Console scalper says we should think about the young people making a good living from...

[m3tavision]

It sucks for us but I say it's just a job in reality. It's a good bit of work and essentially they are retail businesses at this point. As long as they are paying their taxes and doing everything according to local law there's not much anyone can do. If they are smart, they'd just get business licenses and that makes them untouchable. There's no use crying about it. It is what it is.

If you vehemently hate scalpers, just hope they get burned with inventory when supply makes a surprise jump that pushes the prices down quickly. It's happened a lot, look at toilet paper for God's sake. It's been going on for decades - it just had a different face back then.

You can't get a business license for scalping... and no they are not paying taxes on reselling, because it is person to person transaction.

Scalpers are scum and deserve to loose their fingers, even a 12 year old knows how to scalp but doesn't because they know they can loose their fingers if you anger enough people. So they don't do it....

This guy is in hiding, because he knows his life is on the line.

 

[Aaron Fox]

The 'it adds nothing of value to the market' complaint is false. Economists talk about the economy in terms of information. Information is added to the market, which corrects it.

These people are adding information. They are contributing to the adjustment of the economy.

The same thing goes for high-frequency trading software run by wealthy people to more strongly control the stock market. Samantha Bee on the Daily Show did a very funny but also informative piece on this called Cash Cow. I suggest taking a moment to watch it. She, though, ended the piece by saying nothing of value was added to the market. That is debatable. Most economists would say information has been added, more efficiently than relying solely on people to do the work. The question, in terms of high-frequency trading, though, is about to what degree is automation an inhumane departure from the abilities of human beings. Some will argue that automation can remove the purpose of the stock market — a game in which, typically, wealthy people's privilege is protected and enhanced. It is not accidental that Henry Blodget's 'Occupy' charts showed that the financial class is not the debt-owning class that is trained to put all of its life into lower-end residential housing.

The word 'parasite' is also being bandied about, without looking at all the players whose behavior is hardly altruistic. Even altruism is debatable. One camp believes that it's delusion — that all behavior is inherently self-interested. The other argues the opposite — that only altruistic behavior is truly self-interested; that greedy behavior is ultimately self-defeating. This debate goes to the heart of philosophy, the fundamental schism between the individual/individuality and the group/society. It is not true that more freedom is found outside of society but society also tries to erode individuality, which is an erosion of freedom. People get more benefit from being part of society but they pay a heavy price, especially when they have less money. Money is life abstracted so it's hardly surprising that recent research has shown that it does buy happiness (more money = better life quality).

AMD could be selling a lot more cards directly to gamers. It chooses not to. Nvidia could be selling a lot more cards directly to gamers. It chooses not to. Sony and Microsoft could be selling a lot more consoles directly to individual buyers. They choose not to.

So, where is the parasitism? Then... consider the plastics, water use, chemical plant pollution, and other things that cost poor people so that wealthier people can have their consoles and GPUs. Who is paying the whole price tag for these products?

 

[cliffordcooley]

So, where is the parasitism?

Since you can't see it for yourself. You wouldn't believe anyone if they told you.

How many people work and get paid to deliver a product to us at MSRP? Think about the shares that each person must be getting for each item. Think about one person doubling the value of MSRP. Now compare everyone's share with the scalpers share and tell me you don't see parasitism. Scalpers are pissing on everyone that created the card as well as the ones that want to purchase at MSRP.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Since you can't see it for yourself. You wouldn't believe anyone if they told you.

Thanks for the ad hominem. Next time do respond to the substance in my post with a rebuttal.

 

[Dimitrios]

Man, this is something else lol

I agree with some of his points, but it's still a scummy thing to do.

but 60k a month- that is hard to pass up thats for sure for a lot of people.

part of me is in awe, the other side is a bit disgusted lol

This is common and HAD friends that did this with street bikes, bike and car parts and whatever that was cheap and flip it. I can confirm with the GREED and SMARTNESS of car buddies that try and buy out 1993-2002 CAMARO/TRANSAM parts. I had a set of original rear headlights from my 1999 LS1 Camaro SS and my friends buddy offered me a crazy amount like $600 for two and sold 4 used rare SLP 10 spoke Chrome rims that were from a 2000 or 2001 Camaro SS for $2,000 and some people will go far out to try and steal them.

