alt Hacker NewsVery unpopular opinion: Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies. Now, Valve has no interest in screwing up their users because of the AI hardware craze. But this is what happens if you reject free trading: You have to signup for a lottery to get something scarce/in high demand. No matter how hard you work in your daily life, the only way to get the scarce resource is being lucky in a lottery. Which raises the question, why would you work hard to create value for others in a system like that?
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> Which raises the question, why would you work hard to create value for others in a system like that?
Because creating things for others is a fulfilling way to live your life, and creates a richer society.
Valve does not want to maximize revenue from the controller sales. If they did, they would auction the controllers. That would get rid of scalpers, and ensure each controllers is sold at the highest number the market would bear. They are not doing that, which implies revenue-maximization is not their goal.
My intuition is that they are trying to improve the health of the gaming ecosystem because that benefits their core business which is selling games. For them it's important that some people who are more price-sensitive get this controller. Because those customers buy different games than those who would pay top dollar, and those games are important to Valve. And because they promote gaming in ways that don't bring revenue directly but do create harder to measure value.
Scalping still exists. They're readily available sealed in box for 2-2.5x retail.
For someone who will purchase at a scalped price, this has no impact. For a scalper, it reduces the likelihood of a guaranteed return. For someone who will purchase at an RRP it gives them an actual timeframe for delivery and lets them make an educated decision on whether they want to purchase for £85 in 6 months, or pay £200 on ebay and have it tomorrow.
Scalping removes one critically important part of FMV - the lack of duress. It's not FMV it's effectively a distress value.
> Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies.
This explains why there is always a sea of scalpers milling around outside of every Costco in the United States, selling rotisserie chickens for as high as ten bucks after they bought them for $4.99.
It's basically a requirement, and it's a natural process of price discovery.
> Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies
It discovers who has the wealth to buy up multiples of something and create artificial scarcity which preys on humans emotionally/psychologically, or worse, denies them essentials. Then the buyers are primarily more people with more income who can afford to brute force solve the problem.
It’s parasitic behavior that generates no value. They barge in as unwanted middlemen driving up prices artificially. It’s net bad and does not establish any sense of “true” value. It just makes more things out of reach for more people that don’t need to be.
I don’t begrudge a hobbyist occasionally up selling something of theirs or whatever, but people who make a regular income stream off of inserting themselves as middle men do not deserve the benefit of the doubt or any sort of spin control. It is lazy, selfish behavior that purely exists to enrich them at the expense of people of lower means. It does not help the market in any way, shape, or form.
No, it’s just a case of the rich getting richer. Use your money to buy out the entire stock and then resell it for double the price. What value was added? It’s just the scalper taking the savings the seller intended to pass on to the consumer for themselves.
It adds nothing and makes the world worse for everyone else. It’s anti-social behavior.