"Surely there needs to be a degree of trust in a business like that? Would you feel sanguine about dealing with someone you knew would steal you blind given the chance?"
Well, I don't think you'll find a degree of "trust" in that business for the most part. It's more a matter of professional responsibility, to discharge one's obligations ethically.
For example, I would not feel the slightest qualms about going to a garage sale, seeing a sideboard there that someone had tagged for $100.00, buying it, and selling it to a dealer for ten thousand dollars because I knew it was a valuable antique. I might feel some moral qualms if the seller was a destitute old lady, in which case I'd probably tell her that she was giving the thing away, and work out something different. But that has nothing to do with professional obligations. Buying the ten thousand dollar piece for a hundred bucks is not in itself a violation of ethics, I think.
But if I'm an antiques dealer, and the same person above comes to me with the same piece to sell, and agrees to sell it to me if I provide a good faith appraisal, then I would be bound to buy it for a fair price that included a reasonable profit margin for me to take the risk. That might be twenty, thirty, or even fifty percent, easily enough, depending upon the risk, but certainly I would not be acting ethically if I offered only one tenth its value.
So. Would you feel like you'd compromised your ethics if you bought that piece at the garage sale for a hundred dollars? |