I can't blame him, he knows what's in demand. I hope he doesn't bump into me because he deserves karma. Would love to see him on the news with a smashed up face or him being missing. What's next you POS? Steal our vaccines learn from your parents you scumbag! Seems like the type that would start some sort of sickness and at the same time sell the sure. Gotta love greed.................

 

[MyShadows]

Absolute rubbish. You're morally compromised if you think this excuses the practice. There were more than enough consoles and cards to go around.
You people need to remember these scalpers stole goods, purchased stolen goods at reduced price and sat on them keeping these products out of the market circulation. They have also cheated by using friends move stock their way before it goes out. They have used bots to place orders before retailer sites go live.
If you were genuine then we would have a different name for you.
It's called "online retailer" and you would place an order with a supplier and sell at RRP rather than stealing from other retailers and customers.

Next your going to claim human trafficking is good because your sellers can finally buy a Merc and your giving these children jobs rather than starving in their home country. Wake up people!

 

[complexxL9]

I say it is fine, as long as there are enough people willing to pay extra, let the scalpers take their money.

 

[Michael7]

That is not the same as scalpers artificially inflating prices. That only holds true if companies raise their own prices. And to be honest that is what needs to happen. Companies need to raise their prices to combat scalping. It needs to be known that scalping will not be tolerated. Scalpers need to know that scalping will not only raise prices for their buyers but them as well.

There is no such thing as artificially inflating prices by scalpers. Scalpers buy and sell the cards in the open market.

Prices are inflated by scalpers. There is no one else selling above MSRP.

No one? Are you sure? I bet there are many legitimate buyers who if they managed to grab the card at MSRP, and got a chance to sell at double would not do it (if the cards they already own are good enough). Also if you bought a card say a year ago, played a few games and now got a chance to sell at double would you not do it? And wouldn't that made you a scalper, a profiteer?

 

[cliffordcooley]

There is no such thing as artificially inflating prices by scalpers.

You must not know the definition of artificial inflation, or you wouldn't have said that.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Next time do respond to the substance in my post with a rebuttal.

Like I said, you would reject any answer to your query.

 

[Michael7]

The price inflation is ABSOLUTELY the fault of scalpers. Here's why:

While ETH miners will continue to purchase in bulk (driving the overall shortage), the scalpers are adding to the scarcity by purchasing any of the remaining stock. They then turn around and double the list price, knowing the ETH miners (who will make that back easy) can afford even double the list value. The end result is that all scalpers are doing is jacking up the price for the few cards that are on the market, ensuring that only miners can afford them. Without the scalpers, more people would have the opportunity to purchase the few cards on the market, only at MSRP instead of double.

Yeah sure. So it is scalpers fault that not enough cards are produced by Nvdia and AMD? It is also their fault that ETH miners buy everything they can their hands on? Without these 2 factors there would be no scalpers as there have never been before, which is the best proof. What you say would be true only if all retailers had to sell at MSRP like say in communism but the scarcity would be even greater and in many parts of the world cards could not be purchased at all. There would also be a black GPU market (so the prices may not be listed on Ebay, but they would still exist). So what is your solution? And what if you managed to buy a card say a year ago and now you decided you no longer need it and want sell? Would you sell at MSRP (acting against your own interest) or at the market price earning double the price you paid because if so you would also be a scalper, a profiteer or you managed to buy 2 cards?

