The Wall Street Journal just published a flattering, long profile of a 16-year-old boy who has spent the past 18 months buying and selling items over the internet, with an emphasis on “elusive” video game systems like the PlayStation 5.
He’s also been collecting and selling Xbox Series X consoles, Pokémon cards, and shoes, as well as finding a market for more basic (but still necessary) goods such as heaters.
In other terms, he is a distributor.
Someone who purchases goods at retail prices and then resells them at an inflated, demand-driven price.
Reselling fucking stinks, for reasons you’re probably well aware of, but which I’ll mention here anyway.
To begin, reselling makes it more difficult to get anything you want since stock is purchased by those who do not desire the item itself but rather the value connected with it.
Then, the technique increases the cost of purchasing that item significantly, since resellers by definition charge more for their goods than a shop would.
Finally, as a philosophy, it’s simply so…bleak.
It’s a market created completely out of thin air, the most deplorable example of late-stage capitalism conceivable.
Reselling occurs only to benefit those capable of squeezing their way between a product and its intended market.
Reselling is a nuisance for individuals trying to get nice shite—like video game systems or sneakers—and a real issue for those attempting to purchase necessary items, such as medication and toilet paper, during times of worldwide epidemic.
It’s the simplest thing in the world to criticize.
However, if you are the Wall Street Journal, this is not the case!
Their profile of the adolescent is effusive.
He’s a self-starter, a cunning entrepreneur, someone with the foresight to recognize an opportunity for profit and seize it.
It lauds his financial success—$1.7 million in sales last year, with profits of $110,000—and describes him as a “tech-savvy adolescent [who] leverages the supercharged resale market for rare items.”
Did no one at the WSJ think that the reason these products are limited is mostly due to resellers?
Or should I read and re-read this passage?
While reselling non-essential products is usually allowed, merchants often frown on it due to the potential for customer friction.
Hate mail and trolling from customers enraged by the inflated costs is par for the course.
[The teen’s father] said that he was first unhappy with his son’s business success since it was facilitated by the health issue.
However, he determined that it was acceptable since his son resells only luxury items and not needs.
“It is a significant distinction,” [the father], 61, said.
“This is capitalism in action.”
Naturally, they did.
It’s the Wall Street Journal, and free market self-sufficiency is their raison d’être.
Indeed, this is capitalism, baby.
I’m not about to leave this child here.
The adolescent, like the rest of us, is molded by the vampiric capitalist hellscape that is twenty-first-century America.
The child’s dalliance with resale here—and brush with national fame—could just be a period that he looks back on as a transformed man one day.
Or not; I’m not his father, and the child isn’t really the point here.
There are many more like him—the New York Times recently highlighted a similar, though less successful, example—and the issue is not necessarily personal, but structural.
Resellers are thriving at the present because the market has been unable (and in many instances just unwilling) to prevent them.
Sony doesn’t care if a PlayStation enthusiast or a reseller purchases a PS5, as long as they make the transaction.
It makes no difference to Nike who purchases a pair of shoes as long as they get payment.
And it makes no difference to a reseller how much we want something that was meant to cost $500 but is now $1000, since the only individuals who possess them are those who want to resell them.
It’s just awful.
Everything about this is abhorrent!
And instead of businesses, lawmakers, and the media seeking answers, we get shrugs from businesses or inspiring profiles like this.
Much of the anger with reselling stems from the perception that it is an intractable issue, a horrifying result of decades of politicians and consumers surrendering themselves to “letting the market speak for itself.”
As the child’s father said, what is occurring here is not unlawful.
And maybe that is acceptable to him.
However, for the rest of us, just because something is legal does not automatically make it right.
