4 ms·

I'm annoyed that you just can never get the latest model of raspberry pi at retail. Even today, you can't buy a raspberry pi 4 which came out in June 2019. Peo

by bko 5y ago

I'm annoyed that you just can never get the latest model of raspberry pi at retail. Even today, you can't buy a raspberry pi 4 which came out in June 2019. People blame the scalpers but I blame the organization for not producing enough or underpricing it. There's no "benefit to society" if people can't buy the product. Something needs to be done to achieve the mission. Hopefully an infusion of money will help them make raspberry pi more available without going through scalpers.

daniel-s 5y ago
People hate "scalping", even giving it this bad name, but I think that they just don't understand the economics. It is an important part of an economy and helps reduce scarcity by bringing a product's price closer to what it should be is a market economy. A vendor doesn't know what the free market price for something is. They have to guess, this is speculative. If they guess low they get shortages and if they guess high they have unsold inventory. The scalper is doing you a service. They're securing you access to a scarce product. You're paying for that service. You are also deciding that the benefit of this is worth more than the price you're paying for it. In exchange, the scalper is rewarded the difference between cost and secondary sale price. Remember, the scalper is also speculating that they know better than the original vendor what the item's sale price should be. If correct they are rewarded for this risk.
acomjean 5y ago
I kinda don’t understand why at least online there are no preorder queues for items out of stock. Seems that and purchase limits would prevent this kind of behavior.
bsder 5y ago
> People blame the scalpers but I blame the organization for not producing enough or underpricing it. There's no "benefit to society" if people can't buy the product. Then buy a Beaglebone? The problem that the Beaglebone folks bumped into is that if you don't make the hardware stupid cheap (<$20, and probably <$10), people won't buy it and form a community around it. Of course, if you make it too cheap, then you really don't want to sell all that many of them since you're losing money on each one.

by bko 5y ago

daniel-s 5y ago

People hate "scalping", even giving it this bad name, but I think that they just don't understand the economics. It is an important part of an economy and helps reduce scarcity by bringing a product's price closer to what it should be is a market economy. A vendor doesn't know what the free market price for something is. They have to guess, this is speculative. If they guess low they get shortages and if they guess high they have unsold inventory. The scalper is doing you a service. They're securing you access to a scarce product. You're paying for that service. You are also deciding that the benefit of this is worth more than the price you're paying for it. In exchange, the scalper is rewarded the difference between cost and secondary sale price. Remember, the scalper is also speculating that they know better than the original vendor what the item's sale price should be. If correct they are rewarded for this risk.

acomjean 5y ago

I kinda don’t understand why at least online there are no preorder queues for items out of stock. Seems that and purchase limits would prevent this kind of behavior.

bsder 5y ago

> People blame the scalpers but I blame the organization for not producing enough or underpricing it. There's no "benefit to society" if people can't buy the product. Then buy a Beaglebone? The problem that the Beaglebone folks bumped into is that if you don't make the hardware stupid cheap (<$20, and probably <$10), people won't buy it and form a community around it. Of course, if you make it too cheap, then you really don't want to sell all that many of them since you're losing money on each one.