 

[Zeroshiki]

The fact that so many people here agree with this ******* is insane. Just because it isn't a necessity, doesn't mean that it's your place to tell me that I can't buy it at market value and I have to pay you, some random *******, an extra, not $100, but $400-500. Last time I checked, Sony and Microsoft had that position filled. And lower income people have to save up to buy **** like this, we can't just drop $599, much less $1000 on a console. Not everyone is a millionaire scalper. And at that point, you might as well just buy a PC, anyway. This is straight up bullshit, in every way, and Sony and Microsoft need to do something about this before it becomes as normalized as NFT, Crypto, and Indian call-center scams. Because that's all it is; a scam.

 

[bexwhitt]

And taxes the hell out of you while doing it. Hell, the Beatles wrote a song about that over 50 years ago! Many famous people leave the UK to avoid taxation.

The upper rate of tax then was double what it is now. Anyway carry on drinking your kool aid, not I said Civilised which the corpocracy of the USA is not.

 

[KENTA]

They can still go F themselves lol. It’s a gamble they take. I hope they’re stuck with all the extra units.

 

[Jolleygreen]

I actually don't disagree. I can truly see both the side of the scalper who is really just adhering to otherwise well accepted hustler culture and people wanting to buy consoles are usually also trying to access one of the only forms of entertainment available to them and being priced out.

It's actually not hard to see how both the low level scalper and the single unit consumers (As in strictly personal use ones) are really both being pinned against each other artificially when the real issue is a neoliberal capitalist society that tells us that

1) It's ok to do anything you want on the free market, price is what someone is willing to pay no matter how much and greed is a good value and aspirational

2) There should be no concerns about community building and mutual aid and the only thing that matters is individualism and personal responsibility.

So we as a society accept both 1) and 2) as essential core moral values and very widely protected legal rights, then we are basically saying we're ok with the creation of a scalper market and with people on either side of the equation developing an adversary stance.

The real solution would be to force companies to be 100% transparent in their supply allocation and numbers instead of allowing it to be a trade secret to be exploited and intentionally constrained to create both artificial scarcity and prolong any "natural" scarcity past it's initial impact both to basically fix the pricing and serve as advertising because at the end of the day, Sony and Microsoft still benefit from the PS5 and Series X being highly sought after commodities: even if there's some backlash it's usually not that much (Again, because of points 1) and 2) above) and the result is just more customers and ones that are much more likely to be loyal due to the fact that people invest so heavily, both in terms of money and in terms of being emotionally charged in these types of conversations, it ultimately translates to better brand attachment for them.

You make great points the problem with comparing them to real business entrepreneurs is that real businesses pay taxes. These guys drive up the market and value by buying up the low supply, then basically charge their own tax on it without paying taxes themselves. They qre in no way a business. If they pay taxes on said sales provide receipts to the tax man then thats different. I do see your side of it though and I do agree to a point. Also this is in reply to more than one of the comments you made just not willing to reply to every one

 

[Lounds]

Theres a difference between reselling an item in demand as a side hustle and making it an actual full time job. This is scummy AF.

 

[Ohnooze]

Hell, that's CHEAP! Three months ago 6900XT was $2300 at Microcenter (and on the shelf).

It's cheaper on Newegg by about $100. If it would drop I would consider buying it but but at $1000 it's already an expensive card that is a bit hard to justify.

 

[Dimitriid]

You make great points the problem with comparing them to real business entrepreneurs is that real businesses pay taxes. These guys drive up the market and value by buying up the low supply, then basically charge their own tax on it without paying taxes themselves. They qre in no way a business. If they pay taxes on said sales provide receipts to the tax man then thats different. I do see your side of it though and I do agree to a point. Also this is in reply to more than one of the comments you made just not willing to reply to every one

Well I think you can realize that if I replied to everyone here I might just have to quit my job to keep up but thread would be cleaned up for going off topic really fast.

As for your comments I can agree actually: they are in no way a 'business' but my caveat is that is precisely because of what I'm talking about which is legitimacy. Not having legitimacy has both negatives and positives: Perception and backlash (Being on page 5 on this topic already speaks to both those) and the volatility of the business are some.

