Pay less for pills? Why not?

Hiyall from a newbie to this site (but not the concepts of fun freedom and fun).
It's clear that we pay way too much for pills here (Australia), and even this varies depending of the area, city or states you're in.
Looking at other topics within bluelight, the price we pay is way over that paid in other countries.
While I do accept that there are legal, geographical and logistical influences that must make them more expensive here, I don't belive the end price (regardless of the quantity-vs-price arguement) here is at all justified by the abovementioned 'logistics'.
It seems more that greed is more of an influence to this than any of the above issues.
If person x pays an amount for 100(or 1,000)pills, they will want to cover their initial outlay, cover any costs incured (travel, sweat, marketing, fear etc) & then make a healthy profit.
I have no problem with this as a concept, but in Australia, is it that the 'wholesaler' is charging too much in the first place, or is that the 'distributor' is asking too much, or are we all too greedy (for money), or needy (for pills) that we self regulate ourselves to acceptance this?
Can we not give ourselves a fairer go here, either from the top (dear wholesaler, shit, if you did drop your prices, imagaine how many more you'd move), the middle (dear distributor, as above, not only would your sales pick-up, you'd be able to more pick & choose your clients, thereby protecting your 'business'), or, more importantly, the most powerful player in this equasion, you & I!
What would happen if we ALL (or at least those of us that care enough), decided to offer say $5.00 less each time one is offered, everyone out there knows how it'd move prices (& quickly) if enough people did this.
To agree it'd work & to actulally DO something are 2 very different acts, with 2 very different outcomes.
How would it work for you, 2 people offering nice pills, one at $5.00 (or more) less, I know who I'd buy from, & the same next time.
And again to 'dear middleman' how much more comfortable is it to be carrying dollars as opposed to pills you're having trouble moving? all because someone else is offering them for less, also what are people going to think when the other is sold out, & you're sticking to your price?
What about next time who are they gonig to approach first?
We're not at the bottom of the world, nor at the bottom of thinking, so how would it work if we did something proactive about not paying for fun as though we were at the bottom of the 'pecking order'.
One final point, is it not supporting too many negative values to not do anything?
Shit, if wholesalers, middleman &/or users don't read this sort of stuff, I'll chew my own cud.
"all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is for good 'people' to do nothing"

erm,
Pill prices much like anything simply reflect the basic laws of a supply and demand economy.
That we pay 'too much' is simply a normative judgement that if people truly believed.. would drop prices in and of itself. As people stopped buying due to excessive cost, demand would lessen and prices would correct themselves accordingly.
The only place where this doesn't work is in monopolies, duopolies, cartel collusion and in situations of addiction.
I don't think appealing to everyones better judgement is going to do anything in this case. The scheme only works if everyone spontaneously adopts it. The problem is that the individual feels like he/she is the only person doing it, which in turn means the scheme isn't going to work, which means there's no point in them doing it, so they don't.
Only the union movement was ever able to muster this kind of grass roots collectivism.. and life hasn't been peaches and cream for them since the Howard govt. took office.
Welcome to Bluelight

And your forgetting it's not a free market. Often at the lower end of the market, it's a sellers market (ie you will pay $x amount otherwise you can piss-off). But my belif is that at the upper end of the market it's a buyers market, (I'll take 100 off your hands for $x amount, if you don't like it I'll go else where.)
And because the market is underground price lists aren't something you are going to come across so people just go to the same person for convienience regardless of the cost.

1st of all what you pay for a pill is not necessarily what anyone else pays. I have seen prices range from $5.00 to $70.00 in my lifetime and it all depends on who you know, where you are, etc etc.
also your theory will not work because you are dealing with a drug! it's not like a long distance phone company If u'r desperate you will pay more - Fact. Someone I know has paid $40 for a pill one night yet paid $20 a few weeks before - why? they really wanted one and that was all that was avail. whereas last time there was a heap around from diff sources.

You are a dickhead mate. If you hadn't noticed, the shit is illegal. What, do you want somebody to go through the risk of going to gaol without making a profit? Do you have the faintest inkling of the risks involved? So, you want some "middle man" to risk his whole life without any sort of profit just so you and your mates can feel good every weekend? Fuck that! If you like feeling good so much why not take the risk yourself to sell pills, cos when you buy in bulk they're bound to be cheaper. I'm always happy to pay a dealer what he/she wants, especially if its quality. Forty dollars isn't that much to spend, if i drank all night i'd spend way more than if i just bought a couple of bics, $80 isn't that much to fork out Your idea would just see an influx of shit cos thats all people are prepared to pay. Your just a whinging bitch, if you did sell, got caught, and had to go to gaol you'd just get fucked up the arse. We live in a capitalist society mate, why don't you fuck of to vietnam if you don't like the way shit happens.
[ 11 July 2002: Message edited by: killarava2day ]

killarava2day: LOL
you said what I wanted to say but I didn't cause I wanted to be nice to a newbie!
oh and BTW.... 2 days... where r the mods?

