Haters Gonna Hate, Ganzo at BladeHQ but the price?!?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Vlade said:
I bought quite a few knives from bhq already. Never had a problem. Why would you boycott a retailer because you don't like one of the knives that they sell? Or maybe I'm reading something wrong
Click to expand...
To send them a message that getting in bed with scummy companies makes people question their business ethics and if their business ethics are in question how can they be trusted to hold up their end of any business deal?

Truth be told I wrote them off when they started carrying ( trying to carry?). Survive knives this just looks like more of the same.
 
Vlade said:
I bought quite a few knives from bhq already. Never had a problem. Why would you boycott a retailer because you don't like one of the knives that they sell? Or maybe I'm reading something wrong
Click to expand...
There is some bad blood re: “Ganzo” between OP and a few others causing an overreaction I think.
 
Quick Chrono, I’m pretty sure an F22 just scattered a bunch of Ganzos in the Atlantic!

Vlade said:
I bought quite a few knives from bhq already. Never had a problem. Why would you boycott a retailer because you don't like one of the knives that they sell? Or maybe I'm reading something wrong
Click to expand...
It’s not about the knives, it’s about the company who makes the knives. A company based in China disregards American IP and sells knife clones. Part of the money that’s helped Ganzo persist was made by simply copying our stuff. Knife fans have something at stake in that; some see it as a great way to get a cheap knock off, but others see it as ultimately harmful to the advancement of knife design and morally questionable.

I’ve no interest in buying anything from Blade HQ as a result. Buying and selling it is permitting it.
 
EngrSorenson said:
Quick Chrono, I’m pretty sure an F22 just scattered a bunch of Ganzos in the Atlantic!


It’s not about the knives, it’s about the company who makes the knives. A company based in China disregards American IP and sells knife clones. Part of the money that’s helped Ganzo persist was made by simply copying our stuff. Knife fans have something at stake in that; some see it as a great way to get a cheap knock off, but others see it as ultimately harmful to the advancement of knife design and morally questionable.

I’ve no interest in buying anything from Blade HQ as a result. Buying and selling it is permitting it.
Click to expand...
I get it, thanks
 
GmpaJim said:
My question is, if you eliminate purchases from companies that participate in questionable practices…how can you buy anything?
Click to expand...
Cursed by knowledge, Jim.

There’s different levels of immoral behavior and resulting damages. We happen to have a shared passion for cutlery.

I’m sure on the curtain rod forums they’re doing battle with Home Depot.
 
Chronovore said:
I get the controversy. I also completely understand the position held by Hackenslash and others. I've gone down that rabbit hole so far I had to dig out the dirt at the bottom. For any who are actually interested...

There are a few different arguments involved. First is the anti-China stuff but that really should be a separate conversation. Given that such a conversation is inevitably political, such a conversation should take place in the dedicated sub-forum for politics.

Second is the argument that Ganzo has a history of "stealing". Of course, stealing and copying (to whatever extent) are different things and not everyone is intellectually honest about the difference. (We also sometimes see conflation between copying and counterfeiting. The latter involves an additional step of intentional fraud and that's not what Ganzo is doing.) Many in the opposition lean on "IP theft" here but that's a legal construct. It's ultimately much more complicated and nuanced than hardly anyone making claims about it here actually understands. Whether or not something legally constitutes IP theft is not a matter of some dude-bro pointing a finger and saying it does.

Some object that "it really is stealing because it steals sales". That's voodoo economics. You can't steal a potential sale. Such a proposition is counterfactual by definition. There exist any number of possible reasons for consumers deciding to buy or not buy a product, including any number of other alternatives, including but not limited to "legitimate" options that are actually in the same range of price or quality. (Remember again that we are not talking about counterfeits or deception.) Some further object that "Sal Glesser says so" but that's an argument from authority by definition and has no logical bearing on the true statements presented here, no matter how smart, cool, or otherwise amazing the man is. Speaking of...

Third is "fruit of the poisoned tree" or "Ganzo can't do anything good because they also do bad and any support of them in any way is always bad". There are two important problems here. First is that a lot of outsourced manufacturing goes on in the dark and nobody knows what OEM work Ganzo does for any other company. So it's possible that some of the people arguing against Ganzo have purchased Ganzo-made products without knowing it and are therefore guilty of supporting Ganzo. Second is that Sal Glesser himself would be guilty under this type of argument, as would anyone buying any Spyderco knife. This is because Spyderco has not only used Sanrenmu for OEM work, they actually invested in Sanrenmu and helped to train them to get their skills up to the task. (If that's not "support", I don't know what is.) For anyone who doesn't know, Sanrenmu has been doing the same thing as Ganzo for many years with their Land series of aped CRK designs.

Now, none of this means that Ganzo's copying efforts are good. I'm not saying that copying the designs of others is a good thing. I'm not saying that Ganzo is a righteous or morally good company. I'm even willing to call Ganzo's copying "distasteful". The point is just that they are not the bastions of evil that the opposition here would have people believe and they don't cause the level of harm that the opposition claims. The logic behind the opposition's claims does not hold up.

What remains when all that melts away is emotion. Now, emotion is not logical and people can hate whomever or whatever they want. An important issue for me is when that becomes activism. It's on display here with people claiming that they will be boycotting BladeHQ, a supporting dealer here, because they carry one model from Ganzo with an original design. That's insane! It's also horribly misguided as far as activism goes. If anyone wants to talk about real activism or the underlying political and economic factors here, please join me in the political sub-forum.
Click to expand...
Chronovore, I appreciate your attempt to draw on the tools of logic to address the objections you’ve encountered on the thread up to the point of your comment quoted above.

However, as someone who spent many years as a practicing logician at a university, I don’t appreciate your misuse of said tools (see what I did there? A little bit of appeal to authority). Saying that an objection fails because it’s “counterfactual” isn’t relevant. Counterfactuals have truth conditions just as much as any declarative assertion does. You just have to learn what those are.

Nor are arguments from authority poor arguments simply in virtue of fitting that particular form of argument. There are good arguments from authority and bad ones. You just have to learn the criteria that separate the first from the second.
 
Vlade said:
I bought quite a few knives from bhq already. Never had a problem. Why would you boycott a retailer because you don't like one of the knives that they sell? Or maybe I'm reading something wrong
Click to expand...
Honestly, I'm spoiled for choice in knife retailers and knives are purely a luxury purchase for me at this point, as I have enough to last several lifetimes. That gives me the chance to be picky about what I purchase and who I buy it from.
 
K.O.D. said:
I think they are banking on people not knowing what Ganzo is, people just looking at inexpensive knives.
Click to expand...
Funny enough, if I'm looking for a new knife (since I have a borderline retarded amount already) I always sort price high to low on every retailer I'm on.. noticed a mysterious bump in the quality of my collection as a result.

I think you're correct though.. their demographic are definitely people that don't know a shit knife when they see it.
 
EngrSorenson said:
Cursed by knowledge, Jim.

There’s different levels of immoral behavior and resulting damages. We happen to have a shared passion for cutlery.

I’m sure on the curtain rod forums they’re doing battle with Home Depot.
Click to expand...
In the slippers forum, they could be ripping Havaianas apart for all we know.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top