The difficulty of selling a Wii

[Final-Fan]

cdude1034 said:

Final-Fan said:

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

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.

Is there any way we can get "douchebaggery" into the dictionary?

No, I wasn't deliberately misunderstanding you, I just got tired of posting on this so I got lazy. Sorry for not bringing my A game.

Anyway, if you look at it as a bartering system, we're all traders here. We all trade our time and skills to a company for federal reserve notes that they have earned by trading their goods and services to people who want them.

At one point those federal reserve notes represented gold and as such if we still lived in the early 1900's we could trade them for and equivalent amount of gold who we as humans have artificially given a value (as represented by these aforementioned Federal Reserve Notes) . *breathes*

Basically, we just disagree over how correct it is to do what I'm doing, which is cool.

Also, by your definition, a scalper is basically a trader who asks for more money.

Btw, this is a luxury item. I would never do this with a product essential to life.

Speaking of which; what about people who bottle water and sell it? Aren't they the real culprits here?! We should all go down to our nearest distributor and set this water free for everyone!

You ARE misunderstanding my argument, by which I mean your response COMPETELY IGNORES the argument I made and instead talks about how the monetary system is like a bartering system, which it's NOT.

My definitions of "scalper" and "trader" are clearly distinct and separate. The ultimate difference between them is that the trader enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the markets he serves, whereas the scalper is a simple parasite.

You, sir, are a parasite to the market. And since you are a natural function of our imperfect capitalist system, we accept that as long as you don't suck too much blood or deny your parasitic nature.

P.S.  Bottled water I have no problem with, in the USA, as it merely takes money from stupid people with money to burn.  That is what is great about capitalism.