You’ll have to define “bad” in order to come to any conclusion on this. It kind of sucks that the equilibrium is for the manufacturer to charge less than people are willing to pay, leading to waste in the form of reseller profit, time sunk in queueing/searching, or other non-productive costs. I’d rather the manufacturer get that surplus, and use it to make more stuff for us (possibly far in the future), or at least to be rewarded for making something people want so much.
They can’t do this, because too many people hate the idea of profit and don’t understand that value is personal, marginal, and variable over time. So they think there is “the price” that manufacturers can charge, and they direct their anger at scalpers. If manufacturers charged more variable demand-based prices, that hatred would flow to them, and likely hurt them in the long term.
It’s that consumer misunderstanding and hatred which is the problem—the scalpers are just a mechanism to find the price where supply meets demand, and they’re willing to take the anger for that.
You’ll have to define “bad” in order to come to any conclusion on this. It kind of sucks that the equilibrium is for the manufacturer to charge less than people are willing to pay, leading to waste in the form of reseller profit, time sunk in queueing/searching, or other non-productive costs. I’d rather the manufacturer get that surplus, and use it to make more stuff for us (possibly far in the future), or at least to be rewarded for making something people want so much.
They can’t do this, because too many people hate the idea of profit and don’t understand that value is personal, marginal, and variable over time. So they think there is “the price” that manufacturers can charge, and they direct their anger at scalpers. If manufacturers charged more variable demand-based prices, that hatred would flow to them, and likely hurt them in the long term.
It’s that consumer misunderstanding and hatred which is the problem—the scalpers are just a mechanism to find the price where supply meets demand, and they’re willing to take the anger for that.