alt Hacker NewsThe majority of these companies have long term purchase agreements for hardware at prices far lower than the market prices today, that's front-running the hardware market, the same as scalpers buying up GPU's to restrict supply and then sell at higher prices.
> And in the process of doing so they're providing a hugely valuable service
The value is in the hardware itself, the added services aren't essential - just packaging. The GPU scalpers also sell "a hugely valuable" product, but that has nothing to do with anything, manipulating supply for a price differential is what matters.
> Calling this "scalping" is just economically illiterate conspiracy theorizing.
Scalping is not a conspiracy, it's a well known fact observed since antiquity. Conspiracy or the lack of it thereof aren't among my concerns, the economic fundamentals enabling that phenomenon are.
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Is it “scalping” when HN readers demand six figure salaries for programming work?
Literally everything you are describing, like long term purchase agreements, have been used by corporations (and non-corporations, like farmers) for decades if not centuries, and nobody called this "scalping" before.
You're just "trying to make fetch happen". Stop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen, because nobody else thinks it's scalping.