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Comment by 6502nerdface | Hacker News Reader

> Scalpers are lowlifes, IMO.

If the two alternatives are a world where no new Switches are available for anyone to buy, and a world where some new Switches are available for a high price, then surely the latter is strictly better than the former. Your sentiment places the scalpers in an unfair position of "ethical entanglement": if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Other examples at http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

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>If the two alternatives are a world where no new Switches are available for anyone to buy, and a world where some new Switches are available for a high price

And if that high price is too high for you to afford, then you are strictly worse off in a world with scalpers.

>if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame.

Explain how scalpers are trying to make the problem slightly better. I understand that you may think that they are making the problem slightly better for certain subset of people, but that most certainly isn't their goal.

Scalpers are trying to make money, that is their only motive. The end result is to allow people with a surplus of money to acquire items, at the expense of people who have a surplus of time.

Since people who have a surplus of money tend towards the poorer end of the spectrum, overall scalpers benefit the comparatively wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Scalpers don't 'partially fix the problem'. They don't create new Switches.

They have two effects.

1. They change the distribution of a good from a lottery, to a 'whomever pays more gets it' auction.

2. Depending on how they acquire the good, they may or may not have a positive impact on the original vendor.

Because of #1, depending on your personal values, you can make a very compelling argument that lottery-based distribution of scarce goods is fair, and that turning it into an auction-based distribution (While pocketing the difference) is immoral.

#2 is applicable for things like concert tickets (Where scalpers take on risk, and provide guaranteed, but bounded revenue for the artists/venue), but is probably less applicable for video games/devices (Where unsold scalper inventory will likely be returned for a refund - at no risk to the scalper.)

> 1. They change the distribution of a good from a lottery, to a 'whomever pays more gets it' auction.

The original distribution was hardly a lottery, it was a competition on latency (i.e. competition to be first in line). They change the distribution of some of the supply from a competition on latency to a competition on price. Consumers vary in their ability and preference to compete on latency, and in their valuation of the time/pleasure trade-off. Assuming a fixed supply of switches (in the short term), scalpers add value for those consumers whose preferences are such that they would in this instance prefer to compete on price rather than latency, and are willing to pay the going premium for not having to compete on latency. Without the scalpers, these consumers would have no option but to wait for new supply. There's really nothing unfair going on.

Side note, high frequency trading is kind of an interesting example of the converse situation, where inability to compete on price forces everyone to compete on latency. Because the exchange has a minimum "tick size" for changes in price (a penny or tenth of a penny, or whatever, depending on the exchange), there comes a point where it is no longer possible for buyers and sellers to compete with each other further on price, and so the only thing left to compete on is latency.

First in line, lottery, whomever waits longest in line... In many value systems, these are all more 'democratic' or 'fair' methods of distribution, then 'person with the most money.'

It's one optimization function, but not necessarily the best one. Especially when the original vendor does not see a penny of the scalper windfall.

The same number of consumers have no option but to wait for new supply, with or without scalper involvement.

The only thing that changes is the demographic of those consumers.

HFT arguably reduces spreads, and carries entirely different costs. It's not really comparable.

Nintendo's already sold 1.5 million units in its first week. The Xbox one sold 3 million in its first month. Arguably, Nintendo on purpose let out fewer units than it needed to supply demand. They seem to use shortages as a marketing ploy from past releases. So the interested gamer has these two factors going against him/her: 1. the supplier cuts supply to gin up free marketing and 2. scalpers making an already hard to find item even more difficult to find. I think that's double the 'unfair' and thus not cool, bro.

How are scalpers trying to make the situation better? They don't increase the supply, as in your erroneous hypothetical.

There's an argument for scalpers, but it's more subtle. Companies want immediate sales and to be able to say they sold out. Scalpers let them do that by taking on some of the risks themselves. And it ostensibly allows people to make a time/money tradeoff between waiting in line or for later supplies versus paying more.

> And it ostensibly allows people to make a time/money tradeoff between waiting in line or for later supplies versus paying more.

See my reply to vkou. This is exactly how scalpers make the situation better, by creating the availability of the choice to make a trade-off, where before there was no choice but to compete on latency or luck (which is fine for many consumers, but consumers vary in their ability to compete on latency and in their valuation of the trade-off).

Giving people 'choices' in how goods are distributed doesn't always make the situation better.

Consider rationing when there's a food shortage. We can either feed everyone (At reduced rations), or we can let some people pay more, to get more food, at the expense of letting others starve.

Isn't it great to give people the choice between destitution and starvation? (Or, in the case of the poor, between starvation, and starvation.)

There's a reason rationing is common in times of hunger.

Why consider this example, though, when a Switch, or a concert ticket or iPhone or whatever, is not necessary for survival?

Video games are obviously not life-saving food.

I was using this example to demonstrate that optimizing for [choice/wealth] does not always result in better outcomes. Just as the parent post posits that optimizing for first come-first serve does not always result in better outcomes.

The analogy of that to your link is... tenuous at best. Your idea of helping people out is taking it from people willing to wait in line for it to people willing to pay for it. I don't view this as an atrocity like some would, but to even begin to question someone's ethical consistency based off that is suspect. It's clearly a trade-off and not actually a "small but positive change that gets demonized because it's incomplete". It gets demonized because some people don't think it's positive.

Unlike concert tickets, if the Switch bombed, scalpers would probably return their devices for a full refund. So, in that sense, they aren't taking on any risk.

I understand why a concert venue would be happy to get guaranteed income from scalpers, but this does not hold for consumer devices.

Without scalpers then a shortage means the switches are actually in the hands of gamers who got them for a reasonable price, without some shithead sticking themselves in the middle.

Currently it's a bunch of people who want to play, but aren't willing to be gouged by a bunch of fucking assholes.

> Without scalpers then a shortage means the switches are actually in the hands of gamers who got them for a reasonable price[...]

A reasonable dollar price, but an unreasonable requirement of speed and/or luck.

But with scalpers you make the initial rush a much harder battle (you compete with scalpers now too) so more customers are losers at that stage, and then losers again if they have to be gouged by scalpers.

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