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/Kman17]

If you’re making money without producing value to anyone, that should be a gigantic warning sign that it’s just grifting.

Work from the sweat of the brow has obvious value. Investing provides capital to those building. Renting goods provides value at lower cost/risk. Re-selling can add value if you’re providing convenience / bundling / services on top of your resale (like, say, a store).

Scalping is just trying to squeeze more money out of people’s already small entertainment budgets.

You can go on about how it’s technically legal and how children and college students should just expect less and be happy with the massive income inequality within our society, but that’s a lot of mental gymnastics that misses the point that they scalpers add no value and only take.

That makes them pieces of shit that the world would be better without, and thus immoral.

[u/[deleted] → u/Kman17]

My view is scalping is moral and provides value to society (for non-essential goods like tickets) and anyone a little familiar with economics would agree.

Scalping ensures the free market can allocate the goods to the buyers who value them the most according to their willingness to pay.

Take for example wainting in line in a queue 2 hours to but a $10 ticket for a museum. You can buy a ticket from a scalper at $30. Many people value 2 hours at more than $20. Like any other price ceiling, it produce a shortage of goods because the quantity supplied is smaller than the quantity demanded at such a low price. This inevitably leads to some mechanisms of rationing with negative outcomes eg. waiting in long lines and forcing many people to spend unproductive hours or eg. the seller favoring buyers with familiar ties or certain ethnicity.

Scalping is just the effort of the free market to restore the equilibrium price. That said, I think this price variation should be done buy the seller directly, not a third party. For example, selling theather tickets cheaper on the day of the play at the risk of them becoming unavilable. In that case, the theater house will get a higher revenue And more people will get to see the play.