Wait, is capitalism just re-sellers at this point?

Relax, the government has top men
working on it right now. Top. Men.

You know what's a serious problem? Our country's shortage of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 test kits. That is a thing that is real. What's not so serious a problem is our country's shortage of Nintendo Switches. But they have one thing in common: both are artificially scarce. Supplies because the Federal government is run by a gameshow host who is seizing them from states and piling them up somewhere, while Switches are in short supply because of bots.

Robots: they came for our jobs, our
little plastic discs and now our video
games. Enough is enough I say!

So to be clear, we're going to talk about the Switch shortage. Not because it's in any way more important than medical supplies, but because everything is terrible right now and I'd just rather talk about something less life or death. Oh, and when I say the shortage is because of bots, I'm sorry to say that's bots as in software, not actual robots running around and scooping up all the games consoles. That would probably be way more interesting, but let's make do with what we've got.

According to this article from Vice, jerks are using bots-that is automated tools that buy things online at speeds no human hoarder could possibly match-to buy up the supply of Switches, which were already hard to find. Not because they necessarily want to play Animal Crossing, but because they want to turn around on Amazon or eBay or whatever and sell them to people who actually want them, but for way more.

Pictured: way more. 

I realize the line between reseller and
retailer is somewhat academic, but at
least retailers generally put on pants.

Some people might argue that this is how capitalism works. That supply and demand determine the price. Others would argue that this is how parasitism works. These resellers didn't design, manufacture or distribute the thing, they just bought a bunch and resell them at a markup. Which, ok, that's how retail works, and look, I'm not defending retail as a thing but there's a difference between customers buying things through a supply chain and some rando inserting themself into that supply chain just to jack up the price.

"Need tickets? I got Oedipus Rex, Hadestown,
Antigone, I got'em all. Seventy-five dracmas."

-some ancient greek reseller

This isn't new, you might remember this same thing happened with the NES mini consoles a couple years ago, and it's not at all unique to video games. Resellerr have been puling this nonsense since the invention of tickets. But it's still among the shittier ways people make money particularly in the middle of a crisis that is sticking millions of parents at home with their children. Which I guess in many ways is the parents' fault...oh well, and I suppose I should say it's one of the shittier ways regular people make money. Billionaires on the other hand can do kind of the same thing, but way worse.

Ok mouse, I need you to guard this cheese,
but whatever you do don't...goddamnit...

Did you see this lunacy about those private equity goons who tried to buy .org? As in the domain that like every non-profit in the country uses? Yeah, last second tangent here, but some private equity firm, ironically calling itself Ethos Capital, tried to buy .org from the organization that hands out domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN. Which, in additional irony is itself a non-profit. So there's exactly zero chance this wouldn't have come back to bite them in the ass. Cool idea, ICANN.

The good news is California Attorney General got involved and said no UCANN'T. The bad news is that this is a thing that can happen in our broken, broken system. If they did get away with it, Ethos Capital wouldn't have to produce anything, they'd simply own the thing non-profits need to conduct business and would be free to to charge whatever. I guess what I want to know is how far are we from pitchforks and torches? Five? Six months?

"I'm sure they weren't going to gouge us. I mean, they're Ethos Capital.
And if you can't trust private equity firms, who can you trust?"

-Göran Marby, ICANN President

explaining his well thought out plan