I get this meme is about scalpers, but the description also applies to logistic chains and stores, our world as we know it literally couldn't function without those. Not to say I'm for capitalism per se, but logistics make the world go round (as flawed as that world may be).
To expand a little bit on your comment: The reason that scalpers =/= retail is that initial retail sellers are at the end of the wholesale supply chain, which is the huge logistical market we rely on. Retail scalpers create an uneeded secondary supply chain that's even more exclusive than wholesale. This wasn't nearly the issue it is today until scalpers learned how to code.
Now businesses have no incentive to mitigate the supply issues scalpers introduce because they get a whole host of benefits (guaranteed rapid ROI, simplified logistics or dispatch, reliable product cycles). It's a big part of why you see so many brands going to small 'limited edition' drops/releases lately. Being able to reliably produce known quantities of product that you can be sure of selling 100% reduces depreciation, improves your attractiveness to your vendors and shortens your manufacturing chain.
You can get a single shipment that contains all the materials needed for a given run, without having to source reliable long-term suppliers. Plus if you cant find a certain material at that moment, you can re-tool for what you can find easily (smaller production = smaller production lines = fewer machines) with much less initial outlay. Keeping several designs being prepared at once also means you're much more flexible to supply issues / machine downtime / etc.
There's a ton more perks, as well, but you get the idea.
The tradeoff is that your setup costs are higher and more frequently incurred, but thats pretty easy to mitigate down to near triviality with good management. Also that it's very tricky to get into this position, and if you're relying on FOMO an unpopular product release can take years to finally move all the units.
So what I'm saying is scalpers suck massively and we'd better get used to them because nobody wants to get rid of them except consumers, and fuck consumers amirite c-suite lads?
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I found it both informative and unsettling!
Globalization wouldn't be as attractive if man in the middle incentive didn't factor into cost of goods sold. Vertical integration (take apple for example) can address that, but it introduced other problems. And globalization as a whole is mostly a good thing.
There's a difference between logistics and some cunt buying out all the toilet paper at wal-mart so they can sell it on Craigslist.
Landlords are socially acceptable scalpers
Where does exactly sits the line where a person can own and manage what is theirs to somehow try to make a better living?
I'd say the line gets drawn between landlords that do physical labor to maintain their properties and landlords that outsource the whole process to someone else.
In the first case, the tenant is paying for real labor. Landlords that handle their own drywall and plumbing. Landlords that mow their own lawns and fix their own appliances. Handymen that own a property or two and maintain them as part of their trade. These landlords exist, but they are few and far between. I mostly see them at Airbnb properties and small family-run motels. But even that is going by the wayside, as investment clubs and lending groups either buy them out or run them out of business.
In the second case, the tenant is effectively just paying a vig to the landlord in order to access the landlord's low-interest line of credit. These landlords are fucking everywhere. All your big corporate offices - your Amli's and Lincoln Properties and Pinnacles - effectively operate this way. They've got legions of (routinely underpaid) staff and subcontractors who actually do the work of maintaining the properties. They kick back sizable chunks of their revenue as administrative overhead and - in the case of publicly traded firms - dividends and stock buybacks. Only a fraction of the rental income goes towards the actual acquisition and maintenance of the property itself and the properties are regularly leveraged out for more new borrowing power used to gobble up more open real estate to add to the cartels' portfolios.
The second group also tends to get significant tax incentives, subsidized loans, and other forms of funny money, allowing them to operate for short periods of time at a loss in order to squelch independent competitors.
The real line is ultimately the ROI on the property. If you're earning a standard workman's salary off maintaining a second unit, I doubt anyone will seriously bat an eye at your habits. By contrast, if you have title on a dozen different multi-million dollar multi-family units and you're clearing double-digit annualized returns in what amounts to a part time side-hustle, that's a pretty clear indication of price gouging behavior.
But because price gouging in the real estate market is so routine (to the point that "buy a home" is common wisdom, entirely because its the only consistent way to escape predatory rental practices) we've stopped acknowledging this method of usury as anything but normal.
I'm starting my own small computer store. I'm not a pro, just an enthusiast fed up with horrendous prices for low quality hardware and nearly no choice of brands.
