4 ms·

Whats your preferred method of rationing scarce resources?

mfringel 5y ago
My preferred method is overly broad rhetorical questions that add nothing to the conversation. Also, spatula. Yours?
colechristensen 5y ago
Putting severe limits on people who would arbitrage the rarity when the seller doesn't want to raise prices. Allowing the seller to determine how they want to distribute sales of the item (as long as it isn't price gouging essential goods)
kube-system 5y ago
Adafruit isn't "rationing scarce resources", they're trying to provide good service to their customers. Adafruit is an actor in a "free market" acting in their best interest.
- internet_user 5y ago
  i don't disagree, adafruit is probably acting in their best interest, however they perceive what that interest might be, it's not always just "more profit", more often than not, it's a matter of survival that is at stake. My issue was with the comment somehow suggesting the entire system (Big Bad Market) is somehow less wise than an individual actor. Yet, the entire system contains much more information, that the individual actor does not, and can never have access to, e.g. value judgements of other market participants he will never meet. Markets, at the core, are just auctions. It's one way to resolve the question who gets the scarce resource first. At other times, it's medical triage, a system very different from "free markets". It can also be first-come, first-serve, which is what currently being attempted by Adafruit now. Many such options. Why is "free market" judged to be inappropriate here? From my experience in markets with severe shortages, first-come/first-serve rationing approach never failed to produce a poor supply, and free floating markets were always oversupplied (to a varying extent, but in general there was a trend).
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Sometimes people express a sentiment that the supply/demand curves are more than just tools to evaluate a situation, but instead, are a sacred ideal to always strive towards. But economists also recognize that markets are awful at pricing in externalities, and even worse at respecting morals and ethics.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      This is the core of it for me. The base Raspberry Pi model is supposed to cost $35, because the Raspberry Pi Foundation has decided that offering a low cost SBC is important for the world. Using a bot to buy up all inventory so you can resell it at $50 or $100 or whatever is unethical. You have provided no added value; you are just a parasite scalping others for your own enrichment. If this is what a "free market" is, as many people here seem to think, then free markets are objectively bad for the commons.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        It's not a free market since the manufacturer determines what the stores should sell it for and the result is a middleman extracting the value between set price and market price.
        bluGill 5y ago
        That is still a free market. The free market is across all competitors, so pi competes with pine64 in the market. Pi does not compete with themselves.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        If you have 5 RPi resellers and they all have to have the same price because the manufacturer tells them so is not a free market. There is no interplay between supply and demand.
        5y ago
- teeray 5y ago
  If the resources weren’t scarce, this article wouldn’t exist.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I never said they weren't. I am saying that Adafruit is not playing economics. They're kicking bulls out of their china shop.
    - internet_user 5y ago
      I think adafruit is about to discover just how potent the profit motive is for humans.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    The interesting question is: are the resources actually scarce as in "actual users want to buy more of the resource than the supplier can produce", or are scalpers buying up inventory and leaving it unsold simply to drive up the price even more? There has never been an actual shortage of toilet paper or disinfectant during the pandemic, the production-side supply has always been enough to satisfy the demand - the "shortage" was only because people hoarded up and/or tried to profit by re-selling loo rolls on eBay [1]. [1] https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/ebay-toilet-roll-nicky-morrisons-3993448 https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/ebay-toilet-...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 5y ago
There a many ways to ration scarce resources. Each method serves different goals so different methods are appropriate in different contexts. Here's an incomplete list of common tools: 0) fitness judgement (e.g. grants, scholarships etc) 1) First come first serve (e.g. most product launches) 2) lottery (e.g. grand canyon rafting permits) 3) auction (e.g. broadband spectrum) 4) third party speculators (e.g. scalping) You can often use several of these methods simulatenously, but if your goals include prioritizing egalitarian access to the scarce resource then #4 can significantly interfere with that goal. There's a reason you aren't allowed to resell grand canyon rafting permits.
- NextHendrix 5y ago
  >grand canyon rafting permits Interesting, I had no idea. More info https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    It's actually extremely relevant as the weighted lottery system for non-commercial permits was used to replace the prior system which was a first-come first-served waitlist. It's a great example of evaluating different methods of rationing access to a limited resource when the primary goal is not maximizing revenue or efficiently distributing resources for maximum economic production.
kelnos 5y ago
Why should "whoever has the most money" or "whoever is willing to pay the highest price" be the fairest way to ration scarce resources? Speculative resellers don't actually provide any value. They just extract extra cash from people who want something, when -- absent the retailer with automated buying tools that are faster than humans -- those people could have acquired the product from the original seller at a lower price. I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. You get in line, as a person, and get to buy some limited quantity for your own personal use. Certainly no one can outright ban a secondary reseller market, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a shop to want to sell to real end-users rather than people who will just turn around and scalp people who could have been potential customers... customers who are now frustrated and get a worse experience.
- teeray 5y ago
  > I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. Until you put the FTTH connection in Ashburn, VA sitting next door to every major cloud provider against the 3G user in Somalia. Clicking through the form degenerates to an unfair lottery where you can buy more raffle tickets by paying more to your ISP.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure no one is upgrading their internet connection just so they can have a better chance of buying a Raspberry Pi.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  > Why should "whoever has the most money" or "whoever is willing to pay the highest price" be the fairest way to ration scarce resources? It's not the fairest, but it is definitely better than arbitrary. If Alice is willing to pay $5 for a widget, and Bob is willing to pay $50, it's likely that Bob values the item more than Alice does. It's also possible that Alice is simply poor, of course, but I can't imagine how a practical system could take this into account without also destroying incentive structures. >I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. You get in line, as a person, and get to buy some limited quantity for your own personal use. This is arbitrary, IMO. Might as well hand them out to whomever can win a race in Mario Kart.
jabroni_salad 5y ago
Are they actually scarce, though? Is it legitimate customers, or botted speculators, that create more demand? It seems to me that someone has realized the product is slow enough they can afford to just buy all of them to resell regardless of actual demand. I used to do this with glyphs in WoW and got a lot of hate mail for it. I was buying cheaper glyphs in such quantities that I would delete a good third of them due to warehousing capacity and was still making money reselling other peoples products, and even then I was not selling 100% of my stock. To me this means that demand was actually lower than what the market could bear if it werent for me pinning it at 100% by buying literally everything. It's totally abusive but nobody can do anything about it.
- evilDagmar 5y ago
  They're actually scarce because of the wonderful debacle the whole supply chain has become in the past two years. This short-term scarcity is being exploited by bad actors who are seizing upon an opportunity to attempt buy up all the remaining stock in hopes that the legitimate end users will be forced to purchase from them at inflated prices. As far as "nobody can do anything about it" is concerned, 15 states have made ticket scalping illegal because it harms consumers, and if this sort of thing continues you can bet that will expand further. Such legislation would even be fairly straightforward to write, but I suspect it will be more entertaining to watch as various scalpers of retail gear get nailed for various forms of tax evasion.

