Reply #32: BTW, to break it down in dollars and cents.

[Oregone]

Imagine your whimsical little brother takes $300 bucks and throws it into 4 piggy-banks. One piggy has $50 bucks in it, two piggies have $100 in it, and one piggy has $150 in it (he forgot which one has what amount). He decides to sell it because he can't open the piggies and he need dough for an X-Box. Being a good brother, you have a few options:

1) Take him at his word about the amount and buy all the piggy banks for $400 dollars (despite his back being against a wall). Yes, you lose on the one with $50 bucks in it, but you win on the one with $150 bucks. You can balance out what you paid for him when you get your piggy bank cracking crew to open up the banks and extract the money. Thats going to take some work, and will probably cost $10 bucks over the course of the years until they are cracked, but its worth it for the little shit. If you are lucky, he might of put an extra $10 dollars in one of the banks and you win. But any way you cut it, at a small profit or loss, you make sure your brother gets the assets liquidated and he can stimulate the economy by buying an X-Box. You can hold it over his head and make him do your dishes for a few weeks straight.

2) You can ask your friends, Walter and Harry, to buy each piggy bank at $100 a piece. Yes, you will put up $85 dollars and they will put up 15$, and pay you back the $85 plus another $5 dollars in interest plus 5% of profits made on each bank. Lets say Walter buys 3 of the piggies and Harry buys 1. Anyway, Walter comes back to you after day 1, and says, "I got $150 out of the first bank!". So, he hands you $90 dollars, and another $3 on the $60 dollars of profit. So on the first financing of $85 dollars, you made $8 dollars! Now, the next day, he comes back and says, I found a measly $100 dollars in the second piggy. You get your $5 dollars for interest, and your $85 bucks back. So now, you've made $13 dollars financing the sale of the piggys. Well, the third day you little shit friend comes back and says, "I didn't like what was in my last Piggy, so I traded with Harry". Walter hands you a quick $90 dollars for the financing on his last piggy (which had $100). In the end, Walter profited $32 dollars ($350-$100-$15-$3), and in all such purchases, he only put up $45 dollars of his own money. Walter almost doubled his money with your help!!!

You didn't see Harry for a few days so you went to find him. Harry says, "Well, you know, about that bank....I sort of declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy you know". Harry hands you the last piggy with $50 dollars in it, and crys about the $15 dollars he lost. It seems like an unfortunate case.

When you do your math, you realize that you financed $340 dollars of piggy buying, and you got back $270 from the financing, plus $3 dollars in profit, plus a lousy $50 dollar piggy that you have to hire someone to crack. You shake your head and realize that in this venture you lost $17 dollars! In fact, the amount you loss, plus the amount that Harry loss, is equal to the amount that Walter gained! But its worth it to you, because after all, you realize that your brother gets his X-Box and Walter and Harry love you much more. So, in the end, you may of lost $17 dollars, but you gained two friends and your brother, who now idolizes Walter and Harry, gets his X-Box.

So where you were looking to at least make $20 in financing plus your equity stake, you ended up paying $17 bucks (subsidization) just to have your new friends involved (who lovingly refer to you as the "Double D-Bag".

Weeks later you learned Walter gave Harry $15 bucks to trade boxes, and then split the remaining $17 dollars in his profits with Harry to absorb the loss. You thought that it wasn't too cool that they stole $17 bucks from you, so you confront them about it. They kick you in the left testicle. When you get home, angry, your brother kicks you in the right testicle for making his idols upset. You still have to go back and beg Walter and pay him $5 bucks to crack the $50 dollar piggy bank for you that you got back from Harry. How humiliating.

3) Tell him tough shit, he doesn't need an X-Box. When his friends come over, you can charge them to play on your superior Playstation you just bought with your own dough. He will figure out cracking the piggies eventually and in the meantime, you can make a mint lending money to him and his buddies with your own load of dough.

4) Just go buy some good BC Bud and say fuck it. Who cares about your brother, his friends, your rich divorced mom with her augmented breasts, and the homeless guy on the corner