>Is a retailer that buys things and sells them with a markup a scalper?

If you bought all of the food then offered the food at 10x the prices, we'd be outraged with you, yes.

Stakes are lower because it's a luxury good, not food, but it's the same idea.

There is a reason this doesn't work in general though.

If you bought up all the food, farmers would raise prices until either you couldn't afford to do that anymore or eventually there is a splurge of new farmers taking advantage of all your free money until you run out of money. It could maybe work in times of famine where the government introduces price controls or rationing; it does not work in normal times.

For black markets (which is essentially what scalping is) to work, there has to be some shortage of a good that is priced artificially low. It works with concerts because singers can only sing so much but they also don't want to make the concert so unaffordable that only millionaires can go. There are very few situations like that. In most industries you would just increase prices until supply equals demand.

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Brendinooo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This makes sense, but I'd contend it's all the more reason for outrage: not only are scalpers doing what they're doing anyways, but they're destroying the (totally legitimate and sympathetic!) reason for "artificially" lowering the price to begin with.

I should note that outrage doesn't seem to land on the people who buy from scalpers, which is...probably correct? Seems easier to say "don't break the contract" to scalpers instead of fans who are just able to pay more.

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pixl97 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Onion futures act.

This is the reason that businesses don't try to monopolize the food industry. It's not competition as we just saw from the egg industry. The government gets pushed back from the masses pretty quickly on food related issues.

	▲	gruez an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>This is the reason that businesses don't try to monopolize the food industry. It's not competition as we just saw from the egg industry. The government gets pushed back from the masses pretty quickly on food related issues. But you provided your own counterexample with eggs?