This is going to be just an hobby store but I would like to see some return for my time invested.
If I see you at Best Buy, trying to clear the shelf of the latest widget so you can upsell it at your boutique venue for 3x the sticker price, I'm still going to believe you're going straight to extra hell.
If I see you on Temu or Aliexpress, picking up specialty hardware in bulk and then undercutting Best Buy right next door, I'll put a word in with St. Peter when you get to the Pearly Gates.
Well, I'm an atheist so, for me, its either lights out or hell, if the other side is in any way correct.
I jumped right unto importing. Small scale, mostly consumables at the moment: thumb drives, SSDs, cables, mice, the likes.
I test before I sell; if it fails me, it's not worthy to market to customers: better a returning customer giving me hell to get the best deal out of me than an one time sale and a lasting bad reputation.
Only thing I have to buy localy it's keyboards; we're a small market and it's hard to get our layout in small quantities.
Good luck with that. But there's practically no money in hardware. We sell things, and our suppliers can't get it to us in bulk for the same price you can pick it up on Amazon. Our customers are technophobes who only buy from us so they can ring us up when they can't plug it in.
Custom software and services are the only places we make money.
Thank you for the warning.
Brick and mortar is rapidly dying... Especially for computer hardware. Look at circuit City, radio shack, best buy... They're either dying or dead. Make sure your market research is really solid!
Isn't that literally everything you buy? Nobody sells at cost price and stays in business. Supermarkets, even. Just everything.
This is about scalpers. (Which includes Ticketmaster.)
During the height of the pandemic many scalpers were claiming that they were a crucial part of capitalism. That what they were doing was important for the economy.
There is a subtle, but fundamental, difference between being a distributor - someone who buys in bulk at Location X and sells retail at Location Y - and a monopoly/cartel - an individual or group that takes control of a critical point in the supply chain and then operates as a monopoly reseller at enormous mark-ups to everyone downstream.
The general distinction is in the degree of markup that your position provides. For inelastic goods/services (staple foods/energy/medical/emergency services) and opportunity-limited services (concert tickets/first-edition prints and collectibles) you can capitalize in a sudden spike in demand to raise prices astronomically.
No better example of this than the Texas electricity grid. Natural Gas power providers run a cartel in our state which allows them to limit how much electricity they generate during periods of peak usage. So when the weather starts cresting 100° and electric demand for A/C peaks, they can charge upwards of $3000/Mwh for electricity that was trading at $15-20/Mwh hours earlier.
Dear ‘capitalists’ who keep using this excuse to defend what they do: Distribution is different from scalping. One has legitimate costs for what you suggested to keep a brick and mortar business running. The other is fleecing without cost and it’s not exactly for the altruistic reason of ‘just surviving’ nor is it interested in anyone else’s ability to survive. It is the unchecked reason why the planet is in the hole now.
I think this isn't any kind of defense of capitalism. He's just saying that meme isn't specific enough about it being about scalping. "Distribution" also falls into the description that the meme gives.
Wait until you learn about 80% of amazon sellers
20% of them sell at a loss?
Their fees are like a wall of nonsense.
I used the calculator to figure out what I could sell things for and what they charge is obscene. You can quickly see why Amazon is an ocean of tatty plastic shit.
The cost of entering the Amazon marketplace is trivial. The cost of being the first thing a person sees when they search for X is enormous. And since Amazon has its own internal brands, you're often competing against a staple product in a bidding war where the auction house is both a bidder and seller.
This environment encourages tatty plastic shit, because anyone that isn't making enormous margins on their sale isn't able to operate profitably. Its a weird sort of survivors bias in which only Amazon, a handful of well-recognized name brands, and a bunch of shameless scammers can operate profitably.
There are many people out that think if they make a profit, then by definition they are doing societal good.
THERE WAS A DEMAND, I AM MEETING A DEMAND!
ALSO, I CREATED THE DEMAND. OOPS.
Yeah, but trying to corner the market on Unicorn themed items is the only reason I keep coming back to Gaia Online now that AI Art scratches my wardrobing itch
Yeah fuck you New York bodegas!!!1!
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