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What you're describing as a "problem" is people beyond the wealthiest members of society having a chance at owning popular consumer goods, while the wealthy mus

What you're describing as a "problem" is people beyond the wealthiest members of society having a chance at owning popular consumer goods, while the wealthy must contend with an X% chance at getting them on demand instead of 100%.

nybble41 5y ago
Please do keep in mind that we're talking about toys here. You don't have to be among "the wealthiest members of society" to be able to afford the market-clearing price.
- rektide 5y ago
  It's really hard for me to accept such downtalking, the presumption that we should all have to compete & that since these are mere "toys" it's ok that we get charged 2x market rate, 4x what flagship gpu card prices were a couple years ago. This is a sad drain on society. The way this is talked about, the justification for prices spiking, ignores so much sadness I feel for all the kids who will never have access to PC gaming ever again. Whole generations being cut off from the PC, in this one swoop. I'd really like to see some kind of even modest go at empathy, some dawning cognition that something is lost here from those justifying the massive massive upswings in prices. So far I haven't seen the recognition of human good that seems clear to me, that we as a world have clearly lost now that this "market surplus" is eradicated & exploited. I'd just like to see some of the anti-market-surplus views at least acknowledge some of the human cost here, be willing to adopt some viewpoint that acknowledges trade-off. That doesn't assume from the start it's own correctness & properness.
  - avalys 5y ago
    The problem here is that lots of people want to buy GPUs. There's no need to "justify" an upswing in prices, because there is no central authority that sets the prices who can accept or reject your justification. Yes I'm sympathetic but there is no solution here other than increasing the supply of GPUs or decreasing the demand. Complaining about scalpers isn't going to help with either one. Scalpers don't set the price. In fact, what you should be willing to do is argue that NVidia and AMD should sell all their GPUs direct to consumer at an auction, so that they can capture all the consumer surplus here and re-invest it in order to expand production capacity.
    - rektide 5y ago
      > Yes I'm sympathetic but there is no solution here other than increasing the supply of GPUs or decreasing the demand. Complaining about scalpers isn't going to help with either one. Scalpers don't set the price. This feels like the "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) and I have never been a fan of that kind of unwillingness to explore. Video card makers have been running lottery systems. Those systems might need better defense against scalpers, better identity verification to function adequately. Sure the exploiters will keep escalating, keep trying to get the money they can & resell; we can't make perfect the enemy of the good though. We just need to keep iterating, keep trying to do the good job of getting good equipment into actual humans that want them's hands. I'm not going to just throw my hands up & say "improvement is impossible!" > In fact, what you should be willing to do is argue that NVidia and AMD should sell all their GPUs direct to consumer at an auction, Again this absolute refusal to acknowledge that consumer surplus is allowed to exist. GPU makers need to get cards into actual consumers hands. They need to keep the PC gaming market alive. What you propose would destroy the entire industry these card makers exist in. Only the rich being given access to these products would destroy the market, end the product segment entirely. No one would make PC video games. Insisting we obliterate consumer surplus, milk every last oz of profit, is a shortsighted, profit-motivated view of the world, & fails to provide essential essentials. Endless doubling down on how profit must be extracted, how it's the only possible option: it just totally misses the entire ecosystem of computing that's getting shredded to bits by inaction & exploitation. Simply saying, we need to move those profits to the GPU maker is not going to do anything to help the ecosystem.
      - avalys 5y ago
        If there are only 10,000 graphic cards available to sell - what difference does it make if these end up in the hands of 10,000 rich gamers who can afford to buy them at market price - as opposed to 10,000 randomly selected gamers who won a lottery system? The fundamental problem is that there are only 10,000 cards. If the PC gaming market is destroyed, it will be because there are not enough cards, not because they got distributed to the wrong gamers. You are focused on the wrong end of the problem. (In fact, you could certainly argue that the PC gaming market will be better off overall if the limited supply of cards goes to rich gamers who are more likely to spend more money on games and keep the industry alive).

nybble41 5y ago

Please do keep in mind that we're talking about toys here. You don't have to be among "the wealthiest members of society" to be able to afford the market-clearing price.

rektide 5y ago
It's really hard for me to accept such downtalking, the presumption that we should all have to compete & that since these are mere "toys" it's ok that we get charged 2x market rate, 4x what flagship gpu card prices were a couple years ago. This is a sad drain on society. The way this is talked about, the justification for prices spiking, ignores so much sadness I feel for all the kids who will never have access to PC gaming ever again. Whole generations being cut off from the PC, in this one swoop. I'd really like to see some kind of even modest go at empathy, some dawning cognition that something is lost here from those justifying the massive massive upswings in prices. So far I haven't seen the recognition of human good that seems clear to me, that we as a world have clearly lost now that this "market surplus" is eradicated & exploited. I'd just like to see some of the anti-market-surplus views at least acknowledge some of the human cost here, be willing to adopt some viewpoint that acknowledges trade-off. That doesn't assume from the start it's own correctness & properness.
- avalys 5y ago
  The problem here is that lots of people want to buy GPUs. There's no need to "justify" an upswing in prices, because there is no central authority that sets the prices who can accept or reject your justification. Yes I'm sympathetic but there is no solution here other than increasing the supply of GPUs or decreasing the demand. Complaining about scalpers isn't going to help with either one. Scalpers don't set the price. In fact, what you should be willing to do is argue that NVidia and AMD should sell all their GPUs direct to consumer at an auction, so that they can capture all the consumer surplus here and re-invest it in order to expand production capacity.
  - rektide 5y ago
    > Yes I'm sympathetic but there is no solution here other than increasing the supply of GPUs or decreasing the demand. Complaining about scalpers isn't going to help with either one. Scalpers don't set the price. This feels like the "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) and I have never been a fan of that kind of unwillingness to explore. Video card makers have been running lottery systems. Those systems might need better defense against scalpers, better identity verification to function adequately. Sure the exploiters will keep escalating, keep trying to get the money they can & resell; we can't make perfect the enemy of the good though. We just need to keep iterating, keep trying to do the good job of getting good equipment into actual humans that want them's hands. I'm not going to just throw my hands up & say "improvement is impossible!" > In fact, what you should be willing to do is argue that NVidia and AMD should sell all their GPUs direct to consumer at an auction, Again this absolute refusal to acknowledge that consumer surplus is allowed to exist. GPU makers need to get cards into actual consumers hands. They need to keep the PC gaming market alive. What you propose would destroy the entire industry these card makers exist in. Only the rich being given access to these products would destroy the market, end the product segment entirely. No one would make PC video games. Insisting we obliterate consumer surplus, milk every last oz of profit, is a shortsighted, profit-motivated view of the world, & fails to provide essential essentials. Endless doubling down on how profit must be extracted, how it's the only possible option: it just totally misses the entire ecosystem of computing that's getting shredded to bits by inaction & exploitation. Simply saying, we need to move those profits to the GPU maker is not going to do anything to help the ecosystem.
    - avalys 5y ago
      If there are only 10,000 graphic cards available to sell - what difference does it make if these end up in the hands of 10,000 rich gamers who can afford to buy them at market price - as opposed to 10,000 randomly selected gamers who won a lottery system? The fundamental problem is that there are only 10,000 cards. If the PC gaming market is destroyed, it will be because there are not enough cards, not because they got distributed to the wrong gamers. You are focused on the wrong end of the problem. (In fact, you could certainly argue that the PC gaming market will be better off overall if the limited supply of cards goes to rich gamers who are more likely to spend more money on games and keep the industry alive).