Sure, I've been outbid at the last moment. Losing an auction is always a little frustrating. But if I was willing to pay that price I should have bid it myself. Feels fair enough?
If there was never a worry about this, they could bring out (and decide) that ceiling only after being outbid.
Since, from the outside, it surely sounds like you get pleasure by inflicting some form of suffering on others. But that hopefully isn’t considered fun, is it?
Globally, wealth gets created, which leads to a positive-sum game, not a zero sum game.
On the other hand, if one quadrillionaire in a city owns all the money available in that said system except 100 currency units, the remaining 100 humans are in possession of exactly 1 currency unit. The suffering for the 100 humans is significantly higher for the 100 than for the one, even though it fulfils your premise of a balanced global suffering index.
Before the trade, the value for the seller and the buyer was zero. Whatever the trade involved, the moment the minimum of the seller gets hit, it becomes a positive-sum game.
If this would not be the case long-term rise of stocks would be impossible. That would mean a stock rise is a redistribution and you take it away from someone else . So, if the stock market were truly zero-sum, every currency unit earned would require someone else to have lost one.
> if one quadrillionaire in a city owns all the money
That's a valid risk factor but on a random eBay purchase I think it's fair to say we have no idea if the purchaser or the seller gets more utility out of each dollar.
>we have no idea if the purchaser or the seller gets more utility out of each dollar.
Assumption: the seller opened the auction with his actual hard lower limit, he should be happy with what he gets as soon as that limit gets hit.
The original poster said that he essentially altered the bid in favour of the seller. However, the exchange of subjective equal values is based on the balance between the two parties and now gets distorted in favour of the seller and in detriment of the buyer. This should result in win/lose if I am not mistaken.
So, maybe I get you wrong, I am not sure right now.
My argument is that this distortion in favor of the seller isn't really good or bad in a meaningful way. It's just rude.
The seller is happy as long as their limit is hit, the buyer is happy as long as their limit isn't hit. How should the surplus happiness get split? I dunno. So the earlier poster sticking their finger in and shifting the surplus around isn't a particularly moral issue.
And this probably appears to work enough times in the snipers favor to trick them into thinking it is a winning strategy, whereas they likely would have won the same auctions in the end by just bidding that 'minimum' as their maximum bid. But as they can't easily (i.e., without expense) A/B test their strategy, they get no feedback that sniping isn't really helping them like they think it is helping them.
There also isn't really any detriment. At worst, the sniper is making the same bid they would have made otherwise. If the opposing bidders are not purely rational, and have not put in their actual maximum bid, then sniping can deprive them of that opportunity and thus lowers the hammer price.
And bidders are not purely rational, especially when the items are not purely utilitarian. Getting notifications that you have been outbid has an emotional effect, as does having time to think about raising the bid.