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.

[–] gornius 55 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] throwwyacc 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] gornius 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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?

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.

Btw. A situation like this was happening recently in the GPU market. Nvidia had a crazy high demand for their GPUs because companies invested in AI were going to buy these cards no matter the price. So they bumped the prices like crazy, and they were instantly sold out.

Meanwhile Nvidia's competitor - AMD - didn't have nearly as strong GPUs for Ai as Nvidia. Do you think AMD's prices stayed the same? Nope. They bumped it just like Nvidia, barely undercutting them, because there was still demand, in fact growing demand, for GPUs for gaming, while AMD's supply was obviously limited.

2 years later, lower demand, GPUs actually in stock, but prices are still fucked (though not as much) because people got used to it.

[–] flakpanzer -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

They are making the assumption that demand is constant because the product is a necessity (such as with something like insulin). Profit at higher volume and lower prices only happens with products with elastic demand.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In this example this new company would probably sell fridges at a whooping discount of some 5% and still be able to sell more although the price is 1990% of the original

[–] throwwyacc 1 points 9 months ago

The point being that if company A cuts their price to compete, and company B has an artificially inflated price

Now we have company B with no sales, and are forced to match or beat their competitor

Repeat until the price is fair. This breaks if both companies are co-ordinating with each other and forcing all other competition in line. But that's a crime and would be regulated

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This take is basically accelerationism. That if something is bad it will inspire more people to change their opinion. Your take is fine, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree with the sentiment but feel like it doesn't really work that way. It's what I learnt from 2020 at least, whenever things turn to worse, people would rather do nothing than change anything. That makes a bit afraid of how bad should something get for changes to occur

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is an important observation. You're probably more right, that things can get worse without people caring. Sometimes when we say things will get worse unless we do something, that does prevent a bill from passing or someone awful getting elected or some business going bankrupt etc.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

man that's a lot of words to say that a theoretical person is a hypocrite

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

[–] prime_number_314159 5 points 9 months ago

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.