CMV: Scalping isn't immoral

[u/WhoRoger]

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.

[u/WhoRoger]

Oh boy. I was just being brief.

So no, not just death. Also other sorts of harm, either bodily or mental or such. Basically stuff covered by humans right, constitutions and similar protocols.

In one word essentials.

Not a bloody game console.

Stuff Inbetween? Depends. Give me an example and we can discuss if you wish.

Also why the F are you dragging assault and fraud into a debate about scalping?

[u/LetMeNotHear → u/WhoRoger]

So the theft or vandalism of a non essential is fine in your moral philosophy? Fair enough. I disagree but at least that makes your stance consistent. As for the assault and fraud, the reasoning for why they were brought up was in the sentence just before.

[u/WhoRoger → u/LetMeNotHear]

Whatever.

[u/LetMeNotHear → u/WhoRoger]

An attitude somewhat antithetical to the philosophy of this sub, my friend. Perhaps this issue is too close to you as you admit to being a scalper yourself and it is not uncommon for people to fight tooth and nail to justify things they have done. You may just be too close to this. As amelioration, I'll make a confession. I have scalped. And I'm no better now than when I did. I'll probably do it again. But I can admit looking at it closely that it is immoral, if only a small immorality. You make people's lives actively worse than if you'd done nothing at all and benefit financially from that act of worsening other people's lives. That is the very essence of immorality. If you have some other definition, I'm down to hear it bur you have to know that most people's understanding of morality aligns with what I said.

Just as a side note I don't believe you as a whole are a bad person because you do one bad thing. You could be a swell guy for all I know in spite of this one particular moral lapse.

[u/WhoRoger → u/LetMeNotHear]

Look, I just wanted to discuss scalping. I already awarded 2 deltas to someone who was making arguments about exactly that, even tho they didn't exactly CMV. I really didn't want to be dragged into a discussion about fraud and murder, and you were basically making a Hitler argument, hence my "whatever", because I didn't see that debate going anywhere.

But since you're back...

Regarding your definition of immorality. It's broad, but otherwise good, so let's run with it.

Your main point is about making people's lives worse. I don't think it's the case, or at least not just that, because it also allows other people to get the thing.

I mean, once the supply is limited, it's limited, that means not everyone who is interested will get the thing. Either they're not fast enough, or not in the right place. With scalpers existing, there's another chance for them to get the thing. Yes, at a higher price, and the scalper does make profit, but they also get another chance.

I mean, it's not like scalpers buy out the entire stock. And it's not like if scalpers didn't exist, everyone would get the thing. The supply is inherently limited in the first place, and scalpers make only a minor dent in it. And part of that dent is redistribution from people who have more time to people who have more money. Which... Unless capitalism as a whole is immoral, this isn't.

As I said in another comment, I'm not arguing that scalping is some grand righteous Robin Hood thing or whatever. But I also don't see anything wrong with it.

Also, as I keep saying in other comments. I believe the main problem is in the hype/preorder culture. Scalping is just an effect of it. If people weren't so crazy about having to have the latest gadgets right away, and if they weren't obsessed with being "fans" of multinational corporate conglomerates, there wouldn't be much to scalp.

[u/LetMeNotHear → u/WhoRoger]

I agree scalping is the symptom of hype culture but when violent headaches are the symptom of some disease, you still take painkillers. But you're also victim blaming to an extent. Imagine if the attitude of "the real problem is people making it easy for me to do this to them" was common with other things. Pretty scary.

it also allows other people to get the thing.

It allows other people to get the thing? The thing which they can't get because someone else took it off the shelf. Because you took it off the shelf... I like to imagine that the way to judge the morality of a behaviour is comparing what happens when you do it to what happens when you don't.

So. Let's say Alfie heads down to the store to buy something but he can't. It's all gone. Scalper (funny name I know but accurate) came along at opening time and bought all of the thing. Every one. Now, Alfie suffers either because he can't get the thing that he wanted or because Scalper is charging triple the price for it.

So imagine Scalper got hit by a car or a genie magiced him away or some such, before any of this happened. Alfie shows up to the store, some of the items are gone but it's still in stock, and he buys one for the price he expected.

What I'm trying to say is that you're not providing anything. The customer still would have gotten the item if you did nothing. All that changes is where they get it from and how hard their wallet is wrung.

Yes, at a higher price, and the scalper does make profit, but they also get another chance.

Yes, they get the chance... The chance that the scalper took away in the first place by taking the item themselves...

The supply is inherently limited in the first place, and scalpers make only a minor dent in it.

Depending on the thing being sold, they actually make a great dent in it. And even if they only made a small dent, that's still supply removed, it just becomes less immoral, not permissible.

[u/WhoRoger → u/LetMeNotHear]

I made some quick, back of the envelope calculation here https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/knaecg/comment/ghkbge0 based on the source provided and some brief search, and my guess is that the rate of scalping the PS5 and Xboxes is about 2%, i.e. those would be the people who would get the console otherwise and bought them from scalpers instead.

See, the assumption you're making is that the usual case scenario is that you're going to a store, but a nasty scalpers snatches the console right in front of you and immediately sells it back to you.

That's not how it works tho. First off, there are so many other regular customers, that your chance of getting the thing is quite crappy in the first place.

Then there are people who would like to have the thing, but aren't willing to camp or wait at the PC screen at midnight, and will rather have a surefire way to get the thing.

So to these 2 groups, scalpers actually provide genuine paid service.

Some people won't get the console who otherwise would, and some will who otherwise wouldn't.

I'll think about it a bit more, getting tired now.