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StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

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Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#71

Post by dwb »

brookst wrote: post #55
Brendinooo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if you poke at the term "rent-seeking" with the definition of "middle men who add no economic value yet inject themselves into transactions", you'll just end up arguing about what "adding economic value" means. That said...if you can do that, you'll probably find that some additions of economic value are far more defensible than others, so it shouldn't all be flattened in the manner you're suggesting. I…

Yeah. “Rent-seeking” is just a fancy rhetorical term for “people doing things I don’t like with money”. Subscriptions are rent-seeking. Loans are rent-seeking. Spending millions in capital to buy a building and renting apartments for thousands? Rent-seeking. Copyright and patents, for sure, unless an AI company is involved in which case copyright is noble and must last a thousand years, because AI companies are rent-…

No, too reductive. Rent-seeking is when people manipulate a situation to charge money without providing value themselves. Landlords are rent-seekers to the extent that they don’t do much, they mostly just own property - typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you (and anything else you want to argue a landlord does). The housing supply is naturally quite limited so the market doesn’t self-correct.

And anyway, if enough people don’t like the things people are doing with money, we can stop them from happening! So a pretty odd gotcha, to me.

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#73

Post by Brendinooo »

dwb wrote: post #71
brookst wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. “Rent-seeking” is just a fancy rhetorical term for “people doing things I don’t like with money”. Subscriptions are rent-seeking. Loans are rent-seeking. Spending millions in capital to buy a building and renting apartments for thousands? Rent-seeking. Copyright and patents, for sure, unless an AI company is involved in which case copyright is noble and must last a thousand years, because AI companies are rent-…

No, too reductive. Rent-seeking is when people manipulate a situation to charge money without providing value themselves. Landlords are rent-seekers to the extent that they don’t do much, they mostly just own property - typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you (and anything else you want to argue a landlord does). The housing supply is naturall…

I mean, you saying that landlords don't do much is the exactly what I meant when I said "arguing about what 'adding economic value' means"

>typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you

I'm curious about this.

I'm not sure if there's a universal rule of thumb, but it's something like "expect 1-4% of the home's value in maintenance every year" - $4,000 to $16,000 on a $400,000 home. Take the lowest end of that - $333/month in expected maintenance a year. Add $100/month for home insurance.

You're claiming "many, many times" $433 a month in that scenario? Given more recent interest rates and the uptick in "maybe you should rent for awhile, actually" articles/videos I've seen, this doesn't strike me as plausible...

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#74

Post by Brendinooo »

brookst wrote: post #55
Brendinooo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if you poke at the term "rent-seeking" with the definition of "middle men who add no economic value yet inject themselves into transactions", you'll just end up arguing about what "adding economic value" means. That said...if you can do that, you'll probably find that some additions of economic value are far more defensible than others, so it shouldn't all be flattened in the manner you're suggesting. I…

Yeah. “Rent-seeking” is just a fancy rhetorical term for “people doing things I don’t like with money”. Subscriptions are rent-seeking. Loans are rent-seeking. Spending millions in capital to buy a building and renting apartments for thousands? Rent-seeking. Copyright and patents, for sure, unless an AI company is involved in which case copyright is noble and must last a thousand years, because AI companies are rent-…

Not sure what the intent behind this reply is but - I guess it's strictly true and I think we're agreeing in some sense, but to be clear I think it is totally fine to say that scalpers are doing things I don't like with money, and I'd like to see their excesses curbed.

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#75

Post by ozgrakkurt »

bawolff wrote: post #70
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt you can’t buy the whole harvest of a farmer if you pay for the whole thing. You can probably buy it for less than normal

But how much less then normal. Like the logic here is the scalper company buys all the crops and then resells at an exorbitant mark up because everyone needs to eat, but then the market price becomes what the scalper is selling for. Would the farmer really leave that much on the table? They may be willing to give some discount to sell all at once, but there comes a point where it is no longer worth it to them to do s…

There is a case where farmers don't have the power to fight against big corporations. One example in US that I know of is roundup pesticide issue.

This makes me think that it is possible for corporations to suppress the price on the farmer side and fix it on the consumer side.

