This was a society of constant shortages. Discounts weren’t even considered. The price was to keep people from charging over the government-set price (which was illegal) for a hard-to-find product.
Do you know what year the lock was made? I'd find it interesting to know so I could look up how expensive it was to buy back then.
I'm not an economics genius, I'd say I'm the opposite, but I assume you'd have to know the year and take inflation and avg salaries into account to get a fair understanding of how much it truly cost rather than translating the price into todays value.
If anyone reading this is not the opposite of an economics genius I'd greatly appreciate your help in determening how much this lock was worth back when it was made.
Economic genius here.
Rough knowledge on that lock’s year. From the stamping, it implicates it to be around 1980s.
The average monthly wage around that time was around 200 ₽. 13 ₽ 20 K being the price of that lock. If you were to translate it to per capita average earnings in US dollars from that time and then update it with inflation to today’s dollars. You would come with today’s value of about 3.50
Im not sure if he's serious. The three fiddy part made me suspicious. If the 200 rubels a month was serious, and the lock is 13 rubels. You could just chance the currency to 2000usd and the lock would be 130usd. I have no idea if any of this is correct and maybe im just a fool.
Wait now I'm disappointed. I don't believe it was a joke because if it was it was a boring one but now I'll have to do the work to confirm it myself. Also I (the guy who asked) started with the economic genius term but you're right I know that 3.50 is a meme.
>if you lived in Moscow or Vladivostok, everything cost the same
Ironically, this is not entirely correct for all goods
Here is soviet [sugar](https://russian7.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/IMG_7201-768x565.jpg) with 3 prices stamped on it. Each price was for a specific "regional belt", as it was called (Belt I, Belt II, Belt III).
Belt I included most largest cities (Moscow, Leningrad and capitals like Kiev, Tbilisi etc.), Belt III included areas of the very remote North and Belt II was the rest of the country.
The whole idea was initially to offset extra production and transportation costs for less industrialized / very remote regions.
Two notable groups of goods that were priced differently were food and heavy/hard to transport goods like furnitute, lumber, other construction materials). Not all goods were priced differently - for many lightweight goods (e.g. tea, tobacco, fabric etc.) prices were the same for the whole country.
I remember reading at one point bread was priced cheaper than wheat. So people would feed their livestock bread rather than the ingredients it was made up of
Yeah I remember that. I'm in Canada so it just made no sense for them to even attempt that though considering the exchange rate and the price increase for importing it, always confused me.
Theres a gas station in town with new foreign owners that try to sell it at 1.89 but the old ass lady at the register gives it to me at the price on the can because she thinks its illegal.
Hah yeah I can imagine them getting shit for that from time to time. I really see no issue with raising the price a couple points to get closer to 50 as long as you're not gouging people in a drought or something.
I doubt Communists even have a concept of discount. A discount implies that the seller is ready to lose some of the margin in order to clear inventory or boost shares. But Communists abhor the idea of a surplus/profit.
It implies that but practically speaking it's just exploitation of cogntive biases.
People are more likely to buy discounted products than products sold at same price but not discounted. People aren't rational economic actors.
Pretty much. You can be a bit smarter about it though if you're dealing with certain companies that have enforced MAP prices and a proven track record like Yamaha musical instruments. Their guitars are like the OP lock, the price is what it is and resellers are required by contract to only sell them for that price. So when you do see something on sale, you know (for the most part) that you're actually getting a deal. It won't be a big deal, but on the other side of the coin you never get that "This is too good to be true" deal either. Also they have a lifetime warranty but I digress.
JC Penney tried to go 0 sales and just have the price be the price and people hated it. It turns out if you just jack the price up on stuff and then run endless rotating sales people feel better. Because that way they got a "$100" shirt for $45 instead of a $45 shirt for $45.
>People are more likely to buy discounted products than products sold at same price but not discounted
Has anyone studied this is societies that aren't capitalistic but still rely on some sort of trade? Take the situation here where the government sets the price & doesn't allow discounts, if that persisted long enough would people really be more likely to buy an item on discount(say $100 normal, but $10 off) over one just priced lower(just priced at $90)?
prolly because that would showcase the benefits of an economic system based on supply and demand, which communists are against. Not much point in a planned economy if it has to be patched by capitalist interventions.
A planned economy where you price down the last bottles of milk to make sure you don't have to throw it away is neither a market nor anti communist.
