Scalpers are awesome. Price gougers are awesome.

...

And it's also true: Life ain't fair.

 

I cannot think of anything more shallow than WANTING to take advantage of someone else. That's exactly what scalping is: WANTING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE of another person for your own gain.

 

While you and others declare it is okay engage in scalping and price fixing in a free market. No one likes or appreciates what it does for the community. Only people who engage in the act admire it. The majority see it for what it is - selfish and inhumane - regardless of the legality.

 

If everyone carried themselves in this way, we would not be living in the free and open society we have today. It is those that are truly humane and put caring and compassion ahead of personal gain that maintain the positive elements in our society MOST of us live by.

 

What IS AWESOME is the few selfish people actually serve to remind the majority that goodwill is more important than wealth. :tard

:clap :beer :tfdance :beer :clap

:pfx to what PHP said. Empathy is the difference between normal people and sociopaths.

I am not as hardcore collector as the rest of you guys probably are. I had these toys in the eighties when Santa would bring me them for being a good boy. I got away from it and started collecting again when the movie toys came out. I haven't had a problem collecting any of the movie toys i might have to wait for a couple months till my Wal-Mart got them, but i waited and got them. I seen the Starscream Reproduction a week before Christmas at a Wal-Mart and passed on it. The stuff is there if you wait. And if you can't wait...blame it on Wal-Mart for not stocking better. There are dudes out there that make a living on marking up prices, it's a part of live. Their job is to know the stocking schedules and get there when the stuff gets on the shelf. Just be happy playing with stuff you got, and eventually you will find what your looking for.

:tflaugh okay

 

Just understand that you can post your opinion in a non-confrontational manner, without waggling your INTERNET Night Viper all over the place. Acting like that here will not be good for your long-term survival.

 

Meh. This time was a hell of a lot better than last time, though: now I have a cod piece

 

Scalpers are awesome. Price gougers are awesome.

 

Price gougers own their product and ought to have the right to sell it at whatever price they want. They don't HAVE to sell their product at all.

 

Scalpers went out of their way to buy their product and, like the price gougers, own their product. They don't have to sell it at all (if they didn't then there would be considerably less TF's to go around. And you CAN'T attack scalpers by claiming that Hasbro has an "even distribution" policy, I won't let anyone get away with that. Though it's besides the larger point about scalpers in general, the TF scalpers help evenly distribute the TF's).

 

This isn't an issue of morality, this is an issue of how free markets work: If you want something in high demand bad enough you'll have to shill out a lot of money or a lot of time. The scalpers didn't make the demand nor did they make the high prices. The people who buy from them and want transformers did. AND! Scalpers are just as much as part of the demand as "regular customers."

 

I'm also going to shoot down the argument based around TF scalpers taking away from the enjoyment kids can have of TF's: TF's aren't meant for kids alone, making us lucky to be able to have them for ourselves. They're meant for everyone who wants them. It just so happens that Hasbro markets them to children. Children are the biggest market but not the only one. [Afterburner comment meant to be taken as sarcasm] Besides, children spoil easy. Toy scalpers help keep parents from spoiling them.[/Afterburner comment meant to be taken as sarcasm]

 

And it's also true: Life ain't fair.

 

I have SHUT DOWN this argument with my clear, capitalist reasoning. Any attempt to refute me will be met with laughter.

 

That is all.

 

WTH. This is probably folly but so is the rest of the internet so I'll play my role in this farce.

 

What scalpers do is akin to price fixing. They go ahead and set their prices high knowing that other scalpers will do the same. If they had to worry about other scalpers undercutting their prices and therefore had to compete for business *then* you might be able to argue that scalping holds to the principles of a free-market economy. There are a large number of anti-trust/competition/anti-monopoly laws that prevent this sort of thing from happening on a corporate scale, but scalpers are not bound by the same concept.

 

Now, when a scalper sets the starting bid at $0.99 and the final sale price is $60 for a $10 toy, that's people competing with each other and the free market concept works. But when every single starting price on a $10 toy is $35, that's either intentional or de facto price fixing.

 

If I were a scalper I would SO undercut the others. Maybe only by 4 or 5 bucks, but I still would. And monopolies and cartels are still subject to competition.

 

If it's your product, you can sell it at whatever price you want.

 

Scalpers are awesome. Price gougers are awesome.

...

And it's also true: Life ain't fair.

 

I cannot think of anything more shallow than WANTING to take advantage of someone else. That's exactly what scalping is: WANTING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE of another person for your own gain.

 

While you and others declare it is okay engage in scalping and price fixing in a free market. No one likes or appreciates what it does for the community. Only people who engage in the act admire it. The majority see it for what it is - selfish and inhumane - regardless of the legality.

 

If everyone carried themselves in this way, we would not be living in the free and open society we have today. It is those that are truly humane and put caring and compassion ahead of personal gain that maintain the positive elements in our society MOST of us live by.