This happened to at least some crops in Turkey in the past, for example farmers were selling hazelnut for 15TRY/kg and you could only buy it for 100TRY/kg in big cities. Farmers were actually complaining that they couldn't even make a profit from growing hazelnut.

Corporations would like to do this with even water if given the chance as Nestle CEO was saying himself in a famous video.

So they would for example do it with bread and starve people in the process if it means they can make money. And I think that they could easily do this for example in US if they didn't correctly fear that people would force the goverment to smash them.

Also the selling format doesn't have to be the crop itself. For example they make nutella from hazelnut. So farmers can't associate it directly with their selling price even though it is obvious that they are getting shafted.

Another possibility is the farmer selling 80% to the corporation for the normal price and then selling the rest at a massive markup so both profit. Same thing that is happening with ram manufacturers. Then the whole thing is justified as free market and only the consumers get hurt because in the end you have to buy RAM. Or equally the corporation could pay the farmer a 20% bonus and still make 80% extra profit on end consumer. Farmer might not object if the scheme is dependant on the corporation.

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#76

Post by TZubiri »

dataflow wrote: post #65
TZubiri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but if you enter a contract with the intent to violate it, is that legal? My understanding is that it's technically illegal (only civil perhaps, but still illegal), the impracticality of enforcement notwithstanding. On the first matter, I'm not sure, it might be fraud, which can be civil or criminal if there's a specific law that defines criminal penalties. Again I guess the proposal could be that a law specifies th…

> On the second matter, it really is. The layman perception of a contract is usually a formal document that needs to be signed, whereas in no legal systems that I know of are these actual elements of a contract. In most legal systems a contract is a much broader concept: a private agreement between two parties, with the main defining elements being offer, acceptance and consideration. Most if not all trade transactio…

Oh interesting.

I'm not sure if you question whether the first sale or the latter resale might not be contracts.

But in either case, I believe both them to be. It's similar to a sale of a stolen good with an unaware purchaser.

It's a contract on two counts. First, the contract is not void, the subject is not illegal in itself, the seller would just fail to fulfill their end.

Second even if a contract would potentially be voidable, I would argue it is a contract until a judgment voids it, this is a bit subjective, ontological and inconsequential for cases where the judgment would be certain like a contract for stealing, but the more borderline the case is, the more relevant it is, a contract about a complex legal issue that might be or might not be voided with p=0.5 is still a contract to me. Of similar value to a contract about a good of stochastic value, like an option, or an asset that may have been stolen with p 0.5

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#77

Post by dwb »

Brendinooo wrote: post #73
dwb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, too reductive. Rent-seeking is when people manipulate a situation to charge money without providing value themselves. Landlords are rent-seekers to the extent that they don’t do much, they mostly just own property - typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you (and anything else you want to argue a landlord does). The housing supply is naturall…

I mean, you saying that landlords don't do much is the exactly what I meant when I said "arguing about what 'adding economic value' means" >typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you I'm curious about this. I'm not sure if there's a universal rule of thumb, but it's something like "expect 1-4% of the home's value in maintenance every year" - $4,0…

Certainly where I live, rents are many times that, yes. If landlords really were just charging cost plus a modest profit (despite that I really object to any profit on housing) I wouldn’t be outraged.

Re: StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

#78

Post by Brendinooo »

dwb wrote: post #77
Brendinooo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you saying that landlords don't do much is the exactly what I meant when I said "arguing about what 'adding economic value' means" >typical rent is many, many times the value of someone looking after the maintenance and building insurance for you I'm curious about this. I'm not sure if there's a universal rule of thumb, but it's something like "expect 1-4% of the home's value in maintenance every year" - $4,0…

Certainly where I live, rents are many times that, yes. If landlords really were just charging cost plus a modest profit (despite that I really object to any profit on housing) I wouldn’t be outraged.

okay, so like...7x that $433 figure? $3000 a month? If a mortgage + escrow payment on a 400k house is around $2500/month, a comparable rent is $5500 a month?

Where do you live, if I may ask? I live in a reasonably sane market which might be why this isn't clicking for me.

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