The key difference is that time that is spent on a transaction is burned and not transferred. Money that is spent is transferred and the value of it preserved. An economy that runs on search-costs is just wasting a bunch of its capacity on stuff that nobody cares about.
Or in other words: A monetary transaction consists of trade where both parties get what they want. A transaction that is mostly paid in search costs doesn’t get the counterparty anything.
True, but the extra money goes to the scalper to pay for the scalpers time. The moment the makers started selling the PS5 too cheep, they were destroying value in search costs. Scalpers don’t change that.
The key difference is that time that is spent on a transaction is burned and not transferred. Money that is spent is transferred and the value of it preserved. An economy that runs on search-costs is just wasting a bunch of its capacity on stuff that nobody cares about.
Or in other words: A monetary transaction consists of trade where both parties get what they want. A transaction that is mostly paid in search costs doesn’t get the counterparty anything.
True, but the extra money goes to the scalper to pay for the scalpers time. The moment the makers started selling the PS5 too cheep, they were destroying value in search costs. Scalpers don’t change that.
My guess is overall scalpers spend a lot less time buying them, though definitely not 0 either. So I do think scalpers drive total search costs down.