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> Scalpers perform a social service by rationing demand and ensuring availability.

While the fundamental issue is indeed price discovery, even in the most abstract market -- stocks/fx/derivatives there are numerous regulations in place to limit the predatory behavior of certain speculators.

It is astonishing we have no such regulation for real-life items.

Scalpers are compounding a problem, by reselling something at 5X the price they invite others to do the same, they create artificial demand and speculation.

> Think about hospitals paying 10 times more

No, think somali pirates in terms of transportation costs. If you only look at it throught the autistic-economical lens, they are entrepreneurs helping the market find the right price for transportation.

> the problem is low competition not intermediaries

The problem is inelastic markets and high moats. Think New York real estate market where mobsters around the world inflate property price and will destroy the local economy.

Think about drug cartels and drug prices.

Think about the USD and its status as a global currency and its relationship to the Military Industrial Complex.

> It is astonishing we have no such regulation for real-life items.

We have something close for emergency situations. It’s illegal to price gouge during something like the aftermath of a hurricane.

It’s a well intentioned law. But for some things, it really may be best to let market forces dictate. For example, generators are in high demand and short supply during a hurricane. Folks snap them up so they can play Nintendo. Because they’re inexpensive due to gouging laws, they sell out fast. Now, someone who actually needs that generator for important, possibly life-saving work is SOL. And there isn’t a price incentive to expedite bringing in more supply.

Edit: I still think the scalpers are scumbags. Just wanted to point out an argument I found compelling in the past.

You don’t need to apologise! It is sad that people don’t get this simple mechanism. I believe that lots of misery could have been averted if market signals where not distorted when they are needed most. E.g. in your example higher prices for generatora would not only prevent people from buying them for less important things but also open up a location arbitrage opportunity and incentivise to bring generators to the place where they are needed most.

In a civilized society it is the governments burden and obligation to ensure scarce resources are shared responsibly. When this process is disrupted and not quickly remedied you will inevitably discover that people take matters into their hands to get what they need. They might commit white collar crimes or engage in destructive or violent robberies and protests. They might also roll out the guillotines and collect some scalps to remind society at large that the most dangerous people are those who’ve had everything robbed of them. When entire regions and communities are allowed to reach this point war is almost inevitable.

The government is often the cause of scarcity.

If price sky rocket, investors will increases production until prices are lower.

Government can mess with this by limit prices causing investors to stay away, meaning fewer chips get built, thus ensuing a temporary problem gets worse.

You can't increase production of semiconductors within 3-4 years.

Those assembly lines are highly specialized and extremely efficient. After all this time, the best they can do is 1% extra efficiency per month.

And factories were big and owned by the evil rich, so Russia socialized them. Thus leading to decades long shortages for all but the very rich.

A short term (1-5) year problem is no reason to takes steps to ensure a generational problem.

Free market is brutal about improving efficiency and growing with demand.

Absolutely not. “Sharing resources” doesn’t work when there is not enough to share.

A civilized society works when supply and demand intersection determines the price of goods and services.

Governments should interfere for specific cases (life emergency, masks, etc) and there are laws prohibiting scalping for these commodities - rightfully so.

Your idea of government intervention would assume that government is a rational entity. The truth couldn’t be further from it. Bribes and political favors from large companies would leave everything worse than it was before.

Imagine you're a low volume medical instrument maker and you need a dozen STM32 chips for your life saving device. Scalpers make sure that these chips are available and ready to ship, albeit at a premium which the company is happy to pay for given the circumstances.

Laws prohibiting "scalping" or "price gouging" in emergencies often makes problems worse by incentivizing hoarding and disincentivizing more suppliers from entering the market.

Price gouging laws target the products with most serious risk of shortages and guarantee shortages. I think back to the gas pipeline shutdown earlier this year, and how simply that could have been a non-issue if stations had been allowed to raise prices.

The problem is one of optics - if life-essentials were allowed to be price-gouged, the local gov't officials get blamed for not instituting price control during the period of shortage. Even if the shortage would've been worse had there been price control!

I think that everyone I've met with this viewpoint has been an "intermediary" or one who profits from them.

