>How is that any less arbitrary than "whoever has the most money"? Because when you're talking about a discretionary purchase like this, it's less "who has the

>How is that any less arbitrary than "whoever has the most money"? Because when you're talking about a discretionary purchase like this, it's less "who has the most money" and "who is willing to sacrifice the greatest proportion of their disposable income". I'm not saying the scalping isn't scummy, but it genuinely is a better way to distribute scarce resources than a lottery or first come first serve. On average, the person willing to pay a scalper to get their hands on something (which is not just expensive but degrading) needs it or wants it more than someone who isn't. >One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's goals is to get decently-powerful, hackable, educational computing into the hands of people who usually can't afford it. If that is genuinely their main goal, then they're doing a woeful job as an organisation! For the price of a base model Pi 4, one can get a refurbished desktop with an i5 (!!!) processor, 500GB HDD and 4GB of RAM. Blows the Pi out of the water. Maybe I'm a little bit biased here (I spent a decent chunk of my life designing a low-cost USB Oscilloscope, sold with free worldwide delivery, and almost all of my customers have been wealthy tech-enthusiasts from the Western world) but outside of IoT/Education, I don't really see the product being used as much more than a toy for rich people.