| shikamaru317 said: I'm not saying that the government should get involved and make the practice illegal, I don't like big government; it was one thing for the government to get involved and confiscate the scalper stockpiles of toilet paper, masks, and disinfectant earlier this year when covid hit, but it would be another entirely for the government to get involved and make it illegal to scalp anything, that would be far overstepping their bounds. |
Again, they already do this and for good reason: it's illegal to scalp tickets (baseball, concert, whatever) and it doesn't rob you of nearly as much money as these console scalpers currently are.
And to anyone who thinks it'll end soon, I disagree with that. I could totally see this lasting until at least spring, if not a whole year or longer. The 360s sold out for months after their release, and they didn't have online-exclusive drops for scalpers to bot and hoard. That sold 1.5 million units by the end of its launch year, the PS5 sold that much in its first month, actually, more than that since Europe didn't even report their numbers yet. Bigger demand and artificially-deflated supply because of bots and scalpers ultimately means it's not going away anytime soon.
Yes, I agree with the whole spiel about "people being foolish enough to buy it insanely overpriced in the first place", but it doesn't change the reality of the situation. They're botting and hording off limited supply of a product that they didn't create for their own personal gain when even licensed retailers aren't allowed to do that in many states and avoid paying income taxes in the process, which is, in and of itself a crime, just ask Wesley Snipes.
