I’m actually a huge fan of scalping and hope it happens more. Here’s why: many of your more dim-witted, more or less middle-class “free market” bros will gladly tell you that the value of a good is set by supply and demand. Hospital care is so expensive because there are comparatively few doctors, MRI machines, etc. in comparison with the entire population. Houses are so expensive because everyone wants a house and it’s an appreciable asset. I’ve seen these people my entire life. They’ll decry socialism and make the age old joke that “socialism is when no potato.” But the second a PS5 gets a street price of 700 bucks, suddenly they become walking “Homer Simpson fading into the hedge and coming back out wearing a different outfit” memes. They’ll say things like “scalping should be illegal” or “the government should step in to make sure that the actual consumers who want one can get one - nobody should be allowed to buy 500 of them and just sit on them forever.” Suddenly, market economics produces a state of inequality that doesn’t directly benefit them, and the guiding hand of the government should be used to ensure equitable distribution of resources. Not that they’d ever reflect on this in any way or consider how their personal experiences indicates a larger set of structural problems with the economic systems that produce such a state of affairs.
I’d rather have retailers and manufacturers agree on a way to start prices high, then bring the price down towards the target MSRP every time the item is back in stock. That prevents scalping, let’s consumers decide exactly how much “get it early” tax they’re willing to pay, and gives the money to the people that did 99% of the work.
The simple reality is that if there are more people interested in a good at the current price than there are goods available, you must select a way to figure out who gets those scarce items. Raising prices and lotteries where you verify everyone participating is a distinct human are probably the most fair options.
It’s free market exploitation. If you believe a free market can exist without regulations, you’re imbecile.
Just imagine: People need fridges. All fridge manufacturers agree to raise prices of a fridge by 2000%. So what, people are going to stop buying fridges? No - because they need them.
You would say: it’s a free market, some new manufacturer is going to offer fridges at regular prices. Well - no you dumb fuck. What’s the incentive for the new fridge manufacturer to sell at lower prices, when people are going to buy fridges anyway, because they need them? The answer is - none. It would be a dumb business decision, because your supply is limited, and you’re going to sell it at market price, because that item is essential.
So how does the economy even work if that’s possible? That’s right idiot - because it’s price fixing and it’s fucking illegal.
The incentive here would be that a new company could sell far more fridges when reasonably prices compared to their competitors and take all of their market share
But yes of course govt regulation is required when there is actual price fixing going on. I’d also like to know the alternative way of pricing goods/services from people with the alternate view
Your goal as a company is not to sell as many, but to make the greatest profit. So let’s say that the new market price is $3 000.
You’re the new company. Your supply is 20 000.
Do you
a) Sell fridges @ $2 950/each, undercutting competition while selling whole supply, because of demand being higher than your supply, making $59 000 000?
or
b) Sell fridges at a reasonable price of $400, selling the same amount, because your supply is limited anyway, making $8 000 000?
The company still has no incentive to go B route. They only need to undercut the competition, not make prices reasonable.
Free market self regulates, provided nothing artificially screws with supply and demand and there are competitors. Both scalping and price fixing screws with it. It is literally the cancer of free market, and people screwing with it call themselves “investors”, while actually destroying the economy.
It is the government’s responsibility to prevent those situations before they happen, otherwise these changes may be irreversible.
I don’t think you ever took even economics 101 in school because for almost all products there exists a price where you can actually increase your profits by decreasing the price because the larger sales volume offsets the revenue lost. Applies to your fridge example as well. You just assumed the same sales in both scenarios which is not even close to being realistic. And your Nvidia/AMD example ignores the high inflation seen during that period.
My opinions nobody asked for:
I really don’t care if people want to scalp non-essential goods tbh. It sucks but my life intersects with those items so seldom that it doesn’t impact me. I make a slight exception for things like electronics (i.e. GPUs a few years ago) because some peoples’ livelihoods are directly tied to being able to access those goods.