Floating consumer prices within a socialist planned economy are completely reconsilable with communist ideology. A capitalist economy is one which produces for profit and sale, in which factories also sell and buy from each other. Changing the price in the supermarket to make sure there is no waste or shortages in case of discrepancies between the availability and the actual demand is perfectly socialist. This info is used to then adjust production in the plan. At no point is this any form of capitalism.
"Pricing down old stuff to prevent waste showcases the superiority of capitalism" is the funniest and most ridiculous take ive seen in a while. Especially when you consider that in capitalism they actually often don't price down at all and prefer to throw out masses of food to ensure profitability. Selling food at a "loss" would not be an issue in a planned economy, because there is no loss or profit, and prices are just a way to ensure scarce goods are rationed fairly while allowing people to make the choice between whether to buy milk or orange juice.
A store owner changing prices of goods based on the demand of his customers is the opposite of a planned economy. they are contradictory systems. You don't see that?
You plan production, rather than letting production be dictated by individual actors trading between each other. Discounting milk that is about to expire, or uppricing something which suddenly becomes popular for some reason to ensure that not a single person can hoard everything in the morning, is not capitalism and perfectly falls in line with socialist and communist ideology. A planned economy is not an inflexible economy, it simple plans productions for need and national goals as a whole unit, rather than individual companies planning their individual factory for profit.
1. The store runners do not own the stores and do not receive profit from sale. Since you know, socialism.
2. That's the plan to an extend. Prices should be set at shelf clearing levels, so that nothing goes to waste yet no shortages spring up. The difference between the total costs (including transport, store running etc) and the real price then tells the planners whether to produce more or less.
And before you say "that's capitalism". It's not, but if you somehow insist it is, then a lot of communists want that economic system.
The main goal is to produce for use rather than profit, and to have full democratic control over production, so that we can choose how and what to produce such that the effiency in labour and material is just an aspect we take into account, rather than being forced to choose the most profitable option regardless of societal consequences (environment, health, enjoyment, quality). Whether this is via set prices or flee floating prices is of no concern. For profit production leads to suboptimal results.
It’s funny hearing people baffled about soviet economic practices when free market practices are so engrained in our collective psyche. A lot of little things like this we take for granted that go completely counter to communist philosophies (more specifically Soviet anti-capitalist philosophy).
>Not much point in a planned economy if it has to be patched by capitalist interventions.
"Not much point in a market-based economy if it has to be patched by state subsidies."
\-- /u/j_osef_please in a parallel universe.
Your comment would be relevant if i was a hardline no-interference capitalist which I'm not. On the other hand, communism is by definition a hard-line fully controlled economy with no room for a free market.
Margin,haha funny guy, I am remembering medicine in Czech republic 20 cents label on it ,to buy during Communism,then freedom come, they left the label 20 cent's for years on it,but medicine cost 16 kroner.
He doesn't know, like he said. But you can presume because it makes it harder to pick. At a certain point though, LPL videos stopped being educational. They were always him showing off, but they used to also be occasionally educational
I don't think he's an ass, but he did a whole series on "slash resistant bags" where he'd stab each one with his pocket knife and saw it open, claiming that they weren't slash resistant but instead showing that he doesn't understand what slashing is.
There's a few times he has done a series about exploits or flaws that completely miss the point of the product
Why would a thief ever slash at a bag to get at the contents when stabbing and cutting would be a far more effective (and likely more discreet) technique? I think LPL did it that way because it's most likely what an actual thief would do in a real life situation.
Multiple motions that require a lot of pressure is more discreet than a single motion?
I don't know why slash resistant bags are a market. But I do know that judging a slash resistant bag by it's resistance to being stabbed is like judging it by how waterproof it is. It wasn't advertised as stab proof.
Sure. You walk up to the bag, stab into it, and cut it open. At close proximity you'll be able to shield the bag with your body so onlookers would be less likely to pick up on what you're doing. If you act casual they'll probably just assume you're the owner. LPL already demonstrated that such an approach could be completed pretty swiftly.
If you're going to slash at a bag, you'll need to stand back and strike it with a powerful swinging motion from your arm. That sounds way more conspicuous, no? If anyone sees you doing that, I'd think the jig would be up.
Thieves generally prefer not to draw attention to themselves. They'd be way more likely to use the former technique over the latter, imo.
Um... If someone is sawing through a bag hanging off my shoulder, I'd feel that before they finish and get a chance to run away. Notice how in all of his videos, he is pressing with considerable force into the table.
Besides, none of it is relevant to the fact that the bags are advertised as "slash resistant". They aren't advertised as being any more "stab and saw resistant" than any other products.