My preferred method is overly broad rhetorical questions that add nothing to the conversation. Also, spatula. Yours?

Putting severe limits on people who would arbitrage the rarity when the seller doesn't want to raise prices. Allowing the seller to determine how they want to distribute sales of the item (as long as it isn't price gouging essential goods)

kube-system 5y ago

Adafruit isn't "rationing scarce resources", they're trying to provide good service to their customers. Adafruit is an actor in a "free market" acting in their best interest.

internet_user 5y ago
i don't disagree, adafruit is probably acting in their best interest, however they perceive what that interest might be, it's not always just "more profit", more often than not, it's a matter of survival that is at stake. My issue was with the comment somehow suggesting the entire system (Big Bad Market) is somehow less wise than an individual actor. Yet, the entire system contains much more information, that the individual actor does not, and can never have access to, e.g. value judgements of other market participants he will never meet. Markets, at the core, are just auctions. It's one way to resolve the question who gets the scarce resource first. At other times, it's medical triage, a system very different from "free markets". It can also be first-come, first-serve, which is what currently being attempted by Adafruit now. Many such options. Why is "free market" judged to be inappropriate here? From my experience in markets with severe shortages, first-come/first-serve rationing approach never failed to produce a poor supply, and free floating markets were always oversupplied (to a varying extent, but in general there was a trend).
- kube-system 5y ago
  Sometimes people express a sentiment that the supply/demand curves are more than just tools to evaluate a situation, but instead, are a sacred ideal to always strive towards. But economists also recognize that markets are awful at pricing in externalities, and even worse at respecting morals and ethics.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    This is the core of it for me. The base Raspberry Pi model is supposed to cost $35, because the Raspberry Pi Foundation has decided that offering a low cost SBC is important for the world. Using a bot to buy up all inventory so you can resell it at $50 or $100 or whatever is unethical. You have provided no added value; you are just a parasite scalping others for your own enrichment. If this is what a "free market" is, as many people here seem to think, then free markets are objectively bad for the commons.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      It's not a free market since the manufacturer determines what the stores should sell it for and the result is a middleman extracting the value between set price and market price.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        That is still a free market. The free market is across all competitors, so pi competes with pine64 in the market. Pi does not compete with themselves.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        If you have 5 RPi resellers and they all have to have the same price because the manufacturer tells them so is not a free market. There is no interplay between supply and demand.
        5y ago
teeray 5y ago
If the resources weren’t scarce, this article wouldn’t exist.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I never said they weren't. I am saying that Adafruit is not playing economics. They're kicking bulls out of their china shop.
  - internet_user 5y ago
    I think adafruit is about to discover just how potent the profit motive is for humans.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The interesting question is: are the resources actually scarce as in "actual users want to buy more of the resource than the supplier can produce", or are scalpers buying up inventory and leaving it unsold simply to drive up the price even more? There has never been an actual shortage of toilet paper or disinfectant during the pandemic, the production-side supply has always been enough to satisfy the demand - the "shortage" was only because people hoarded up and/or tried to profit by re-selling loo rolls on eBay [1]. [1] https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/ebay-toilet-roll-nicky-morrisons-3993448 https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/ebay-toilet-...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 5y ago

