Scientology Preventing Resale - Trend Might be Formed

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On February 18th, 2008, Reality Based Community posted an article about Scientology. The interesting part of it is when they talk about Ex-Scientologist's troubles with reselling "e-meters." "E-meters" are used by the church to detect thought or something related. The Church of Scientology is the primary seller of "e-meters," availible for high prices. When ex-scientologists try to sell "e-meters" on ebay, the auctions dissapear within hours. This is because The Church of Scientology is part of Ebay's "Vero" program, which is intended to allow owners of a particular intellectual property remove counterfeit auctions.

The first thing to gather is that this is not about Scientology, it's about a company's ability to prevent resale. In this case, the company is making more money by forcing people to buy the product new. While this isn't criminal in and of itself, it's that they're using something (Vero) that wasn't intended to block resale; it's intended to block counterfeits. Assuming they're not stopped somehow down the road, perhaps more and more companies will use "Vero" to prevent resale. This would force more people to pay higher prices directly to the company. On the other hand, it could just pick up the economy; it's based on a flow system, so putting some money in one direction will eventually have the money come back.

Personally, I like buying things used. It's usually not a devastating loss of quality, but the price is greatly reduced. It's also nice to buy something new, knowing that if things don't work out, part of the initial investment can be recouped by resale. So I would initially be against this sort of thing. However, upon consideration of the circular flow model and how giving money to businesses can result in the money coming back to you, it could actually strengthen the economy. It's hard to decide between a small payoff now, or an uncertain large payoff in the future.