from Patrick McKenzie | by Patrick McKenzie

A quirky thing you find under the covers of every capital item in the world is an ecosystem of brokers, flippers, mom-and-pops, and marketplaces that latch onto the waste supply and resell back into the market.

These are often very scrappy businesses, partly because no one grows up dreaming of becoming a furniture liquidator or used-canning-machinery broker and partly because you can get in on the ground floor with a phone, grit, and absolutely nothing else.

"I mean you need money for inventory." Interestingly, you do not, because you can structure at least some deals such that buyer pays you and you pay seller *then* deliver, or even "buyer pays seller and then seller pays you."

There is, I assert without fear of contradiction, a woman somewhere in Nebraska or Kansas who knows more than anyone else about where the stocks of the old Singer sewing machines, back when they were built to last a lifetime, are hanging out and will be first in line when sold.