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Should a company police RRPs and fight scalpers?
880 sats \ 29 comments \ @stack_harder 3 Jul econ
What do the free-market stackers think of this?
What got me thinking was an article today about nintendo getting games pulled from amazon becuase they thought the prices were undercutting (https://mynintendonews.com/2025/06/30/bloomberg-nintendo-stopped-amazon-us-sales-as-third-party-sellers-were-offering-games-lower-than-advertised-rates/).
The gist is this:
Nintendo of America was displeased that third-party sellers on Amazon were selling video games for lower prices than Nintendo had advertised. They did this by buying the games in bulk from Southeast Asia and exporting them to the United States for less than the recommended retail price. Amazon seemingly failed to stop this from happening so Nintendo decided that the best solution from their point of view was to stop selling their products on Amazon.com
Now, as someone who has been working with amazon sellers for a decade, I fail to see why this is an issue. It's basic retail arbitrage. There are whole communities of people that make a full-time living arbitraging all kinds of things, some make millions doing it, the best of them can sniff out a deal anywhere, find liquidations, raid thrift stores, and then flip.
To me, this is just Nintendo being bullies (as long as the games aren't bootlegs), but looking at the comments, some people think it's great
Now, how doing an arb trade and offering a product for a cheaper price makes someone a scammer, I'll never know. A lot of companies police price controls, though, and these days, Amazon will always side with the companies and bash sellers down, as long as the brand is big enough and has the clout.
What about scalpers?
Now, while I stroke the free market with one hand, when it comes to scalping, I'm right there with the socialism police force.
I feel like if a person can use a bot to just immediately buy everything on launch, mess up all the supply, and then flip, this creates a net negative experience all around.
But one man's scalper is another man's free market maxi.
What do you stackers think?
Am I a hypocrite? Should nintendo police the sale of legit games bought with the deliocusly cheap fiat?
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100 sats \ 26 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul
It’s entirely dependent on what was agreed to at the point of sale.
If you agreed not to resell something when you bought it, then it’s wrong to resell it. Otherwise, it’s yours, go nuts.
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142 sats \ 7 replies \ @stack_harder OP 3 Jul
Makes sense, although I feel like scalping, while legal, is morally reprehensible. But I also don't think a company should be able to legally stop you selling anything, unless it's used medical devices or things like that.
In fact, it kind of is illegal to stop a reseller. I just looked up "first-sale doctrine" (US) or "exhaustion of rights" (international IP law), and once someone legally purchases a product, they are typically allowed to resell it.
Nobody is signing a ToS form in a video game in Japan.
This is just Amazon enabling the big brands, they've been sued for it before apparantly, but hey, when you put all your eggs in the amazon basket, you might just get rekd
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202 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul
So, what’s your problem with scalping? If bots really are doing what you describe, that just seems to imply the tickets are horribly mispriced initially.
Standard economic reasoning would say that’s going to cause shortages: i.e. there will be people who would have paid more for a ticket but were unable to. Selling out is also bad for consumers.
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142 sats \ 5 replies \ @stack_harder OP 3 Jul
I was mostly thinking about console release scalping.
My issue is that people buy up all the stock and then jack the price and ruin launches for everyone. it's literally just shit. You can't buy a new console anywhere, apart from online for a vastly inflated price.
Ticket scalping, I imagine, is the same. Why should someone get to buy 60% of tickets at once, just to resell them on a corner (well, online now) for more. It's not like there was a natural case of supply and demand. it is a person using a bot to snipe tickets before a normie even has a chance, doesn't mean the prices were crap. Not even time for price discovery. Scalpers don’t add value – they profit by introducing inefficiency.
I would say ticket scalping is a net negative and should be controlled as much as possible. Literally, who likes ticket scalping?
But when it comes for someone buying a game in yen for cheaper and flipping it in the US, everyone wins. Nintendo Japan made a sale, a US customer gets a cheaper game, and the guy who was in Japan made some money, too. It's winning all the way.
The fact that the eshop prices are like the same is madness too, if it's 50 usd, it will also be 50 euro , then 50 gbp etc , so i will more often just buy from the US store, it's a digital game after all
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42 sats \ 4 replies \ @optimism 3 Jul
But when it comes for someone buying a game in yen for cheaper and flipping it in the US, everyone wins. Nintendo Japan made a sale, a US customer gets a cheaper game, and the guy who was in Japan made some money, too. It's winning all the way.
Why is the game cheaper in JP than in US? If this is for identical versions, then no-shit-sherlock, you're gonna get arbitraged. And arbitrage is a feature, not a bug - imho.
