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You're saying people scalping PS5s right now are taking a risk and deserve to be compensated for it. Setting aside how absurd I think this is, in the same para

You're saying people scalping PS5s right now are taking a risk and deserve to be compensated for it. Setting aside how absurd I think this is, in the same paragraph you say this is both an "amoral reality" and you "don't see...an ethical problem with this." You're using market dynamics to justify morality. My point is you extrapolate this and you end up with the US healthcare system, which is completely fucking broken providing less value at higher cost. Parasitic middle men don't deserve to be compensated and we should do everything possible to eradicate them. It's actually quite easy to live in a market-based society and not have these problems - it's called regulation and we need a shitload more of it. It's how we established a minimum wage, and abolished child labor, and even separated commercial banking from investment banking for a period of time.

vmception 5y ago
Good thing we are talking about consumer electronics and not healthcare, but if you must extrapolate then I can tell you my position is one of liquidity and services that provide liquidity, which the US healthcare system does not satisfy because of different market inefficiencies. So you can save that guilt trip for some other form of penance you pursue, good luck with your personal redemption arc, that doesn't move my position on consumer electronics scalpers or some other forms of middlemen.
- MegaButts 5y ago
  I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone I'm just pointing out how retarded "the market" can be by using an obvious example. You're right, consumer electronics is not the same as healthcare. You're defending scalpers because you say they provide liquidity, but you're ignoring that they're creating artificial scarcity in order to price gouge you. It seems like things are misaligned to me, but agree to disagree.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Although scalpers don't behave in a uniform way, I'm envisioning a reality where individual owners using them for their consumptive purpose would be creating greater scarcity.
    - MegaButts 5y ago
      You're envisioning a world where people are using the product as intended, and simply because it's not available to richer people instead that is what you view as the problem? It seems to me the problem is scarcity (I think we agree on this much), and people trying to profit off that aren't anything more than parasites (we seem to disagree on this). Let's just agree to disagree.
      - vmception 5y ago
        Not really my stance except the one thing we agree on. MSRP is wrong, the console is worth around $750, this would match the inflation adjusted price of home entrainment consoles for the last 40 years. In both of our views - maybe ironic to you - it would be more ethical to diminish the returns of scalpers by having the price correct in the primary market to begin with. The only reason it hasn’t happened is because Sony doesn’t want the vocal backlash especially when they drop the price to $200 just a few years from now. As long as the primary market chooses to misprice, all the symptoms - like all the startup partime retailers you say aren’t providing a service - are completely benign. Extracting value isn’t unethical, to me that is blaming Sony’s “make work” program (the mispricing) as unethical, taking us back to square one: charge the correct amount. I’m not here to agree, I’m completely fine with that disagreement and it doesn’t end the conservation at all, I’m here to elaborate.
        MegaButts 5y ago
        I don't have a strong opinion about the manufacturer raising prices in this instance. In the sense that there is a wild mismatch between supply and demand it makes sense to do so, and I'd rather the manufacturer reap the reward. I haven't thought enough about knock-on effects though. Yes, I'd prefer the manufacturer raising prices to having scalpers do it. I'm not trying to nitpick here, but I never said otherwise. My focus was entirely on the immorality of the scalper. In my opinion, they aren't providing value. In fact they are actually reducing value, since they have to hold at least some cards in order to sell them, actually restricting supply (and that's assuming they aren't doing it intentionally to create more artificial scarcity, which I'm sure some are). All they are doing is matching a limited supply with the highest bidder. Without scalpers just as many cards would get delivered to end users, now the only difference is those end users are richer. They are constricting a bottleneck and profiting from it at the expense of consumers and arguably even GPU manufacturers. > Extracting value isn’t unethical We just fundamentally disagree here. Parasitism is unethical to me. I understand it's inevitable, but that doesn't make it okay.

vmception 5y ago

Good thing we are talking about consumer electronics and not healthcare, but if you must extrapolate then I can tell you my position is one of liquidity and services that provide liquidity, which the US healthcare system does not satisfy because of different market inefficiencies. So you can save that guilt trip for some other form of penance you pursue, good luck with your personal redemption arc, that doesn't move my position on consumer electronics scalpers or some other forms of middlemen.

MegaButts 5y ago
I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone I'm just pointing out how retarded "the market" can be by using an obvious example. You're right, consumer electronics is not the same as healthcare. You're defending scalpers because you say they provide liquidity, but you're ignoring that they're creating artificial scarcity in order to price gouge you. It seems like things are misaligned to me, but agree to disagree.
- vmception 5y ago
  Although scalpers don't behave in a uniform way, I'm envisioning a reality where individual owners using them for their consumptive purpose would be creating greater scarcity.
  - MegaButts 5y ago
    You're envisioning a world where people are using the product as intended, and simply because it's not available to richer people instead that is what you view as the problem? It seems to me the problem is scarcity (I think we agree on this much), and people trying to profit off that aren't anything more than parasites (we seem to disagree on this). Let's just agree to disagree.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Not really my stance except the one thing we agree on. MSRP is wrong, the console is worth around $750, this would match the inflation adjusted price of home entrainment consoles for the last 40 years. In both of our views - maybe ironic to you - it would be more ethical to diminish the returns of scalpers by having the price correct in the primary market to begin with. The only reason it hasn’t happened is because Sony doesn’t want the vocal backlash especially when they drop the price to $200 just a few years from now. As long as the primary market chooses to misprice, all the symptoms - like all the startup partime retailers you say aren’t providing a service - are completely benign. Extracting value isn’t unethical, to me that is blaming Sony’s “make work” program (the mispricing) as unethical, taking us back to square one: charge the correct amount. I’m not here to agree, I’m completely fine with that disagreement and it doesn’t end the conservation at all, I’m here to elaborate.
      - MegaButts 5y ago
        I don't have a strong opinion about the manufacturer raising prices in this instance. In the sense that there is a wild mismatch between supply and demand it makes sense to do so, and I'd rather the manufacturer reap the reward. I haven't thought enough about knock-on effects though. Yes, I'd prefer the manufacturer raising prices to having scalpers do it. I'm not trying to nitpick here, but I never said otherwise. My focus was entirely on the immorality of the scalper. In my opinion, they aren't providing value. In fact they are actually reducing value, since they have to hold at least some cards in order to sell them, actually restricting supply (and that's assuming they aren't doing it intentionally to create more artificial scarcity, which I'm sure some are). All they are doing is matching a limited supply with the highest bidder. Without scalpers just as many cards would get delivered to end users, now the only difference is those end users are richer. They are constricting a bottleneck and profiting from it at the expense of consumers and arguably even GPU manufacturers. > Extracting value isn’t unethical We just fundamentally disagree here. Parasitism is unethical to me. I understand it's inevitable, but that doesn't make it okay.