 

What IS AWESOME is the few selfish people actually serve to remind the majority that goodwill is more important than wealth. :tard

 

Meh. Foolish people who throw around their money will throw around their money anyway. I may as well open my mouth to get some of that sweet, sweet milk.

 

Plus they're happy with what they get for throwing around their money.

 

And being a scalper is no more being a sociopath than wanting the toys for yourself:

 

A sociopath is someone who lives off the misery of others for the sake of misery, right? Imagine the following situation:

 

Let's say GEORGE is just a run of the mill collector. He goes to a store and finds the last 09 Bumblebee. 5 minutes later another collector, JUSTIN, walks by the toy aisle and doesn't find the 09 Bumblebee he was looking for. George is happy and Justin is not... But George is not happy because Justin is not. A scalper is the same way: He's not happy because others aren't. In fact, he's happy when others are happy because they finally got the toy they wanted and he made a nice little profit. If scalpers were sociopaths then they'd smash the toy before sending it and refuse to refund the money.

 

I don't see what the problem is.

 

I am not as hardcore collector as the rest of you guys probably are. I had these toys in the eighties when Santa would bring me them for being a good boy. I got away from it and started collecting again when the movie toys came out. I haven't had a problem collecting any of the movie toys i might have to wait for a couple months till my Wal-Mart got them, but i waited and got them. I seen the Starscream Reproduction a week before Christmas at a Wal-Mart and passed on it. The stuff is there if you wait. And if you can't wait...blame it on Wal-Mart for not stocking better. There are dudes out there that make a living on marking up prices, it's a part of live. Their job is to know the stocking schedules and get there when the stuff gets on the shelf. Just be happy playing with stuff you got, and eventually you will find what your looking for.

 

AMEN, BROTHA'!

 

 

And for my conclusion:

 

BWAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHAAA!

 

Erm... I mean...

 

lol

A sociopath is someone who lives off the misery of others for the sake of misery, right?

Wrong. A sociopath is a person who is incapable of understanding what others feel. Our ability to empathize is what separates us from animals who will kill each other to get what they want. What you so proudly advocate feeds our base instincts rather than our moral aspirations.

 

Let the degenerates think however they want to about screwing people (mostly KIDS) out of a TOY for a few bucks instead of getting a real job. It's OK, Pete.

In Before Lock. :lock

:note GREED IS GOOOOD LALALALALALA :note

If I were a scalper I would SO undercut the others. Maybe only by 4 or 5 bucks, but I still would. And monopolies and cartels are still subject to competition.

 

If it's your product, you can sell it at whatever price you want.

 

I suggested the undercut strategy at one point, to which I was then informed of the obvious flaw that other scalpers would buy up my product and resell it at their price. It's a great idea but unless you can start some sort of a movement, enough to where regular schmoes can buy at a fair price once the scalpers have cleaned you out, it won't work.

 

Maybe we're quibbling over terminology, but how is a monopoly subject to competition? Isn't a monopoly defined by the lack of competition?

 

Anyway, I'm not saying it's illegal to do it. I'm not even saying it's wrong (I believe it is, but that's not what I'm arguing here). I'm just saying that "free market" doesn't apply to a bunch of price fixers. You wanna love scalping, go ahead, free speech and all that. (Though don't expect me to go searching for your gonads when the rest of this board has ripped them out and thrown them in the river.) But don't call something a free market that isn't.

Meh. Foolish people who throw around their money will throw around their money anyway. I may as well open my mouth to get some of that sweet, sweet milk.

 

Plus they're happy with what they get for throwing around their money.

 

And being a scalper is no more being a sociopath than wanting the toys for yourself:

 

A sociopath is someone who lives off the misery of others for the sake of misery, right? Imagine the following situation:

 

Let's say GEORGE is just a run of the mill collector. He goes to a store and finds the last 09 Bumblebee. 5 minutes later another collector, JUSTIN, walks by the toy aisle and doesn't find the 09 Bumblebee he was looking for. George is happy and Justin is not... But George is not happy because Justin is not. A scalper is the same way: He's not happy because others aren't. In fact, he's happy when others are happy because they finally got the toy they wanted and he made a nice little profit. If scalpers were sociopaths then they'd smash the toy before sending it and refuse to refund the money.

 

I don't see what the problem is.

 

Well as usual you pose a scenario that does not apply to the very argument you made. :tflaugh

 

George and Justin don't have a toy. They are not the people (scalpers) YOU are talking about. Where your argument fails is a plain old job is more profitable, reliable, scalable, ehtical and EASIER. Your justifications are so slanted they border on retardation. What you defend is a inefficient, selfish and inhumane act that hides behind a mask of commerce. Really, it is like you are rolling in your own excrement to prove that doing so is wholesome and good. :tflaugh