We're here - we're reading it... it's nice and self regulated at the moment though so I didn't think it was nessessary to comment too much...
I'm not about to shut down a thread straight away when someone put this amount of effort into it... I was interested to see where it goes...
I'm also not going to edit killarava2day either, even though it was pretty harsh - dingodoof should have the right of reply...

Thankyou, all of you, for your responses. Whether or not my point, or my way of presenting it is correct is not the point!
If nobody listened to anyone elses point, we wouldn't even be discussing such a sweet little pharmacutical. For while it might've been discovered, without others listening, it'd never have been uncovered.
Same goes for the whole concept of Bluelight, no listen, no share, no hear, no care!
Whether YOU choose to reply with as much respect as you have for your point as you do yoursefl, will probably reflect your understanding of the concept of respect for others.
I do agree that supply & demand is an undeniable interperatation of how much of this planet justifies some pretty shocking things (think IUDs being 'offloaded' in 3rd world countries, where the westerners long ago banned them, or with what fervour we might "liberate" those in a state under which vast supplies of oils & minerals might be found?
In short, yes of course supply & demand do exist, but to explain something with 'logic', does not make it right.
Slavery, Emancipation, Apartheid, Holocausts, Starvation, Child Abuse, Child Labor, Rape, the World Bank.......All of these attitudes have, at times been supported, justified & maintained with logic.
Thankfully, some of the above have had such logic addressed & challanged by enough people, with enough courage as to introduce a different 'logic' to such conditions, some are still being challanged, such is the strength of those whose self interest warrants a continuation of these conditions, often with hefty, brutal & stealthy support of the state.
I don't really expect my offering to change things overnight, I don't even expect that my offering will change the situation at all.
The reply of "killarava2day" offers one of my most feared reactions in any discussion, that is not listening or considering what's been offered them. Note the following from 'kill',-
"What, do you want somebody to go through the risk of going to gaol without making a profit? Do you have the faintest inkling of the risks involved? So, you want some "middle man" to risk his whole life without any sort of profit just so you and your mates can feel good every weekend? Fuck that!".
Now compare the above with something I said in my initial post,--
"If person x pays an amount for 100(or 1,000)pills, they will want to cover their initial outlay, cover any costs incured (travel, sweat, marketing, fear etc) & then make a healthy profit.
I have no problem with this as a concept, but in Australia, is it that the 'wholesaler' is charging too much in the first place, or is that the 'distributor' is asking too much, or are we all too greedy (for money), or needy (for pills) that we self regulate ourselves to acceptance this?".
I wonder if there is anything more worrying, in our culture, than those that react, strongly & sometimes viscously, before they've considered what they're reacting to.
Think of a recent wedding party in Afganistan, 20 people dead, because others hadn't considered a difference in how we do things.
Justify with logic anything you will, we either work, as a race by providing explainations, or asking questions, one offers dogma, the other offers understanding & answers.
I'm more interested in ....What if?,
Less so than.....oh, that's just because that's how it is.

This is a discussion board!
Discuss! Dont just call DingoDoof a dickhead!!
He's made some good points. Why don't we all just expand our imagination just a bit so we can keep this discussion flowing as it has so nicely flowed!
For a newbie, i like Dingo's style.
Give him a chance.
I can't add much right now, but play nice, please!

Another factor that you must not overlook is that it's very difficult to produce MDMA in Australia, because all the precursor ingredients are also illegal. Therefore - either the ingredients (illegal) or the substance (illegal) or the completed tablets (illegal) must be imported (illegal) before they can be sold.
This means that an imaginary entrepreneur we might consider takes a mighty risk in amassing an importable quantity of the chemical or it's precursors. Let's imagine that the pills come from Asia, where they could be bought in bulk at a tiny fraction of the cost to the end-user in Australia. It's not only risky to buy traffickable quantities of chemicals in Asia, it's life-threatening, as if you're busted you definitely face the death penalty.
Then, our entrepreneur takes another awesome risk in bringing said chemicals back to Australia. They have to spend money, risk their freedom, somehow arrange for the substance to cross customs undetected, collect the package/s from whatever they're concealed in, transport them to a safe location... and they haven't received a single red cent, yet.
Next, our entrepreneur contacts either prearranged buyers (risky due to possibility of telegraphing his moves to the police prior to importing, the quieter the better), or he has to hustle ass and offload these things somehow, as he's working in debt at the moment. So, he needs to recoup all that money, and obtain a substantial sum for personal effort and stress. Our entrepreneur quite probably never wants to have to go through that experience again, so chances may be that he wants to get enough out of the deal to happily 'retire' on... So he's gonna milk every last pill for every cent he can get out of it.
No wonder prices are so high, BUT they have lowered dramatically even in the last 5 years. Used to be that people would not even bat an eyelid at paying $50 for an ecstacy pill, or more if it was bought in a club or other venue from a stranger. With the booming population of ecstacy users in the country, more and more people have access to the drug. This means that where before there might have been one person that you knew who could find a pill for you for the weekend, these days it seems like everyone knows a dealer, and it's not hard or expensive to buy ecstacy pills.
But then again - it's all about who you know, isn't it?
BigTrancer

