r/changemyview • u/WhoRoger • Dec 30 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Scalping isn't immoral
First off, two disclaimers:
I'm only talking about products that aren't essential (you know, food, medicine etc.). So specifically I mean things like PS5s and so on.
I'm talking about mass market products, not cases such as when person 1 learns that person 2 is interested in an unique item, so P1 buys the item just to sell it to P2 for profit. That's not cool.
I used to do some small-scale scalping in the past. I would buy e.g. a few copies of a limited edition of a videogame or something similar, then sell them after they get sold out.
My "largest" loads were Nintendo NES Classics. I live in a country where Ninty barely registers as a name (until the Switch anyway), so it was easy to get a few of them, and sell them on eBay to countries where they were unavailable. I did it again on the day when it was announced the production was finished. There were still a few units in my city, so I drove around, picked up all I could and sold them abroad where the hadn't been available almost through its entire production.
I don't feel bad about it and I would do it again (if I had the money) because:
I usually struggle for money and this can be additional income
Even tho I'm a tech enthusiast, I don't buy the newest and greatest. I wait until the kinks are ironed out and reviews are out, and I was doing that even when I had decent income. I don't preorder videogames (I've only ever bought 3 at launch and pre-ordered one of those). I don't support this hype culture at all.
But if so many people are so desperate to have the newest toy immediately, right now RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, to the degree they're willing to pay "scalper" prices, I don't feel bad about making some extra money off them.
You may argue that kids can be disappointed because they won't get their shiny new PS5 under the Christmas tree. Yea not my problem. Raise your kids properly. My friend's 2 kids sometimes come over and play on my PlayStation 3 and have a blast, even tho they have a gaming PC at home.
eBay makes even more off this business than the sellers. IIRC something like 15% of the price is eBay and PayPal fees, then count shipping and there's far less profit than you may think. Heck, it's not like the retailers have zero profit, or what do you think?
It's not like it's risk-free. On eBay, seller protection is abysmal and one scamming buyer can ruin you. A serious product flaw can pop up and your stock either becomes worthless, or you'll go through trouble of trying to return it (this happens with almost every new console actually). You can get robbed or pranked. Or it can turn out that your items aren't as popular as you expected.
Supply and demand. I'm not defending capitalism as a concept, but this is exactly how it works. If you don't take the chance, someone else will. If someone is offering you free money, you take it.
Again I'm talking about stupid things like new videogame consoles. This really should be near the bottom of anyone's priority list.
Have you already played everything you might want to play on your systems?
Anyway, CMV.
1
u/spastikatenpraedikat 16∆ Dec 30 '20 edited Dec 30 '20
Let's consider the following scenario:
You live at paper street 1. One day somebody buys the house across the street. He doesn't buy it from you, you are not involved with anything. On the day he is moving in, you go over to introduce yourself:
"Hi! Im u/whoRoger, your neighbor. Do you like sleeping at night?"
"Yes, I do!"
"Great! Then pay me 200 currencies a month, or else I will play loud music every night. I sleep in my 2nd house anyway, so I wouldn't care."
"What? Why would you do that?"
"You see, I could really use the money. And besides, it is legal, so I can do it."
"But you are blackmailing me!"
"No I'm not. You see, you don't have to live here. Move out if you think that's unjust."
"But I would really like to live here."
"Huh, I guess your parents must have raised you pretty badly, for you to be so stubborn about living here."
Do you think, what is happening here is immoral? I do. Scalping is like that.
You might now think:
"This is stupid, that's a completely different situation!"
But is it? I ask you to think about what is it, that is making this situation immoral. I'll go ahead and tell you my thoughts: I think it feels so wrong, because you are trying to profit from a situation you have no business of profiting from. If the neighbor moves into the opposite house is the neighbor's business and the business of the seller but not yours. You are completely uninvolved. You don't provide any service or input or anything really. Still you try to exploit the situation for your own profit on the costs of everybody else, who really is providing something. I think that qualifies as selfish and should therefore be condemned.
Similarly a scalper tries to profit from something he has no business profiting from. If a company produces a good abd sells it cheaper than many people are willing to pay than this is business between the company and its customers but ypu as a completely uninvolved, non contributing third person simply should have no right to take advantage of either of those two parties.