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144 sats \ 3 replies \ @stack_harder OP 4 Jul
it's cheaper for the same reason lots of things are cheaper in different countries with weaker currencies - regional pricing, exchange rates, market habits, retail competition, lower wages, different taxes etc
And of course, arbitrage is a feature; there's nothing wrong with it, which is why it's annopying to see ninendo make amazon take down these sellers
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42 sats \ 6 replies \ @kepford 3 Jul
Yeah... I was gonna say that scalping to me is nonsense as a term. If I buy something why can't I sell it. In general I think scalping isn't a bad thing. If you think about it they are just doing what any number of people do in other markets. If they buy tickets and don't resell them they are hurt by their calculation.
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125 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul
Like I said, if it’s causing an enormous disruption that tells me the initial prices were set very poorly.
If prices are set correctly then there would be no margin for scalpers to capitalize on.
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42 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 3 Jul
Exactly.
I have thought a lot about this as well as the way businesses handle demand spikes. An example is how Costco and others handle spikes in demand on toilet paper. They will limit how many people can buy instead of just letting them sell out or raising the prices.
Why? Social pressure. I think economists overlook this SO MUCH. Social norms and ideas about greed have a massive affect on the market actors. Sure, Costco if it were a purely market based actor would just raise the price of the good based on demand. Over a longer time-span they will actually do this. But they usually do not for short term spikes in demand. It think its pretty obvious that the reason they don't do this is because the masses would think its terrible. Less people have a problem with limiting the amount one person can buy. That seems more fair to them.
Honestly, the pricing system is better as it does a better job of punishing those that are impulse buying and puts up a barrier to those that may not be thinking about their real need. The classic explanation about "price gouging" fits here. When a short term demand spike results in an increased price it will encourage producers to increase production while at the same time introduce time preference into the mind of those that delay their purchases. This helps supply handle the demand spike and results in those truly in need being able to get what they need.
If this were taught in schools... (pipe dream) instead of the socialist crap they train our kids on maybe companies would actually use the pure price system. But our population is so mal-educated that Costco would suffer far more from shifting to a pure price approach.
I think demand pricing is what Uber calls their approach and honestly it makes nothing but sense to me. I'm sure it is annoying when you get hit by it but it works. But, you know most people hate this. Drivers don't though... And if you really need an Uber and you get one in a high demand time its probably due to this approach.
I've given up on so much of this stuff. It seems so logical to me. We can see these approaches (market) work. But there are problems. Mostly due to brainwashing from socialist educators. They don't even realize they are socialists. That's what's so frustrating. Its not just liberals or democrats. Its pretty much all of them. The republican and Trump people are just socialists in different areas. Different markets and segments. But they are all so blind to this influence and its destructive consequences.
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41 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul
Another aspect of rationing that occurred to me during Covid is that by having some of the item in stock, more customers come to your store and buy other stuff.
Rationing can create a loss leader out of items your competitors ran out of.
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 3 Jul
Very good point. Going with the Costco example their hotdogs were something they said they would not raise the price on. I mean, I don't like their food but they do sell a ton of food in their fast food area.
"You can observe a lot by watching"
~ Yogi Berra
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21 sats \ 10 replies \ @BallLightning 3 Jul
I don't think agreements about usage of an item you brought are valid. If you own it you can do whatever you want with it. That's your private property.
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul
Why can't contracts be conditional?
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21 sats \ 8 replies \ @BallLightning 4 Jul
They can, but some conditions are invalid. For example incan sing a contract where you give my family 100 BTC and in exchange I become your slave. This would be invalid contract.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 4 Jul
Plus why way 100 btc when they could just retail arbitrage themselves a Japanese slave for 20 btc !
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 4 Jul
Contracts are conditional transfers of property titles. What makes the condition of not reselling invalid? If that condition is agreed to by the buyer with no intention of abiding by it, then they've committed fraud.
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21 sats \ 5 replies \ @BallLightning 4 Jul
Ability to freely transfer owmership is part of the onwership criteria. If you can't do that you don't own the property.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @3a42879d5f 3 Jul
I need to rant about this somewhere. Scalping already means something horrible and violent and I don't like that people use it to describe free market arbitrage.
Nintendo Switch 2 sells for over $600 on eBay. Isn't this a sign that Nintendo's listing price is way too low?
I see this over and over again in VTuber merch drops. The merch sells out at droptime, and actually re-sells for higher on secondary markets. Isn't this a sign that the original price was too low?
I've done a lot of free market arbitrage over the years. I won't buy if I don't see a margin. There are huge margins with limited items because the listing price is too low.
I hear it again and again, influencers are worried about setting their prices too high to where their fans can't afford to buy their products. They're ignoring the market value out of a sense of moral obligation.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @zuspotirko 3 Jul
But one man's scalper is another man's free market maxi.
A company avoiding trying to sell to scalpers isn't necessarily anti-free market.
For lots of companies "customer service" is part of the product they sell. And always having inventory ready is part of the "customer service".
So that's my devils advocate answer.
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