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I think one piece missing from your analysis which you need to factor in, is that scalpers distort the market through their actions. The very act of buying up tickets/GPUs/whatever means that there won't be enough to fulfill demand, which drives the price up. Even factoring that in, maybe the original sellers should charge more - but I think you need to account for that as well.
That said, the biggest problem people have with scalpers isn't some kind of desire for below market pricing. It's that scalpers are purely parasites. If Nvidia chooses to charge me $1000 for a graphics card, I can accept that they made it so they get to decide what they want to charge. I won't buy at that price, but I'm not mad. When a scalper buys up all the cards for $500 and then sells them for $1000, they are "solving" a problem of their own making. They are simply scum who want to profit off others without doing anything to deserve it. People would have just as much of a problem if you did this with literally any product, it isn't just luxury goods.
But they need to sell them too, into the original pool of sellers, who still have the same willingness to pay. Outside of things like price discrimination / monopoly pricing it doesn't "drive the price up" any more than the price would've been if nvidia priced it higher.
They're redistributing the cards from people with lower willingness to pay to higher willingness to pay - which can be valuable if it's e.g. a gamer who wants slightly better graphics than the last generation to exactly zero gameplay effect bidding against an AI company, or not matter much at all if it's a concert ticket (but that's because concerts themselves don't matter much). Although - for a variety of reasons, in the past sometimes 'intentionally partly disabling some lines of your product so that you can price discriminate better' but often reasonably, AI chips and gaming chips aren't great substitutes.
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This is not really correct. Scalpers, by definition, have no interest in the goods they're scalping -- they don't want them. Their only objective is to arbitrage the price people are willing to pay and MSRP. If there wasn't demand for the products at the price the scalpers were asking then they wouldn't sell and they'd be forced to lower their prices. There is no scenario where scalpers are "distorting the market", they correct pricing errors and make the market more efficient.
But I don't value market efficiency. Market efficiency is only useful as a means to an end. If nvidia were to charge more, they could at least use that money to make more graphics cards. When a scalper does it, they just increase the price for the consumer. They're worse than the people who drive into disaster areas and sell bottles of water for $50; even if it would be better for the disaster victims to get water for cheaper or free, they're at least generating some value by shipping it in and distributing it. Graphics card scalpers just generate value for themselves while lowering value for actual consumers and being net neutral for producers. As @SubstantialFrivolity says, they're parasites, unhelpful to anyone but themselves.
Yes, I'm in complete agreement with you there. The existence of scalpers is a strong signal that the original price was too low and I'd much prefer the counterfactual world where Nvidia raised its own prices 30-50%, generating more profits (thus delivering more value to shareholders). I can't blame scalpers, though -- their actions are not wrong any more than picking up a $20 bill from the sidewalk is wrong -- it's Nvidia's pricing error that they're taking advantage of, so it's Nvidia's fault. Personally I find the people complaining about Nvidia's higher prices to be more infuriating than scalpers. As you say, at least when Nvidia charges more, that value is going to R&D, manufacturing, stakeholders, etc.
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They're shifting allocation from customers that will spend time to customers that will spend money. You might not value that, but it actually is solving a coordination problem that would otherwise exist.
If anyone's to blame for the scalpers getting a cut, it's the initial seller for using inefficient allocation methods.
The company doesn't randomly put lower prices on its goods; it puts lower prices on its goods because this brings it benefits that are not directly measurable, but are still real. This isn't an "inefficient allocation method" because it's not inefficient after taking the not directly measurable benefits into account.
which are?
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That is not actually a problem that exists.
Nonsense. Those scalpers are responsible for their own scummy actions. Nobody makes them behave badly, they choose to.
The “problem” solved is converting time-preference into money preference. In theory this ensures the cards/tickets go to the “best” end users, because all the factors which might make use of them can be distilled into money.
I don’t find it very morally compelling, because outside of economic use, I’m skeptical of how well money converts end-user consumption. As largely recreational luxury goods, graphics cards (sigh, not for crypto) or concert tickets are basically sinks of value. Given that the user will not produce anything with them, that makes discussion of “efficiency” moot.
So it would be more accurate to say scalpers are allocating luxury consumables to the lucky/hardworking. Yay.
No I get that, but that's already a solved issue. Just like with every other instance of someone who wishes to spend money instead of time, you pay someone to spend the time for you. The order of operations makes a huge difference here. Hiring someone to stand in line for you is fine, someone getting tickets purely to resell is not.
Its no longer about waiting in line. Its about running custom scripts and having multiple tabs open on multiple computers. I say this because thats why my friend had to do to buy UFC tickets yesterday where all tickets were sold out online in minutes.
Of the 15 tabs he had open, only one got through to seat selection. He was lucky, but the average consumer won't have the technical skills to compete against bots in online ticket purchase release.
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Buying tickets from a scalper who stood in line for you is economically equivalent to paying the scalper to stand in line for you.
But not morally equivalent. Nobody has a problem with scalpers on economic grounds.
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Not true - they are reducing demand on the tickets they hold, thereby making tickets available where there wouldn't be. If the tickets have to be $500 they're all sold and you can't buy one. If scalpers are reselling for $1000, now you can. The market prefers "can buy this for an expensive price" over "can't buy this," and that's why it pays scalpers.
Scalpers can buy, and actually have bought, tickets, sold some at high scalping prices, and discarded the rest.
It's entirely possible that pricing the tickets higher results in fewer people in total buying them. At best, the market is maximizing direct measurable cash income. It certainly is not maximizing number of tickets sold, as you imply here. If 600 people would buy tickets at $1000 and 1000 people would buy tickets at $500, raising the price has reduced the number of tickets sold.
And this doesn't even consider cases where the market is just irrational. The market eventually takes care of irrational people, but not before they cause a lot of damage. If someone buys up all the tickets and charges so much that nobody will buy any from him, he'll go broke--the market will punish him. But he's going to go broke after a whole lot of people have experienced not being able to get tickets.
This would fall into price discrimination / monopoly pricing. But how common is that? If there are multiple scalpers, one scalper doing this gets outcompeted by another selling at 'market price' (and both get outcompeted by the original ticket seller selling at 'market price').
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