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142 sats \ 7 replies \ @stack_harder OP 3 Jul \ parent \ on: Should a company police RRPs and fight scalpers? econ
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
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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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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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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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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We call this "price discrimination". The demand curves are different in different places (assuming arbitrage doesn't make everywhere the same place) so companies price to the local demand.
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This doesn't work very well with digital and virtual goods, as the arbers prove - because intervention was needed; the only reason I can think of for this to be employed on digital goods is profit maximization. And this is what feeds disobedience. Good luck taking me off my btcpayserver.