The difficulty of selling a Wii

[Final-Fan]

cdude1034 said:

Final-Fan said:

cebrian said:
So... what if I go to the United States and get 5 wiis to resell them for 330 dollars in Mexico? The price for a Wii here is 400 dollars, I would be giving them for less money than they are worth in my country and i would be getting a healthy profit? would that make me a douchebag too?

No, it would not. Because that's a different situation. You've gone from "scalper" to "trader".

Yet another sigh.

A "scalper" "trades" their time and effort for profit.

OK, up to now you've been pretty intelligent, so I have to wonder if you're deliberately misunderstanding me.  Unless, of course, you have just enough conscience to need to rationalize this kind of bullshit answer. 

A TRADER takes an item from one market, where it is cheap ($X), to another market, where it is expensive ($Y), and sells it for $Z (where X<Z<Y).  This benefits both the trader, who profits, and the customers, who save money (they have to pay less). 

A SCALPER takes an item that is sold in short supply at a fixed price (Wii) or is sold out (tickets) and sells that item in the SAME MARKET he obtained it in for profit.  This benefits the scalper, who profits, and allows sufficiently desperate individual customers to obtain the item; however, the customers in general are hurt by this process (they have to pay more). 

Scalping, in modest amounts, is tolerated in capitalist societies; however, large markups are seen as equally large douchebaggery.  And scalpers who belch platitudes about "helping the customer" are hated with a passion.