But not actually having to pay taxes, having almost no operating costs, not having to honor things like warranties and not having to focus nearly as much on customer relationships are all the positive sides.

To these negatives and to your points, I can concede that they probably won't learn *as much* on a scalping hustle as in business school or an intership on industry or commerce (An actual intership, not a storefront position that deals with almost none of the important keep-the-lights-on business activities the manager positions take care of that are actually at least a little bit conducive of an actual career)

So yes they aren't learning as much about business scalping consoles, specially if they ever want to legitimize and move over to something with better margins and more stability. But on the other hand well, is not like zoomers have much in the way of choices anyway: there's millions of young adults out there that don't have any alternatives or chances and we know they just won't make enough for even basic necessities on interships and entry level business positions.

In that sense alone and in the grand scheme of things, I rather they scalp consoles than sell drugs because we know it can and does get much, much worst once the business is not only look down upon but actually made illegal and leaves aspiring people at the mercy of extremely dangerous sociopaths.

 

[Ohnooze]

In that sense alone and in the grand scheme of things, I rather they scalp consoles than sell drugs because we know it can and does get much, much worst once the business is not only look down upon but actually made illegal and leaves aspiring people at the mercy of extremely dangerous sociopaths.

Wow, your expectations for the human race are pretty low.
I was just thinking "Well at least they aren't turning to assassination for hire". I mean we should really appreciate what they are doing here.

 

[waclark]

The upper rate of tax then was double what it is now. Anyway carry on drinking your kool aid, not I said Civilised which the corpocracy of the USA is not.

You're welcome to your opinion. Talk about drinking Kool-Aid, Corporate America is not the evil demon the media would have you to believe.

 

[Whataheim]

After reading, and laughing at those defending scammers, I had to make two points that invalidate both "we're adding value by making sure things are available" and "these are luxury goods."

Say the market was only able to produce 100 in demand candy bars, and so it did just that. Then, say, 50% of consumers who would wish to purchase these candy bars have the income to responsibility purchase one. 25% don't have the financial income to responsibility purchase one. And then, of course, 25% have more than enough money to responsibility purchase one.

These candy bars were sold at the price allowing for the producers to make a profit. 75% are purchased by the consumer through reasonable market offerings, and 25% are purchased by "resellers", or in other words, scammers. How then can you make the argument that scammers are ensuring availability, when they in fact artificially repurposed 25% of the availability in the market AND then made it less accessible to the people most likely to purchase them.

Which leads to my next topic. I wouldn't exactly call a PS5 a luxury good. A high end, even low end, PC gaming set-up is a luxury good because that is less accessible than a PS5.

The most cost effective way to play video games is a video game console. And I would make the argument that everyone deserves the ability to enjoy their preferred leisurely/recreational activities, especially in today's world.

For people that want to game, buying an effective and functional PC set-up will run you much more than $500. As most of us know, a proper PC set-up capable of playing all games will run you a min of $800, but more likely $1,000+. And we're not even talking about a desk, chair, etc. No matter, the point stands, I don't think it's fair to claim innocence because the PS5 is a luxury good that, at it's $500 cost, is still "accessible" to most low income households.

A luxury good, to me, is something that people who can afford luxury can and will purchase.

Of course I haven't touched on the chip shortage, but this again brings my point home. The scammers hoarding and hiking up the price of a PS5, are the same as the ones hoarding and hiking up the price of the chips. With all that being said, how is it even possible to logically explain and believe that scammers are "ensuring something remains available on the market".

All this being said, I'm personally peeved because worked my *** off to get my hands on a PS5 and clearly had to fight online with hoarders to get my hands on one. And I'm one of the 25% who can purchase luxury goods but won't spend more on them simply because I believe in paying what the market priced them.

 

[waclark]

After reading, and laughing at those defending scammers, I had to make two points that invalidate both "we're adding value by making sure things are available" and "these are luxury goods."

