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How 'Grinch Bots' Are Ruining Online Christmas Shopping (nypost.com)
Yes, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer actually called them "Grinch bots." From the New York Post:
The senator said as soon as a retailer puts a hard-to-get toy -- like Barbie's Dreamhouse or Nintendo game systems -- for sale on a website, a bot can snatch it up even before a kid's parents finish entering their credit card information... "Bots come in and buy up all the toys and then charge ludicrous prices amidst the holiday shopping bustle," the New York Democrat said on Sunday... For example, Schumer said, the popular Fingerlings -- a set of interactive baby monkey figurines that usually sell for around $15 -- are being snagged by the scalping software and resold on secondary websites for as much as $1,000 a pop...
In December 2016, Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which Schumer sponsored, to crack down on their use to buy concert tickets, but the measure doesn't apply to other consumer products. He wants that law expanded but knows that won't happen in time for this holiday season. In the meantime, Schumer wants the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association to block the bots and lead the effort to stop them from buying toys at fair retail prices and then reselling them at outrageous markups.
In December 2016, Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which Schumer sponsored, to crack down on their use to buy concert tickets, but the measure doesn't apply to other consumer products. He wants that law expanded but knows that won't happen in time for this holiday season. In the meantime, Schumer wants the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association to block the bots and lead the effort to stop them from buying toys at fair retail prices and then reselling them at outrageous markups.
This kind of arbitrage is only possible if the original price was far too low compared to the supply/demand. If there is demand at $1000/ea, and you are selling at $15/ea, then something will fill that void. If not bots, then just people buying and immediately reselling.
I have no idea what a "Barbie Dreamhouse" is or why it could possibly be worth $1000 to somebody, but if that's where the market values it, you can either (a) produce more to drive the supply/demand intersection point down closer to what you feel it should be, or (b) sell closer to the current intersection point, which takes the wind out of arbitrage, which also becomes very risky.
These things are matters of basic economics, and have simple solutions.
Considering that we're about to add $1.5 tn in deficit spending to make the ultra-wealthy just that much more wealthy on the poor's dime, I think that the people paying those markups probably don't feel bad about screwing the poorer out of buying them for what the manufacturer and retailers are asking.
We live in a winner take all society where the rich are so completely oblivious that it's going to take literal lynch mobs of villagers carrying torches and pitchforks to get them to see that being greedy bastards has consequences.
Why do kids need the latest plastic toy fad made by $1/hr workers in some sweatshop? Buy them toys that make them THINK creatively and allow them to build. Paints and a canvas, electronics set, chemistry set, Legos, Erector sets, Capsela (yep, re-released), electric trains. Those kinds of things seldom go through fads, so bots are unlikely to be a problem. And you can buy them in brick 'n mortar shops.
He's not talking about toys
Yes he is. Chuck Schumer is explicitly advocating that the power and authority of the federal government be used to control who can and can't sell ... toys.
EDUCATION. HEALTH CARE. CLEAN WATER.
Poppycock. None of these things are sold at below market prices, bought by bots, and then resold at proper market clearing prices. That is not happening at all, and that is NOT what Chuck is talking about. He is talking about toys.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer are the reason that Trump will be reelected.
I've spent years trying to understands the deficit myself. If I understand it correctly, it's a tool which governments attempt to balance between each other to print more money allowing for inflation.
So, for example, if the U.S. were to spend more money it can't afford.. meaning it would have to "borrow from the people" or in reality it's more like printing more money, then in order to avoid devaluing that money relative to the rest of the world, the rest of the world would also have to print approximately the same amount of money (percentage-wise of course). The deficit needs to be carefully balanced to ensure that no country prints too much money, otherwise it would dilute the base too greatly in comparison to others.
The problems with a deficit isn't really the size of the deficit. It's that when introducing so much more money into the system, it has to trickle down through the masses and either it needs to get stuck in the bank accounts of people like Bill Gates who basically removes it from the economy. Or the alternative is it will trickle down to the middle class (not middle income). At that point, to avoid having the deficit have and positive value, it is necessary to coerce the money into the lower classes either through work, taxes, donations, etc... this would allow enough wealth distribution to permit across the board inflation... which means that the poor people would make more and the cost of milk would rise.
The equilibrium will remain, but enough money will be introduced to the economy to allow housing prices to increase thereby increasing the wealth of the middle class and allowing them to help finance their childrens' futures.
This system became important as medicine improved and the middle class could no longer count on inheritance. Because the middle class lives to 80+ years of age, by the time you inherit, you're already 50-55 years old. When you inherit, your kids are already in their late 20s to 30s. Also since mom and dad have lived between 15-30 years on fixed income with almost no increase to social security, whatever they had owned was mortgaged and even the middle class is dieing broke. So inheritance probably is no longer and option anyway. So since wealth isn't being passed generation to generation until reaching the higher end of the upper middle class, wealth to assist later generations has to be produced through the deficit.
I'm pretty sure I've oversimplified and left out many steps. I do believe that the deficit is a very good thing if it can be properly throttled and managed. It is a very bad thing if we can't figure out how to get the wealth produced by the deficit into the hands of the lower classes. If there is more wealth, we need the price of milk to go up... or we'll simply push more people into the lower class.
Ok... so I have displayed I don't know shit about the deficit.
Voters are generally idiots. The proof of it is that most voters choose a team. They vote red or blue, lib or conser, etc... they almost never have a single unique thought and while this is 2017 and we don't actually need NBC, CBS, ABC the NY Times etc... to run for president, the average voter is far too stupid to actually care about what they're voting for. They only care about what team the player is on and whether they'll help kick the other teams ass.
If they still want X in a year, fine, otherwise there's a life lesson about marketing, peer pressure, and temporality to be taught, which is far more valuable than a Cabbage Patch doll or Pet Rock.
On the other hand, this lesson comes at the price of being the only single kid who received it, and being ostracized by the rest of the school's kid for being weird by not following the same trends as every body else "normal", by not having the same outfit, the same popular toys, etc.
Basically, by making the kid more aware and more immune of the above marketing/peer pressure/etc. problems, you're also pushing them into becoming social outcasts and being percieved as "that weird kid".
There's a sweet spot of weirdness were the kid actually doesn't even give a damn about not fitting in the group, is creative enough to find their own interests in life (without needing group approval) while still being a tiny bit social enough to have a very interesting clique of other non-conforming friends.
(And, personal experience, it also helps a lot when the kid happens to be quite a bit taller then any potential bully...)
But that might not be the case of everyone. Some kids might be actively trying to resist your lessons about not needing to fit in because of sheer fear of rejection by the others.
The part of the lesson about "peer pressure" actually goes much deeper than just "you'll see, in a couple of months you won't even want the toy anymore".
It is a very valuable lesson, but it take quite some work to get there depending on the kid.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Since when are middle men who contribute nothing other than inflating the price and burning some oil to ship things around for no reason a good thing?
It also perpetuates inequality by transferring wealth to people who have the capital to run shopping bots.
Imagine if someone bought a fleet of tankers and went around draining every gas station, then selling you that same gas at 10x the normal price. Would you be okay with that, because after all it's just extracting money from rich people clearly have too much and distributing it back to poor working class tanker fleet owners?
You will probably argue that gas is different because people "need" it (as if they can't just walk), but that doesn't sound very capitalist.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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