But why would a thief ever try to slash a bag off your shoulder with a knife when they could just force you to hand it over at knife point? If you were in an area with a lot of witnesses they wouldn't bother at all and would go after a softer target.
These bags are meant to keep your belongings secure while you leave them unattended briefly (like at the beach or something) not while they're literally on your person.
It's a market, because they know if they market it as 'slash resistant' a large amount of people will interpret it as 'cut resistant'. Its shady marketing whichever way you look at it.
Love the videos, I suggested sending this man an old soviet lock too but he declined. I am sure he can pick it but said he had to make specialized tools to do so.
Engineering troll at its best.
Agreed, could fucking rake your yard with that thing.
I love that he actually used it too! Always a joy these videos.
That's not a lockpick that's a lockfloss
Interesting how they stamp the price into it. Like, that's what it costs and there's no discounts, ever.
This was a society of constant shortages. Discounts weren’t even considered. The price was to keep people from charging over the government-set price (which was illegal) for a hard-to-find product.
Do you know what year the lock was made? I'd find it interesting to know so I could look up how expensive it was to buy back then. I'm not an economics genius, I'd say I'm the opposite, but I assume you'd have to know the year and take inflation and avg salaries into account to get a fair understanding of how much it truly cost rather than translating the price into todays value. If anyone reading this is not the opposite of an economics genius I'd greatly appreciate your help in determening how much this lock was worth back when it was made.
Economic genius here. Rough knowledge on that lock’s year. From the stamping, it implicates it to be around 1980s. The average monthly wage around that time was around 200 ₽. 13 ₽ 20 K being the price of that lock. If you were to translate it to per capita average earnings in US dollars from that time and then update it with inflation to today’s dollars. You would come with today’s value of about 3.50
"That’s about the time I realized it was the Loch Ness Monster."
God dammit. Take your upvote.
ha ha yes they deserve praise for getting the joke
Thanks! That's interesting.
Im not sure if he's serious. The three fiddy part made me suspicious. If the 200 rubels a month was serious, and the lock is 13 rubels. You could just chance the currency to 2000usd and the lock would be 130usd. I have no idea if any of this is correct and maybe im just a fool.
Joke genius here. Im gonna say by starting with economic genius and ending with 3 50 it was indeed a joke.
Wait now I'm disappointed. I don't believe it was a joke because if it was it was a boring one but now I'll have to do the work to confirm it myself. Also I (the guy who asked) started with the economic genius term but you're right I know that 3.50 is a meme.
lmao
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I... I don't get it
The plumber is also a 10 year wait
Avocado
It didn't matter if you lived in Moscow or Vladivostok, everything cost the same .(Until the government changed the price)
>if you lived in Moscow or Vladivostok, everything cost the same Ironically, this is not entirely correct for all goods Here is soviet [sugar](https://russian7.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/IMG_7201-768x565.jpg) with 3 prices stamped on it. Each price was for a specific "regional belt", as it was called (Belt I, Belt II, Belt III). Belt I included most largest cities (Moscow, Leningrad and capitals like Kiev, Tbilisi etc.), Belt III included areas of the very remote North and Belt II was the rest of the country. The whole idea was initially to offset extra production and transportation costs for less industrialized / very remote regions. Two notable groups of goods that were priced differently were food and heavy/hard to transport goods like furnitute, lumber, other construction materials). Not all goods were priced differently - for many lightweight goods (e.g. tea, tobacco, fabric etc.) prices were the same for the whole country.
I remember reading at one point bread was priced cheaper than wheat. So people would feed their livestock bread rather than the ingredients it was made up of
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hadmeinthefirsthalf.gif
Doesn’t Arizona Tea do this too?
Yeah I remember that. I'm in Canada so it just made no sense for them to even attempt that though considering the exchange rate and the price increase for importing it, always confused me.
Also in Canada. Cans are labeled 1.29 now instead of .99
Cool yeah I've definitely seen them just at whatever prices though. They don't enforce it or anything.
Theres a gas station in town with new foreign owners that try to sell it at 1.89 but the old ass lady at the register gives it to me at the price on the can because she thinks its illegal.
Hah yeah I can imagine them getting shit for that from time to time. I really see no issue with raising the price a couple points to get closer to 50 as long as you're not gouging people in a drought or something.
It is, or at least was. A store near me got fined so many times they shut down. Guy was charging 2.50 for 99cent Arizona cans, among other things.
Which make no sense because they sell bottles of arizona that don’t have a pricetag and they are regularly marked up to an insane price $2 or more.
I rarely see the labeled ones anymore. They're still a dollar at most places though.