Your thoughts on that?

You're probably doing a bad job of inviting people to share their actual opinions with you. The easy & practical choices here are:

1) People with more money to spend get first pick of stuff.

2) Lottery / people who get to the store-front first.

Both of those are legitimate, although #1 does have a lot of support and theoretical backing in practice. Most of the third ways that get tried devolve back into one of those 2.

> "Scalpers perform a social service"

Good luck finding anyone willing to recognize this absurd point.

> "the problem is low competition"

Tell that to the GPU market.

I've noticed a new wave of neo-capitalists who seem to be actively sympathising with (if not encouraging) scalping. "It's just the way the free market works!" "That's how retailers always worked!" "It levels out demand!".

Such grubby people.

In basically all my hobbies, scalping has become the norm now. Computers, Japanese cars, tabletop games, hell even kids toys. It does feel like there's been a massive increase in the number of people with enough capital to see a trend and basically buy the market out with the intention of making a profit.

So what's your solution? If there is limited number of 3090 GPUs should they be allocated to those who order them first? By random? Auction?

Scalpers at least ensure you can get it of you really need it (that is willing to pay a lot).

I don't have a solution nor do I think I need to offer one, I just think that people who engage in (and sympathise with) scalping are grubby people.

Let’s say resources are allocated first come first served. What if I could pay someone to camp in front of the store and wait in line for me?

It's not illegal to be an asshole. At least scalpers reveal the true cost of the product.

> Good luck finding anyone willing to recognize this

Indeed, most people are pathologically incapable of performing utilitarian reasoning and have a very hard time with this point. Very unfortunate, because that's what informs most economic policy.

Yes, this is exactly my point, thanks for putting it that way.

You disagree but with no reasons. You should consider why you hold that belief.

When did I say I disagree?

"[...] "Scalpers perform a social service" [...] absurd point".

Do you mean that you think it's absurd but you don't disagree that scalpers perform a social service?

I recognize this "absurd" point.

Right, but most don't. Maybe try and understand what I'm saying.

When did people start dousing their driveways in antiseptic?

People do all kind of weird shit especially under stress during pandemic. Tons of richer people who are not scalpers bought ventilators for instance. And this is very expensive medical equipment which is completely useless without team of specialists to operate.

So people bought ventilators completely useless for them make supply shortages on them much worse. And unlike scalpers these people who do something like that due to panic are unlikely to sell them back to market when they're most needed.

Your describing a capitalist dystopia where people with capital can buy up commodities on the cheap and then resell it for 200~900% markup. No thanks I rather not want to life in such a dystopia.

Governments can do this without the inefficiency of the scalpers profits in cases where the need is great.

Also known as a command economy, a staple stalinist recipe.

> Also known as a command economy, a staple stalinist recipe

No. That’s an extreme, just like your idea of what you call a “social service” performed by scalpers.

There’s a middle ground, and it’s certainly possible to regulate a market to mitigate the most pathological consequences of capitalism without Stalinism. In fact, that happens all the time.

Such an idiotic statement. When every other country was suffering under scalpers buying up mask supplies at the beginning of the pandemic Taiwan, South Korea and some other countries actively took a hand in mask distribution. The result:

- cheaper access to masks for the general population

- no mask shortages in critical infrastructure such as hospitals or other health care institutions

- general better handling and health outcomes during the pandemic

Leave it to the Americans that would consider sound policy and good health outcomes stalinist or communist recipes.

Exactly there’s a “guilty by association” fallacy here.

1. You want the government to control production of some resources.

2. Stalin controlled production of some resources

3. Stalin killed millions of people

4. Therefore, you want to kill millions of people

No, there is only "knowing that communist central planning always ends up in shortages".

See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970544 for an example that illustrates the point nicely.

"Some central planning" does not mean "communism".

On top of that the US and Germany had the same ability, it just that they were extremely slow in their decision making.

When they finally made that step it did help. Incompetence caused scalpers to rise and profit while the rest suffered until the Government finally got their heads out of their asses.

Nothing about stalinism or communism in here. Just general incompetence.