It's rather the opposite. They control the supply by creating artificial scarcity in order to profit from inflated prices. It's the absolute opposite of a service.
Example: 1000 Decks available at the distributor at €100 each (random numbers just to show the point) and 1000 people willing to buy one. Fine, each user orders one at that price and bingo: everyone is satisfied. Now put in there a scalper, that is, a middleman who buys almost all Decks at the price (or rather at a discount), then keeps them in storage for a while. Users start buying normally from official sources, then the stocks deplete and scalpers become the only supplier in town. Now everyone wants a Deck but they're unobtanium everywhere, so their scarcity inflates their perceived value and soon or later users are willing to pay twice their retail price to own the thing, rather than wait for the supply to return normal. The scalper slowly sells them one or very few at a time at inflated price and profit is guaranteed.
Now, if the product was built on Mars and the middleman added some value, for example using his cargo spaceship to bring them on Earth a thousand at a time, that would be fine, but the way they operate they're completely useless middlemen adding nothing of value and rather inflating prices for their own profit.
The situation where 1000 get from the distributor at "retail" price is essentially a lottery. It is great if you "won" a ticket and get the item at the retail price (which is less than the market demand would have it at), but not so great otherwise.
Scalpers increase efficiency because those who desire an item the most are willing to pay the most money for it. Therefore with a "scalper" operating it ensures that the items end up in the hands of those who value it the most. It also means there's no "lottery" - the price is increased until only those who value it and have the means can buy it. As we're talking about steam decks, and not food, there's not even any ultimate issue of hoarding or people being denied basic sustenance because they don't have enough money.
> It's rather the opposite. They control the supply by creating artificial scarcity
The scarcity is real. Scalpers sell the time and effort required to obtain scarce items.
>Now put in there a scalper, that is, a middleman who buys almost all Decks at the price (or rather at a discount), then keeps them in storage for a while.
This isn't happening. The value of the Steam Deck to a scalper goes down every time one is manufactured. They have to flip them as soon as possible to profit unless they somehow plan on buying all of the steam decks in perpetuity.
This isn't like concert tickets where there's a finite supply. Scalpers can't buy a significant amount of Decks because valve is just going to keep making them and selling them for less than the scalpers.
> the middleman added some value
Scalpers do add value. Think of it like paying someone to stand in line for you but not in advance.
I'll admit, I have difficulty believing this is a legitimate take.
All scalpers do is decrease efficiency. It's not paying someone to stand in line, it's paying protection to someone to get something that would be available by default.
The real problem here is that we as a society are broken and would absolutely slaughter Valve if they had variable pricing for this in-demand product. E.g. if Valve were to offer Steamdecks at twice the price for you to get to the head of the queue. Scalpers wouldn't exist in that situation unless even that "price point" wasn't satisfying everyone in the market. E.g. what about Bill Gates that wants one right now, shouldn't he be allowed to call up Valve and say "1 mill, I want to get my hands on this thing today!".
There is a gap in the market for whatever reason, and the scalpers are exploiting it. We may not like it, it may be a dirty practice, but it's filling a price-point that people are willing to pay. Not only that, but because Valve is unwilling to offer the product at a specific price/availability rate, they actively created the scalper market.
A gap that is further expanded by the existence of scalpers, which is a huge part of the problem. They’re making a problem worse and in some extreme cases even making a problem where there wasn’t one or it was at least minimal (happens with concerts all the time). Theres a reason so many big items/pre-orders/concerts etc. have invested in queue systems and limit purchase numbers. The ones that don’t are inviting scalpers.
> what about Bill Gates that wants one right now, shouldn't he be allowed to call up Valve and say "1 mill, I want to get my hands on this thing today!".
I'm of the opinion that this should be allowed - when it's a direct interaction between the purchaser and seller.
Any purchaser has the right to contact any seller and say I'll give you N*$ORIGINAL_PRICE to try to purchase something out of line. I'll agree that there's nothing wrong with reselling something you purchased, at whatever price you can - as long as it wasn't purchased specifically for that purpose, and _especially_ as long as automation wasn't involved.
Valve should offer a separate bundle of Steam Decks that are available sooner in exchange for a higher price. Since they have chosen (for PR reasons, presumably) to not do this, scalpers offer this service instead.
It is not only legitimate, it is accurate, and I also agree with it.
Scalpers do not create the situation where demand exceeds supply.
Edit: I get it, y'all don't like scalpers. I am not a scalper (though I have no problem with it), I am just responding to their disbelief by providing data.
Scalpers interfere with the original vendor keeping things affordable. E.g. concert tickets: the same number of seats are filled with or without scalpers, but scalpers just ensure that the tickets are more pricy and the concertgoers are richer people. They are just third parties not affiliated with the venue or the artist who help themselves to some cash, by eroding a margin of affordability that was implicit in the original pricing.
If scalpers took food from a food bank and sold it at close to retail prices, would you still say they are doing a service?
The solution to scalpers is for the original seller to increase the price of the item to the point where the number of scalped items being sold goes down, but the total sales also don't go down too much. Re-adjust as supply and demand change, of course. I think lots of people who don't understand economics would become upset if you did that in many cases, though. Probably would not work for tickets to an event, because you don't have enough time to adjust. Would probably work for Steam Decks and graphics cards though.
You need a way to deal with the scarcity. Pricing is the default way to do that. If you want to avoid pricing, you need to think through what alternative you’ll use, otherwise pricing happens anyway.
There's really so much more to it. Secondary market brokers (scalpers) shift risk, smooth out demand, and when you catch the right event at the right time, often offer ticket for less than they were originally purchased for. This happens when an artist adds another day to a venue, increasing supply drastically, or when brokers just misjudge demand (it's always a gamble whether to sell immediately (if things even sold out) or hold until closer to the event when demand might be higher (and ticket might have eventually sold out). Check Stubhub or Ticketmaster's resale pages for events right before the event starts. You might be surprised how cheap you can get tickets right before in some cases.
> If scalpers took food from a food bank and sold it at close to retail prices, would you still say they are doing a service?
Not everything should be a market. I don't think using something that obviously shouldn't be a market, like providing free food to the needy, as a valid case where market behavior if it was applied negatively proves that markets are bad in general for other things that are dissimilar.
I've written about this before. I used to work in that industry. You can see some of what I wrote here[1] (sorry, it's just a search result), and this[2] specifically was what I view as a fairly productive conversation that covered a lot of points that I think are rarely discussed regarding this topic, in case you're interested.
"I don't want to be be competing against the rabble in the contest of who is early bird to the worm. I've already beaten them with my social position and income, and therefore that should be the contest (in as many situations as possible and applicable, generally speaking). It turns out that some of the same roustabouts are willing to employ themselves in such a way that, for my benefit, they engage in the time competition, whereby they effectively turn it into a convenient bidding competition. As a bonus, the more patrons there are who pay more, the safer and more orderly the event will be. As if that weren't sufficiently excellent, sometimes the hapless ragamuffins find themselves desperate to liquidate numerous unsold tickets close to the event, whereby I can actually save money."