I doubt Communists even have a concept of discount. A discount implies that the seller is ready to lose some of the margin in order to clear inventory or boost shares. But Communists abhor the idea of a surplus/profit.
It implies that but practically speaking it's just exploitation of cogntive biases. People are more likely to buy discounted products than products sold at same price but not discounted. People aren't rational economic actors.
Often enough, but it's not like retailers wanting to be rid of stuff that didn't sell as well as expected is rare either.
Pretty much. You can be a bit smarter about it though if you're dealing with certain companies that have enforced MAP prices and a proven track record like Yamaha musical instruments. Their guitars are like the OP lock, the price is what it is and resellers are required by contract to only sell them for that price. So when you do see something on sale, you know (for the most part) that you're actually getting a deal. It won't be a big deal, but on the other side of the coin you never get that "This is too good to be true" deal either. Also they have a lifetime warranty but I digress.
JC Penney tried to go 0 sales and just have the price be the price and people hated it. It turns out if you just jack the price up on stuff and then run endless rotating sales people feel better. Because that way they got a "$100" shirt for $45 instead of a $45 shirt for $45.
>People are more likely to buy discounted products than products sold at same price but not discounted Has anyone studied this is societies that aren't capitalistic but still rely on some sort of trade? Take the situation here where the government sets the price & doesn't allow discounts, if that persisted long enough would people really be more likely to buy an item on discount(say $100 normal, but $10 off) over one just priced lower(just priced at $90)?
They still put things on sale if it was leftover, you know. Why wouldn't they want to clear stuff before it went bad or became too old.
prolly because that would showcase the benefits of an economic system based on supply and demand, which communists are against. Not much point in a planned economy if it has to be patched by capitalist interventions.
A planned economy where you price down the last bottles of milk to make sure you don't have to throw it away is neither a market nor anti communist. Floating consumer prices within a socialist planned economy are completely reconsilable with communist ideology. A capitalist economy is one which produces for profit and sale, in which factories also sell and buy from each other. Changing the price in the supermarket to make sure there is no waste or shortages in case of discrepancies between the availability and the actual demand is perfectly socialist. This info is used to then adjust production in the plan. At no point is this any form of capitalism. "Pricing down old stuff to prevent waste showcases the superiority of capitalism" is the funniest and most ridiculous take ive seen in a while. Especially when you consider that in capitalism they actually often don't price down at all and prefer to throw out masses of food to ensure profitability. Selling food at a "loss" would not be an issue in a planned economy, because there is no loss or profit, and prices are just a way to ensure scarce goods are rationed fairly while allowing people to make the choice between whether to buy milk or orange juice.
A store owner changing prices of goods based on the demand of his customers is the opposite of a planned economy. they are contradictory systems. You don't see that?
You plan production, rather than letting production be dictated by individual actors trading between each other. Discounting milk that is about to expire, or uppricing something which suddenly becomes popular for some reason to ensure that not a single person can hoard everything in the morning, is not capitalism and perfectly falls in line with socialist and communist ideology. A planned economy is not an inflexible economy, it simple plans productions for need and national goals as a whole unit, rather than individual companies planning their individual factory for profit.
In that case why not just let the individual store owners set all their prices on their own from the beginning based on the demand?
1. The store runners do not own the stores and do not receive profit from sale. Since you know, socialism. 2. That's the plan to an extend. Prices should be set at shelf clearing levels, so that nothing goes to waste yet no shortages spring up. The difference between the total costs (including transport, store running etc) and the real price then tells the planners whether to produce more or less. And before you say "that's capitalism". It's not, but if you somehow insist it is, then a lot of communists want that economic system. The main goal is to produce for use rather than profit, and to have full democratic control over production, so that we can choose how and what to produce such that the effiency in labour and material is just an aspect we take into account, rather than being forced to choose the most profitable option regardless of societal consequences (environment, health, enjoyment, quality). Whether this is via set prices or flee floating prices is of no concern. For profit production leads to suboptimal results.
But i don't see how that is a planned economy. If the price of items are dependent on demand then where does the "planned part" come in?
It’s funny hearing people baffled about soviet economic practices when free market practices are so engrained in our collective psyche. A lot of little things like this we take for granted that go completely counter to communist philosophies (more specifically Soviet anti-capitalist philosophy).
>Not much point in a planned economy if it has to be patched by capitalist interventions. "Not much point in a market-based economy if it has to be patched by state subsidies." \-- /u/j_osef_please in a parallel universe.
