Then of course they started selling their hoard online for multiples of their purchase price.
I don't say this lightly: Fuck these assholes. If this article is accurate, then these guys are true pieces of human shit. Amazon and Ebay should be applauded for shutting them down.
Some rise in prices is natural and expected; the only alternative is enforced rationing. But what these guys do is different; they're trying to create privation and desperation in the market so they can profit from it.
It's difficult -- maybe impossible -- to make this activity illegal in a way that doesn't critically threaten the legitimate free market, and that's an important aspect of the evil that these people do.
Them jumping in and clearing things out completely blows the hell out of what is a carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down, and doubling down on resource expenditure to get product from manufacturer to end user at the cheapest cost possible by inflating the number of miles it has to physically travel all in the name of maybe being able to get away with massive price markups.
This behavior is why we can't ever seem to have nice things. Fuck these people and their reckless chicanery. May their reputations follow them for the foreseeable future.
What specific rules of the free market did they break? Are you suggesting we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed against the free market to keep these individuals out of it?
That is a brilliant idea for other consumers and the health of our planet. Point well taken and I will share this out.
If you happen to be in a fleet of sinking ships, it's an even worse idea to go to other ships, hoard their life vests, and try to sell them back at a markup.
The message here should not be difficult to understand. Those that use the Market to bite the hand that makes the Market possible would be wise to note what happens to the dog that bites the hand that feeds it.
Hell, maybe you're more of a visual person. Obligatory XKCD.
If you can't understand these basic, generally universal tenets of human existence, I really don't know what else to tell you than to tread cautiously, and don't complain when you end up suffering the consequences for your actions.
If you still don't get it, then I can only assume Mr. Sinclair's nugget is in play.
"It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it."
If it's FBA, he only has to pay to ship the items in bulk to Amazon. If it's FBM, Amazon actually gives you a shipping credit (though when I was doing it years ago, it often wouldn't cover the full cost to ship it).
This is bollocks. Anybody wrongly offended, should try to figure out which one is wrong, the word or the concept of feeding on misery. This person is price gouging.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-has-17700-bottles-of-ha...
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/he-has-17700-bottles-o...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tennessee-man-sitting-on-a...
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/03/the-hand-sanitizer-...
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/report-two-chattanooga-b...
Meaning he just hoped no one would notice.
Nothing at Google Cache or Archive.org
Why do you immediately jump to the assumption that he's going to engage in tax fraud? Or are you wishing for extrajudicial punishment when someone does a "bad" thing that's not illegal?
It just seemed odd to laude market competition keeping prices low, while also complaining of people taking advantage of those prices.
That represents scarcity inducement via supply chain disruption due to supply that is generally sufficient for a particular area's needs getting diverted to parts undisclosed without the tight feedback chain created by integration of distributor's inventory/purchasing systems. Those are the important signals. Not some idiot chucking things around Willy nilly through Amazon.