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?