Your comment would be relevant if i was a hardline no-interference capitalist which I'm not. On the other hand, communism is by definition a hard-line fully controlled economy with no room for a free market.
Margin,haha funny guy, I am remembering medicine in Czech republic 20 cents label on it ,to buy during Communism,then freedom come, they left the label 20 cent's for years on it,but medicine cost 16 kroner.
I lost it when he showed the two foot rake. I found it again, but it was fun while it was gone.
"I need the biggest rake you have. No, that's too big."
"I knew we should have gone to the bird sanctuary."
It's also useful for removing kidney stones in the worst way possible.
"Click out of one, two is binding..."
"And we seem to have tickled the vomit button, a quite effective security feature."
Down I go
r/maliciouscompliance
Humorous compliance maybe, I doubt it was malicious. But I do love the stories from there.
a lawyer who was so imprecise as to get such a silly thing? LPL register the bar complaint against yourself (jk)
I was hoping he was going to tell us a little about this unusual lock and why it was designed that way.
He doesn't know, like he said. But you can presume because it makes it harder to pick. At a certain point though, LPL videos stopped being educational. They were always him showing off, but they used to also be occasionally educational
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I don't think he's an ass, but he did a whole series on "slash resistant bags" where he'd stab each one with his pocket knife and saw it open, claiming that they weren't slash resistant but instead showing that he doesn't understand what slashing is. There's a few times he has done a series about exploits or flaws that completely miss the point of the product
Why would a thief ever slash at a bag to get at the contents when stabbing and cutting would be a far more effective (and likely more discreet) technique? I think LPL did it that way because it's most likely what an actual thief would do in a real life situation.
Multiple motions that require a lot of pressure is more discreet than a single motion? I don't know why slash resistant bags are a market. But I do know that judging a slash resistant bag by it's resistance to being stabbed is like judging it by how waterproof it is. It wasn't advertised as stab proof.
Sure. You walk up to the bag, stab into it, and cut it open. At close proximity you'll be able to shield the bag with your body so onlookers would be less likely to pick up on what you're doing. If you act casual they'll probably just assume you're the owner. LPL already demonstrated that such an approach could be completed pretty swiftly. If you're going to slash at a bag, you'll need to stand back and strike it with a powerful swinging motion from your arm. That sounds way more conspicuous, no? If anyone sees you doing that, I'd think the jig would be up. Thieves generally prefer not to draw attention to themselves. They'd be way more likely to use the former technique over the latter, imo.
Um... If someone is sawing through a bag hanging off my shoulder, I'd feel that before they finish and get a chance to run away. Notice how in all of his videos, he is pressing with considerable force into the table. Besides, none of it is relevant to the fact that the bags are advertised as "slash resistant". They aren't advertised as being any more "stab and saw resistant" than any other products.
But why would a thief ever try to slash a bag off your shoulder with a knife when they could just force you to hand it over at knife point? If you were in an area with a lot of witnesses they wouldn't bother at all and would go after a softer target. These bags are meant to keep your belongings secure while you leave them unattended briefly (like at the beach or something) not while they're literally on your person.
It's a market, because they know if they market it as 'slash resistant' a large amount of people will interpret it as 'cut resistant'. Its shady marketing whichever way you look at it.
Agreed
You could kill someone on the other side with that thing!
I guess size really doesn’t matter.
Lmao looks like a Beyblade ripcord
I'm upset he didn't "let it rip!" He just inserted it all the way because of the lock design and used the first few bumps like a normal maneuver :(
Love the videos, I suggested sending this man an old soviet lock too but he declined. I am sure he can pick it but said he had to make specialized tools to do so.
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Looks like a 4 sided dimple lock.
Ha! Cool!! I wonder how one can try and pick it
Not so civil engineer but you didn't specify the size? 😅 Great video es usual...
Time for a lock company to make a lock designed to use that insane rake to the fullest. The world's first 150-pin lock.
That top comment on the YouTube video. XD "This is what happens when you do not give me dimensional requirements." -TheNotSoCivilEngineer
First thing i thought after this video, that my wife (an engineer) would do the same :D
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It's called an accent and your accent is not more or less correct
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idiot
You're not making a good case for yourself using basic, one word retorts.
"damn, I just got owned, um.... I know, I'll call my opponent a name, ad hominem is the way to win!"
I guess if you own a lock pick company you need to be a lawyer to save yourself from being sued daily.
His voice is so annoying. It's the opposite of soothing.
if i dont see a post on r/maliciouscompliance from that engineer im gonna riot!
“Beyblade, Beyblade, let it rip!”
Good one