SNIP

Which leads to my next topic. I wouldn't exactly call a PS5 a luxury good. A high end, even low end, PC gaming set-up is a luxury good because that is less accessible than a PS5.

Less accessible? If you mean due to price, maybe, but not necessarily. I won't bore you with the details but I believe you can make a stronger case for a PC, which can be upgraded over time versus a console which has limited ability to be upgraded. Furthermore, most people have a PC of some sort for work/school and if that's a desktop machine, it could be upgraded with the addition of a GPU for not much more than the cost of a console.

The most cost effective way to play video games is a video game console. And I would make the argument that everyone deserves the ability to enjoy their preferred leisurely/recreational activities, especially in today's world.

Most cost effective way? The most cost effective way is to use the smartphone you have. Sure, you can't get many games on your phone but you also can't get every game on a console (or a PC). As noted above, people already have PCs to some extent. You can play some games, even on a built-in GPU. No, you likely won't be able to play AAA titles but you can play some casual games and some older games will play OK on a standard desktop/laptop.

A luxury good, to me, is something that people who can afford luxury can and will purchase.

Luxury is something that you don't need, unlike food, clothing, shelter, that you spend money on. A gaming console or GPU is a luxury item because for most people they are not necessary in your everyday life. Cost is only a small part of what constitutes "luxury". A small piece of chocolate candy might be considered a luxury to a person who spends most days going hungry.

SNIP

All this being said, I'm personally peeved because worked my *** off to get my hands on a PS5 and clearly had to fight online with hoarders to get my hands on one. And I'm one of the 25% who can purchase luxury goods but won't spend more on them simply because I believe in paying what the market priced them.

On this point, I agree. A single scalper selling 2 or 3 of these on the side doesn't bother me. A guy who is buying pallets of PS5s or whatever and holding everyone hostage is not OK. I'm with you, don't buy from scalpers, even though I have more than enough money to do so. If enough people followed this, many scalpers would be out of business quickly.

 

[Michael7]

You must not know the definition of artificial inflation, or you wouldn't have said that.

I was referring to your post as if scalpers were rigging the market. They are not. Prices are not set by scalpers, as they are the product of high demand and low supply. Scalpers only facilitate the exchange of goods. That's it.

 

[Michael7]

Prices are inflated by scalpers. There is no one else selling above MSRP.

Really? So back when there was not crypto currencies which could be mined on a GPU and no pandemic, do you remember any scalper activitiy? Anybody complaining about scalpers. Or what magical power scalpers now posses that they haven't before?

 

[Jarrod kennedy]

This post angered me
There scalpers aren't being fair they aren't being smart if anything they are being low down rats
Turning a 500 dollar console into a 2k or 1.5k item they mark it up 300% and make it impossible to buy these items
And to that person who said something earlier yeah it is right the second that the tpm chip was made a necessity for newer windows 11
They made that the same **** paying upwards of 200$ on a 10$ chip

And other parts they aren't smart or helping young people, consoles and computers are a necessity not a luxury because in this day and age technology is soo integrated into society disrupting a video game industry has grave implications for the other industries that follow
These wankers are by right evil people

I have one person I'm my town right saved up for about 3 months at his job to buy a console for his kid to give him something he didn't have , as he grew up poor and with a ****ed up family and he couldn't do it because these scalpers cornered the market, it broke his heart because if you had of seen him he was defeated couldn't afford it as he didn't have 2k to blow on a console and was bearly making ends meet, these scalpers have made it so only the wealthy with a good income can afford these items

Some people buy consoles to play games to escape from a shitty life in the 80s if you got abused you'd goto the arcade to hangout and forget things this isn't any different these scammers are horrible people. Me personally haven't been able to buy one at a fair price because they use a botnetwork to swipe up all the cheap consoles to then sell on there sites
They aren't resellers they are scammers