and you can all thank your stars that you live in Oz rather than across the ditch. here i would gladly pay $50 for a pill
at the mo i'm sitting on about $60 and that's reasonable..... dammit.....
(sorry, off topic i know, but have to make you aussies feel good about something don't i?)

Ok. It was harsh, but really I don't think dingodoof fully appreciates the risks people take so that their friends can have a good time. Have you any idea what its would be like to have a gaol sentence hanging over your head? Why should anyone take that sort of risk for nothing. Dingodoof needs a dose of the real world before he goes spouting his (or her) airy fairy ideological utopian ideals. And believe me, the "greedy importers" you mentioned are more than likely involved in some pretty heavy organised crime and aren't going to give two hoots about idealistic crap. I those sort of people couldn't make the profits they alredy make off MDMA the you could be guarunteed that the market would be flooded with k and speed pills in an instant. If you can't afford to take pills then maybe you should find a past-time that more suits the lifestyle that you can afford.

I agree with BT that a lack of locally available chemicals is largely responsible for less being made here, which of course will always keep the price above places like Europe. But as BT also said, prices have generally come way down over the past few years.
Australian feds do a very good job of keeping ahead with scheduling and restricting availability of unusual chems, so unless the Boss bought up big before around 94, it’s unlikely he made much of his MDMA here. I’m not including pressing - that’s a different issue all together.
However, with such an increasing demand, deeply applied minds always seem to find solutions, even in the face of tightening world security. A recently announced chemical discovery - or should I say fine tuning - indicates MDMA will probably be able to be made anywhere, and none of the chemicals can be removed from being over the counter. This could definitely change what is to come in terms of where it’s made and what it costs on the street.
An interesting point about NZ, is that they didn't regulate chemicals till quite a bit after Aus. Yet because MDMA hadn't really taken off there, there were probably few who took advantage of this. NZ has also had a reputation of being a hard place to get drugs into, so it’s not surprising prices are currently high there.
When I first saw pills (Aus.‘8 8) they went for around $25ea. Sure they were generally pretty strong, but so are many of the pills around today. I feel the current average price is hardly more than a comparable increase in a cartoon of choice beer. But good luck in trying to reduce it.
I wonder, would the price of MDMA come down if it was ever made legal?
After all, they charge $16 for a single dose of Viagra and that only gets one part of you up.

It's fascinating to see what happens when a question is asked.
I don't deny (in fact agree) that my question, & subsequent attempt to empathise with the flexible situation we call reality, might seem "airy fairy ideological utopian ideals", to qoute an esteemed fellow traveler.
But have a read of the way this has gone, forget if you can, for just a second that you might have contributed to this thread.
Look at how we discuss, understand, argue, justify an idea that challenges the 'way we do it'.
If indeed it is airy-fairy to afford subjectivity to 'just the way it is', then cool!
Just as cool as it might be to not be airy fairy.
I like this place, look forward to future communications with y'all & hope you approach change in your own lives with as much vigour, understanding & hope, as has been expressed.
(I'd like to be able to, sounds a nice path to be travelling, hi fellow travellers, thanks for your welcome)

Just move to Britain......

..... and live in Earls Court, and work in a bar...
'she just smiled and made me a vegamite sandwich..'
kisses

killarava2day - chill out

macksta is correct,
aggregate supply equals aggregate demand.
We as consumers are willing to pay what we pay in australia because of the relative greater costs in australia to sell the product.
And the lack of availabe substitues to the consumer, allows for the sellers to not act in a competitive manner. Giving them some monopoly power, to restrict output and raise price above the competitive levels.
To archieve what you are saying by offering them always $5 less would require an easily accesable alternative, and a HUGE number of people to do the same thing, which is quite frankly impossible.