william-james88 wrote:Quantum Surge wrote:These cone head listings disgust me
That is literally no different than saying the price of Gold is disgusting because of how high it is or being disgusted at how high one's 401K is right now. It's a price determined by supply and demand.
If people want to blame anyone, blame Hasbro for not making enough to satisfy the demand. I mean, in this case we literally know who to blame for the poor supply.
I get what you're saying, but I think the reality is more complex. In the post-pandemic environment, we're seeing concentrated hoarding more than in the past. Retail arbitrage has become an entire business model. The problem with PS5 and XSX supply and demand isn't just that they can't be manufactured and distributed quickly enough for customers, but that there's an entire middleman ecosystem that has propped up to intercept products before they get to those customers. These purchasers now have institutional power, where they can keep prices high enough to independently slow the supply, which increases the demand enough to satisfy those high prices. It also creates an environment where the arbitrage can be multi-layer: if I buy a PS5 or Earthrise seeker set on eBay or elsewhere, I might not be intending to use it myself, but plan to resell at a profit. Commodity trading is a long-standing financial system, but it's just years old in the mass retail space.
Hasbro could reduce the risk of this happening by producing more of them, but how do you factor in this inorganic middleman demand?
This might all seem silly when talking about kids toys, but this is essentially the same economic problem in the real estate market right now. I can't afford a house because no matter how fast builders get them up, hedge funds are buying up single-family homes en masse to lock down the market and take advantage of high and increasing prices. The only hope is that at some point there's a fundamental market reset where the risk to these institutions is too great for their real estate spending sprees.
I'm perfectly comfortable resenting the capitalist infrastructure that prioritizes the centralization of wealth over affordable access, as well as holding a special hatred for those institutional investors. Same principles apply to the current eBay market.
TL;DR it's perfectly appropriate to hate on eBay resellers right now.