There a many ways to ration scarce resources. Each method serves different goals so different methods are appropriate in different contexts. Here's an incomplete list of common tools: 0) fitness judgement (e.g. grants, scholarships etc) 1) First come first serve (e.g. most product launches) 2) lottery (e.g. grand canyon rafting permits) 3) auction (e.g. broadband spectrum) 4) third party speculators (e.g. scalping) You can often use several of these methods simulatenously, but if your goals include prioritizing egalitarian access to the scarce resource then #4 can significantly interfere with that goal. There's a reason you aren't allowed to resell grand canyon rafting permits.

NextHendrix 5y ago
>grand canyon rafting permits Interesting, I had no idea. More info https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm
- shkkmo 5y ago
  It's actually extremely relevant as the weighted lottery system for non-commercial permits was used to replace the prior system which was a first-come first-served waitlist. It's a great example of evaluating different methods of rationing access to a limited resource when the primary goal is not maximizing revenue or efficiently distributing resources for maximum economic production.

kelnos 5y ago

Why should "whoever has the most money" or "whoever is willing to pay the highest price" be the fairest way to ration scarce resources? Speculative resellers don't actually provide any value. They just extract extra cash from people who want something, when -- absent the retailer with automated buying tools that are faster than humans -- those people could have acquired the product from the original seller at a lower price. I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. You get in line, as a person, and get to buy some limited quantity for your own personal use. Certainly no one can outright ban a secondary reseller market, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a shop to want to sell to real end-users rather than people who will just turn around and scalp people who could have been potential customers... customers who are now frustrated and get a worse experience.

teeray 5y ago
> I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. Until you put the FTTH connection in Ashburn, VA sitting next door to every major cloud provider against the 3G user in Somalia. Clicking through the form degenerates to an unfair lottery where you can buy more raffle tickets by paying more to your ISP.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure no one is upgrading their internet connection just so they can have a better chance of buying a Raspberry Pi.
AussieWog93 5y ago
> Why should "whoever has the most money" or "whoever is willing to pay the highest price" be the fairest way to ration scarce resources? It's not the fairest, but it is definitely better than arbitrary. If Alice is willing to pay $5 for a widget, and Bob is willing to pay $50, it's likely that Bob values the item more than Alice does. It's also possible that Alice is simply poor, of course, but I can't imagine how a practical system could take this into account without also destroying incentive structures. >I think "whoever gets through the website order form the fastest" is a perfectly reasonable (if often frustrating) way to ration scarce resources. You get in line, as a person, and get to buy some limited quantity for your own personal use. This is arbitrary, IMO. Might as well hand them out to whomever can win a race in Mario Kart.

jabroni_salad 5y ago

Are they actually scarce, though? Is it legitimate customers, or botted speculators, that create more demand? It seems to me that someone has realized the product is slow enough they can afford to just buy all of them to resell regardless of actual demand. I used to do this with glyphs in WoW and got a lot of hate mail for it. I was buying cheaper glyphs in such quantities that I would delete a good third of them due to warehousing capacity and was still making money reselling other peoples products, and even then I was not selling 100% of my stock. To me this means that demand was actually lower than what the market could bear if it werent for me pinning it at 100% by buying literally everything. It's totally abusive but nobody can do anything about it.

evilDagmar 5y ago
They're actually scarce because of the wonderful debacle the whole supply chain has become in the past two years. This short-term scarcity is being exploited by bad actors who are seizing upon an opportunity to attempt buy up all the remaining stock in hopes that the legitimate end users will be forced to purchase from them at inflated prices. As far as "nobody can do anything about it" is concerned, 15 states have made ticket scalping illegal because it harms consumers, and if this sort of thing continues you can bet that will expand further. Such legislation would even be fairly straightforward to write, but I suspect it will be more entertaining to watch as various scalpers of retail gear get nailed for various forms of tax evasion.