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Car scalping is a thing and it would be a much bigger thing without dealership markups. The markups at the dealership means a smaller market for scalpers. In the absence of dealership markups there would be more scalpers.

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1136687_gm-threatens-dea...

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Markups are just scalping with fewer steps.

That is precisely the point I was making. The dealership becomes the scalper. Would you rather pay the scalp price at a dealership with the accompanying regulations and laws surrounding that transaction or pay the scalp price from someone you don’t know with much fewer regulations accompanying that transaction? The scalp market exists. I think it’s better to have that market at a dealership than from people you might not be able to track down in the case something goes wrong.

The ironic thing is that what Ford really wants is to for Ford to capture those markups, not the dealers.

They want what Tesla is already doing.

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