If you try to flip houses for profit, you’re neither a scalper nor an investor. You’re a sociopath at best and a murderer at worst
I mean if you manage to make money flipping houses, go for it. But I don’t know how in the hell that’s possible in this market.
On a small scale, I agree. I don’t have much issue with individuals or local groups of people buying run down houses, repairing and modernizing them, and selling them on market for a bit of profit. But a terrible positive feedback loop has formed in the past ~10 years where everyone wants to flip houses^1 and no one wants to take a loss. It’s been terrible for lower income people who can’t even afford even the cheapest housing on the market. Therefore, it’s just easier for me to discount housing flippers indiscriminately.
- Read: painting walls grey, cabinets white, and replacing carpet with shitty grey vinyl faux wood flooring.
I have to disagree with the first part, the principal applies unilaterally. Second part, you’re bang on.
Appreciate the disagreement. Honestly, I just don’t care. I’ve basically sculpted my entire life to avoid high-demand, low-supply luxury goods. It just doesn’t impact me whatsoever whether or not two consenting adults want to buy/sell an action figure for 10x over MSRP.
Yeah I get what you’re saying. Here’s the thing though, scalping only exists in scenarios where there is a large difference between MSRP and true market value. That doesn’t usually happen, and when it does, it’s usually for a good reason. Like take concert tickets- most artists don’t WANT to sell to the highest bidder, they want all (or at least more) of their fans to have a chance. So, assuming there’s a reason for the price gap beyond the manufacturer being dumb, I think it’s a scummy thing to do.
I get what you’re saying and I don’t disagree with it, but it also doesn’t contradict my thoughts on the matter. I just do not care, like, at all. I have no strong opinions whatsoever on concert tickets being sold for 20x their retail price because I don’t go to those kinds of concerts and I don’t interact with the type of people who do. Its not a problem for me or anyone I care about, so i just dont care about it one way or the other. Sort of like how I have no strong opinion on bridge building regulation in Ecuador. At the end of the day, I believe in the agency of most consenting adults to manage their lives and decide between/for themselves what they want or don’t want when it comes to non-essential luxury goods.
Perhaps we have a different definition of “flip” but the one familiar with is taking a home in bad shape then fixing it (usually yourself, because hiring a contractor would cost more than the profit). I don’t flip myself, but I don’t see this as a negative. Someone put effort to improve the house and gets profit from it (yes, there’s an issue that they might use the cheapest materials, because they won’t live there and just want to make it look good, but that’s a different issue).
The biggest issue in driving prices up is low supply and high demand.
We should change zoning laws to allow building more houses and also place restrictions on houses purchased by corporations and international investors. Oh yeah, Airbnb is another one that drives prices up.
I flip items all the time, but they are items that very few people want, so I’m providing a service to the few people who need the things that I sell. If anybody needs any vintage vacuum tubes, I have several hundred. I have a Pentium III laptop. Good luck finding these things out on the roof if you’re looking for them.
I think they are specifically talking about housing as that is a basic need.
People don’t understand the difference between reselling and scalping.
What’s the point of the laptop?
They aren’t manufactured, you have to buy them from people second hand.
So either all are wrong or all are right. Which is it? Cuz I know people who complain about house flippers, but are totally willing to scalp products like these.
Just an inherent consequence of capitalism. If people are willing to pay much more than the price that was set by the manufacturer, it’s their loss and a business opportunity for third parties.
Cirno doll > house
I feel like North America could fix its housing issue by simply abolishing the single family housing zones
they could fix the housing crisis by regulating the market.
Zoning laws in the US are particularly fucked. This video breaks it down quite nicely, I find.
I think the difference with the first 5 is that a manufacturer sets the price, scalpers purchase it by that price and sells it at a much higher one.
The house price just fluctuates continuously and when the “investor” or “scalper” purchases it, it was available at that price for everyone (or did he purchase it from another scalper?)
