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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

Scalping adds no value to the product.

Scalping also actively damages the pricing, which is part of the product. Valve wants to sell this product at a specific price, which is targeted to an audience. By scalping and ultimately changing the price, you are hurting both the consumer, who now pays more, and the company, who doesn't see a cent of this increase and is now failing its target.

Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.

Scalping is a bad thing because by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping. Except for scalpers, who make money off it by making it worse for everybody else. Which is why scalpers are bad people.

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Scalping provides the service of exchanging money for time, means, and/or luck. People who have no time to camp, no botting tools or skills, etc can exchange their money instead.

Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.

Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.

> People who have no time to camp, no botting tools or skills, etc can exchange their money instead.

But they only need to do that because of the scalpers! The scalpers aren't adding value, they're adding friction and expecting people to pay extra for it!

But they only need to do that because of the scalpers!

Scalpers can only profitably exist when demand at the list price exceeds supply. If you could magically ban scalping, then some number of willing customers wouldn't be able to buy at any price even after jumping through all the hoops.

Yes, that is exactly what a reasonable outcome looks like when the seller doesn't want to increase the price to levels their target customers can't afford. Some people won't be able to buy, but that is because of luck and not privilege.

what's the difference?

Luck of the draw is very different from having the capital to invest in bots and buying up units to resell at higher prices. You could say they're lucky to have that capital, but economic privilege isn't necessarily luck either. Scalpers do not add value to the market no matter how you slice and dice it, they aren't a consumer of the product they're merely capitalizing on demand to create greater scarcity than there otherwise would have been so that they can demand higher prices. A pretty clear value detraction.

Privilege endures. The lucky player gets a good roll against the odds, the privileged player casts loaded dice. You can be privileged because you were once lucky (e.g. you were born to parents who bequeathed their loaded dice to you), but you cannot be lucky because you are/were privileged

> Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.

In which way do you see the market for Steam Machines to be artificially restricted?

Their price is being set artificially below the market demand/supply equilibrium.

The same thing happens when governments set price limits.

The price is being set according with Valve's costs and expected margins. It's not an artificial restriction.

It is "artificial" in the sense that the price is set well below the natural clearing price based on available supply and demand.

What makes that "natural"? I thought currency and finance were human-created concepts.

>Scalping provides the service of exchanging money for time, means, and/or luck. People who have no time to camp, no botting tools or skills, etc can exchange their money instead.

Which, again, hurts both the seller and the vast majority of the buyers.

>Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.

>Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.

Scalpers, the vast majority of the time, deal with markets with non-artificial restrictions, and use them to their advantage. In this case, Valve has very intentionally designed a system to prevent scalpers because they want people to have a fair chance of getting a product that is very much not artificially restricted. Valve is free to sell to whoever they want, consumers are free to purchase from Valve, and scalpers are in the middle, exploiting the system for profit, and willingly or not pushing for DRM and for binding accounts to devices.

> satisfy market demand

There's not enough sugar in the world to coat that bullshit.

Scalpers aren't providing anything. The product already exists.

I agree, but Im trying to decide what "artificial restrictions...on the market" are and can't come up with anything other than "the problems and solutions occasioned by selling a limited number of items" i.e. distribution problems.

So are scalpers distributors?

Is the onus on the company/market/"all of us" to find "better" (whatever you think "better" is) distribution methods?

by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping

Scalpers benefit customers who are willing to pay the market price but missed out on the lottery and otherwise wouldn't be able to buy at all.

Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.

Basically the opposite. If there are scalpers, there is a predictable price that I can pay. If there aren't, I have to be lucky or have connections.

Which is why scalpers are bad people.

They are not.

Scalpers raise the price only to transfer who loses out — as per your example, where they receive a fee to manipulate which customer misses out (and do so contrary to the wishes of the original vendor).

If you entire business is helping the rich ensure the poor lose and raise the price in general, despite what the original provider may have wanted, you are undoubtedly a bad person.

Sometimes systems which reward luck are better than systems which purely reward money. If scalping exists, it often completely eliminates people who are too poor, even if they are true fans or interested parties (e.g. locals unable to attend sports games held in their cities, etc)

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