greed and selfishness in cornering a market.
It takes a certain kind of person to impose scarcity and price-gouge critically needed items in a national/worldwide crisis.
COVID-19 affects every one of us on all continents; so far it looks like only sub-Saharan Africa hasn't (yet) been impacted as much. And that's just a matter of time because northern Africa has reported cases.
I suppose you've read or heard about the guy who sought to profit from the hand sanitizer and other emergency supplies. He bought in BULK (by the pallets!). He and his relatives made the rounds buying products locally then ordered everything else they could online. Over 17,000 items sitting stashed in his garage -- and later moved to a storage facility --- while people who really needed them went without.
Kudos to Amazon for putting a stop to the heartless, price gouging goons.
Ironically, these are the very people who would squeal the loudest if the tables were turned.
UPDATE TO THE COVID-19 CLOWN:
This guy was standing in his garage with thousands of hand sanitizer bottles in the background, pouting like a victim because his ruse was shut down before he could get started.
Well, you may be glad to learn that the COVID-19 Creep suddenly had a change of heart and it must have been the more than 4,000 comments to his story on a Yahoo! article that helped him to see the light.
Or maybe he got scared that someone as profit-driven as he was would come in the night and violently relieve him of that stash. Even at the expense of his family.
I vividly remember, as a youngster, my experience with Hurricane Betsy in the 1960s in New Orleans.
I and my dad, mom, sister and brother were all roused awake one night during the most active part of Hurricane Betsy. We were rescued from our home and taken to a neighbor's across the street. They had the only 2-story home on the block. My dad had just worked a long shift at his job and was groggy but when he heard that the waters were rising, he (a great swimmer) snapped into action and became a rescuer, too.
That left us alone for the duration and now we had to wonder if we'd ever see my dad again.
Hours later, looking from the safety of the neighbor's upstairs window, I could see the top of the roof on our home ... the rest of the house was completely under water. My childhood home and the memories I savored there were gone.
Nothing was saved but I was grateful that we escaped with our lives.
Everybody from neighboring streets were packed in the upstairs rooms of that house. It was muggy, moist and scary because we didn't know what lay ahead.
From there, volunteers boated us to the rooftop of an abandoned apartment building a few blocks over to wait until a more coordinated response team could bring us to higher ground.
After some hours, one boat appeared with 3 men who offered to take anyone to safety. The only requirement was you needed to pay $10 a head.
$10 a person to be rescued ... in a disaster!
There were sick people on that rooftop. Old people. Babies. A few people had their pets.
Sanitation was non-existent. You "went to the bathroom" as best you could --- which was particularly hard for females.
There were no medical supplies. People who didn't have the medication they needed had to do without it until we were rescued.
There were a few "crazy" acting fellows in the crowd and I was scared to death. My mom was my safe haven but she had three of us to handle all by herself because dad was part of a volunteer rescue team.
Nobody had eaten in many hours.
I doubt anybody had money --- but I remember that my mom did because this was a Friday and my dad had just gotten paid. I saw him hand her a large stack of paper bills; probably around a thousand dollars because he had a good-paying job even for the times. We knew the storm was coming so he wanted us to have money in case the banks were closed in the aftermath. I remembered that mom had safely tucked that stack into her purse. Now, on the rooftop, she had held that purse tightly underneath her arm, covered by a sweater draped across her shoulders where no one could easily see it.
But since the brunt of the storm happened in the middle of the night, people were made to flee with little or nothing.
Water covered homes to the rooftop. Most people lost everything they had in the blink of an eye.
A few had lost relatives and friends in that terrible flood and were still dealing with the raw emotions.
So now, these bone-headed thugs disguised as volunteer Good Samaritans, wanted to profit from other people's pain.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
When nobody on that rooftop stepped forward, it was the saddest sight I ever witnessed to watch that boat turn 360 degrees and head off into the distance.
Not a single one of those "volunteers" looked back.
That was a long time ago but I can'tNOT remember what it felt like; even now.
That was in my youth, so those guys on that boat have likely left the face of the earth by now. I don't know how their lives shaped up since then but I hope they were able to live with themselves.
Later the next day, after we were safe and rescued and in the warm, cozy home of my grandmother, I asked my mom why she didn't take the guy's offer.
She said: "Anybody who would take advantage of people in need would do just about anything. You can't take them at their word."
That sank in for a minute. I suppose she saw the pensive look on my face as it registered; so she further illustrated with an example ...
"What if ...," she asked, "they had taken us into their boats and once out of view of witnesses, shoved us into the murky depths of the floodwater?"
Knowing that she had money on her person, they could have robbed her of what remained then "got rid of us" with no issue.
That may sound far-fetched but during a crisis, people can sometimes get away with very bad behavior. There were lots of drownings with people trapped or trying to escape their homes so our "deaths" would have fit that narrative.
On the other hand, let's assume these were very nice guys with a good boat who just wanted to make a profit?
It's just not a good look.
Profiting is commerce but in a crisis, it's different.
Or it should be.
Where's the compassion?
It says something about a person's core values when in the midst of a disaster, they charge "by the head" to rescue people knowing full well most will not have the means.
Or buying up all the hand sanitizer just to re-sell it at an outrageous mark-up to pimp the demand.