Yes, the problem is the high prices of houses, but to reduce it we need to either increase supply (encourage building more, perhaps changing zoning laws to allow more homes etc) or reduce demand (increase interest rates (that though make it harder for regular people), restricting corporations from purchases, banning Airbnb (yes, they drive prices up, and if you use them, you are contributing to it), penalizing if unit is not occupied (though enforcement of this will be hard), or banning foreign investors.
Land. Value. Tax.
Value.
Tax.
It’s wild that you don’t see how exploitable such a tax would be. Specifically, it would make gentrification occur more easily and quickly.
If a developer became interested in rebuilding a poor neighborhood, their interest alone would dramatically raise the land value of the area. The now untenable tax burden would force the current residents to move out, and because the developer would be the only one interested in buying, the developer has nearly complete control over the sale price.
I don’t enjoy the whole foreign investor solution, I think it’s a scape goat.
It matters little to me if the person fucking me was born in China or 10 miles from me. Being born in this country doesn’t mean you can screw over the rest of the population.
I’d rather see hard limits on how much property one can own. There is no reason for anyone other than the state to own those huge apartment complexes. Dismantle the land barons class, no one should own enough to house thousands.
I think a less heavy-handed way of doing that is, every person can have 1 (one) permanent residence, and all other property you own incurs a much higher property tax. If you’re filthy rich and want a couple of houses, fine, but you’re gonna get taxed for it. But that will stop speculative house buying, more or less. Of course, this will never happen because states race to the bottom to offer low taxes to attract rich people. Another issue is, what if someone wants to live in a house but can’t afford to own it? Renting is the best option for a lot of people. I think that is solvable, but my idea would inevitably take a lot of property off the rental market.
I don’t think it is a scape goat. For example, many people from China are not trusting Chinese Yen, they often purchase property purely to hold value and won’t even rent it to others, because it would cause wear and tear. So it is basically a wasted unoccupied unit.
As for your suggestions I totally agree.
They’re all investments. Most of these products are specifically setup by artificial over demand and under production to be profitable, basically exploiting the fact that there are 8 BILLION humans and a small group have most of the money.
Shit like this wouldn’t work in a stable global economic system that wasn’t headed for collapse on a bullet train
I don’t know why this is controversial. It’s just a fact at this point.
It’s not scalping if you bought them on the secondary market, it’s hoarding.
Scalpers trying to justify scalping. Nope. Please find something better to do with your time.
I don’t think this is a pro-scalper meme, more like an anti real estate “investor” mene
I’m not so sure. It’s just one home that’s been posted. Then again, the nuance of predatory property ‘investing’ isn’t easy to represent in one picture.
In any case, I don’t get the feeling that the meme is saying that they’re as bad as each other, it’s making excuses for scalper exploiting consumers.
No it’s definitely that housing is being treated like scalping when it’s a basic need and the others are not.
That makes it even worse, if it’s comparing buying a house to ripping consumers off.
We’ll you see if you’re making people pay extra for their human rights that’s called investing. Not puny recreational items.
This is a joke. But it is a pattern I noticed in this sample.
Hia Ziglin. Actually You’re right; at least in the US, housing is almost unaffordable for a big chunk of population. (Living in a car or at Your parents place or with roommates don’t count much). We in the US luv paying extra (compared to most countries) for housing, education, healthcare, medicine, for transportation, dental care, for food 🥑🥝, water 🌊💦, electricity 😁🔌, telephone line (cellphone service) and the internet. However gas for car costs less then other countries. Hip hip h000ray 🙌🎉 I am Broke and I am Proud!! 🥲
Now when it comes to entertainment, greedy Corperations like Sony got You covered… They want more and more of Your money too. Remember how you used to play a lot of console games with two players? Now they want you to buy a second controller and maybe a second console. Think it’s plug and play cause it’s 2024?.. Nah, You gotta buy products that work with the PS5 only. But don’t worry Sony is making good products that will work with the PS5.
