Explain this one. I placed an add on PAFOA (a PA gun organization website) that I wanted to buy an M1 Garand. I got something like 10 responses in 24 hours. Suddenly now that I have all these responses, the price of what the various people are willing to take is going down. No legislation, law or mandate required. If you have a product (or item) to sell and you know you have competitors you are going to bring your price down so your buyer chooses you over the rest.

This is just a small example of how Capitalism works.

Discuss...

Theres no need for anexplanation. Its the free market system.

Of course, you can be reasonably sure that none of those guns will explode in your face the first time you try to use it, and that is mostly due to safety regulations enacted by the government intervening in economy...

Except your example is on a massively smaller scale than the global cluster****s of corporations that people have to deal with on a day to day basis. Yes, your situation (exactly like any other want ad scenario seen over the past fifty years) is what we would like to believe is the best. However, you didn't pay scientists to find which price is the best, to research which gun is the highest quality. You didn't pay off a politician or news station to bad mouth one seller or make another one look better. There's all sorts of insane variables in modern capitalism that just aren't seen in your scenario. Modern capitalism has mutated into some hideous monster that barely resembles its original form.

That's because .gov has stuck it's dick in the soup and tainted it too much. Capitalism if left unmolested works the best... don't believe me, ask anyone who remembered the 80's.

So it's the government's fault that big corporations actively seek new ways to **** each other and their customers out of money?

I remember the 80s. High unemployment, high inflation, high interest rates, $221 million Federal budget deficit...

Yup, all after Jimmy Carter. I'm talking about the late 80's there Jeanie.

Capitalism and Free markets are not the same thing... you can have Capitalism without free markets (as we do in this economic system in The United States) or you can have free markets without capitalism.
One has to do with ownership of the means of production and the other has to do with the availability of goods and services and the "natural" seeking of a balance between supply and demand.
In the example cited by the OP, if those interested in selling their guns get together and set up a advertising campaign in which they get (let's say) 100 people to want to buy an M1 and they only have a dozen or so between them, they can artificially adjust the demand within their market and jack the price WAAAAAAAAAY up. That is to the benefit of the supplier (called supply economics). On the other hand , if you can convince those same potential customers to want M16s instead, and thereby force the sellers to compete for your business (consumer economics) you can drive the price down to where you find out who values their product the least.
All market transactions are exchanges... goods and/ or services for goods and/ or services. What do value more: your money or your gun; their money or their gun?

Capitalism, to be clear, has nothing to do with the establishment of prices or value. It is simply the ideology that some people have the right to own resources (whether they be coal, wood, land, ores, or machines, vehicles, or airwaves, air, water, etc).

Im no economist but isnt this just an example of marxist economics and TRPF?

What would you say if every M1 owner in the country pooled their supply together and raised the price to astronomical levels?

Anyway, I'm with Cons, you can't use minuscule scale models to predict the outcome of a gigantic system; that would be like using Advance Wars to plan the rest of the campaign in Afghanistan.