• BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    There are many people out that think if they make a profit, then by definition they are doing societal good.

    • MenKlash@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Depends of how they make a profit.

      By voluntary exchange in a free-market setting? They’re serving consumer needs and, by consequence, doing a societal good.

      By using government-grant privileges to smash the competence? Nope. They’re doing more harm than good.

      • Rapture@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Scalper are not serving consumer needs, they caused the need in the first place! Just because its techincally not illegal DOES NOT make it morally good, or good for society. Scalping is greedy regardless of if its for the government or to pad your own pockets

        • MenKlash@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          But, all models and pandering aside, scalping is simple: Individual sellers have the ownership of a scarce economic good, and they willingly fork over ownership of the good to a willing buyer, at a price agreed upon by both (or all) parties to the transaction. As usual, state intervention in this case means that your property is not your property to do what you want with it.

          Is there a more victimless crime than scalping? Of course not. It is capitalism at its purest level. An event is sold out, you need a ticket and the scalper provides you one at a mutually agreed upon price. You don’t need to be Louis Rukeyser to understand the remarkable efficiency of this market.

          • Rapture@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “Is there a more victemless crime than hording something limited i dont even want for the express purpose of forcing the actual intended customer to buy mine for way more money so i can profit off their misfortune?” Is not a very good arguement to make.

            Id say stop trying to justify your vile actions, but a single glance at your profile tells me you probably go out of your way to make the lives of others worse

            • MenKlash@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Is there a more victemless crime than hording something limited

              There is no victim because the scalpers would hold their private property, owned by legit means, that is, buying that limited good by voluntary exchange.

              forcing the actual intended customer to buy mine for way more money so i can profit off their misfortune?

              The scalpers are not forcing anybody to buy their property. In fact, they’re doing a societal good by helping those customers who value that good more.

              To illustrate this, imagine that a famous singer is going to be in a recital with a capacity of 50.000 people and that the ticket’s price is $70. There are, too, 120.000 people willing to buy that ticket, being $70 the minimum price.

              1. We’d need to understand that human beings are different and varied by nature. Except for a few innate needs, like hunger and temperature, each one of us has different ends, different ways of how to attain an end, and different order of priorities for various goals.

              2. An object is valuable only because there is at least one human being who believes that this object can help satisfy their subjective ends.

              Now, if different human beings can have a different priority to one end (going to the recital), the economic value of that object (the ticket) that attains that end depends on how much the individual wants to satisfy their end. Being informal, we could say that the highest your priority is, the more valuable the object is to you.

              1. The scalpers, like any entrepreneur, analyze the market to see if they can make a profit. By supply and demand, we can easily see that the supply of tickets is way less than the demand for them, so “they exist” because the equilibrium price was not reached yet in the first place.

              As we said before, there would be fans who value going to the recital more, so they would be willing to buy that ticket at a higher price. By consequence, the scalpers don’t create an artificial demand, because the fans would have a different order of priorities for that end, as value is subjective to each individual.

              1. The scalpers can make a profit because of those fans. There’s no “misfortune” because those fans who value going to the recital the most are actually being benefited by them.

              It’s true that the supplier is the one who sets the price, but the main factor of price determination is the evaluation of the consumer, as every one of them decides in his own context whether the price paid for a good betters their life and well-being.

              1. In addition, scalpers absorb the time risk associated with events. Their opportunity for profit is good for the fans because it ensures that tickets will be made available.

              Scalpers are hidden heroes at events. They take personal, financial, and legal risk in order to provide a critical service in the hopes of earning a profit from their labors. Many of the aspects of scalping that people decry are, in reality, a direct product of the prohibition placed on the service. The prohibition raises prices, reduces supply, and limits competition. In addition, in the absence of the prohibition of scalping, buyers would have legal recourse against unethical scalpers who sell counterfeit tickets.