eBay and Beer Sales

I think when markets get opaque the people who will benefit the most are the people with the most knowledge. So while we hate to look at some newbie demanding the world for their beer, the flipside is that the predators of the trading forum (those with, say, more money to burn and more awareness of the trends and value of things and who are slightly unscrupulous) will be able to take advantage of those who now have less information.

Also, I think you're mistaking a correlation with causation. The profit mentality exists because there is an underpriced commodity. The existence of a marketplace certainly makes it more convenient to sell and therefore probably exacerbates the issue (certainly until a clear successor appears there should be some downturn), but its absence doesn't remove the mentality.

There also seems to be a strange idealism that spending money on other rare beers at their original point of sale and then paying for their shipping and handling to another individual is somehow morally superior to spending money directly on the rare beer you actually want through a secondary market. To me, it smacks of just another form of entitlement: I participate in my local beer scene and I spend the time and effort to acquire my local rare beer which therefore entitles me to first dibs on exchanging that rare beer for the rare beer in other communities who haven't put the time I think they should have into this.

Now, there isn't much argument that the proliferation of acquiring large quantities of rarer beers to sell and/or trade en masse hurts the slightly more casual beer geek who loves whatever brewer and just wants to show up and get a taste of something special on release day by increasing the number of people waiting in line, and cutting down on the ease with which beers can be sold should positively impact this at least temporarily, but it does nothing to effect the actual issue at hand (which you and I have discussed privately).

That is: supply and demand. As long as brewers insist on selling their beers for far less than their actual value and in far more limited quantity than there will be some variation of this problem (and all the other problems that pop up with limited releases).

Cheers

 

Your kidding right? brewers are not selling their beer too cheap. Some folks got lots of money are reselling/buying to drive up the price more is more like it. But nice flowery argument,. I have to disagree with last paragraph totally..

 

I'm sure errantnight can speak (or type) for himself; however, all he did is state an economic fact. It's relevant to the elasticity of demand due to price, if you can turn around and INSTANTLY sell (or trade) something for more than you paid for it, the price you paid is by definition below "market price" at that period of time.

He's not saying brewers should increase price, the market is saying that. It may be ugly but fact isn't always pretty!

 

well I understand part of what he said but the ebayers and traders are NOT the whole market, there just not. traders and ebayers are mostly trading rares (whales), we NOT all buying those

on top of that buying low and selling high, yea its capitalizism (free market etc). but having gas in a hurricane and selling it for 10 dollars a gallon is still price gouging. Sure folks that want to leave and are out of gas have to buy it, but its still not right....

 

well said and a good point, still beer does not need to reach a market equilibrium does it?

is just beer and its not a serious talk about it anyway, just something to read as I drink...

 

i think the whole "its a consumable " argument is bullshit. people sell 70 year old bottles of soda on ebay all day. is anyone drinking it? no, they want the sealed bottle.

from the hill farmstead site:

"for the sept. 18th release of our extremely bitter pale ale,LARS, all bottles must be consumed on premises.all patrons will be required to urinate in a mason jar upon exiting,to reduce the chance of our beers popping up on ebay."

 

oh I like it. I think ebay is one thing and trading is something else, the traders work out there own personal deal.
I never cared about ebay hurting me directly, its just that it drives up the price of everything rare. IMHO.
for those who do not care as long as its ticked off, I guess cannot see what it doing in the long run to the average beer drinker on a budget, nor do they care.

I do think if a brewer publicly states don't ebay, then ebay should ban those. In other words does it hurt me, not sure, but if the overall prices goes up because of it, then yea it hurts me. So I am against paying more than I should yep everytime.

 

only us beer geeks like to read that much, YMMV

 

Well, unlike your well reasoned mail to me this is basically two straw men.

First, I never said, and don't believe there is a cause and effect, i.e. ebay didn't cause the high prices, it gave them a place to reach their levels, and advertised them. Instead I offered my evidence that some traders use the easy to read and understand tool of ebay to believe in a higher value of their beer that this ability gave legitimacy. This is an observation, and unless you are doubting my reading ability I cannot see how you might dispute it. The legitimacy of those high values also was not an issue in my post. Prices are what they are. This is a case of one market being influenced by another market, and as I am in the trader market that is/was influenced I am glad that influence is now, albeit temporarily, gone.

The second is this "strange idealism" your straw man seeks to be. It is not idealism, it is its opposite in my case, selfishness, expressed clearly. I don't have "strange idealism", and don't feel entitled to anything as your second straw man also relatedly became in your reply. I want my beer as easily and cheaply as possible and I selfishly welcome whatever change can, however temporarily or incompletely, make this possible.

If you would like to argue these points, that the inability any longer to access or quote ebay auction results for beer I trade, and whether the possible increased supply of beer into the trading market, will make trading easier, cheaper, and/or better, or at least slow the inevitable market forces driving prices, have at it.

Cheers

 

not going to get into the overall argument again, but this is something crucial to understand about economics, and about facts in general:

there are no economic facts that tell you what you should do.

"but if demand is outstripping supply so much that i'm alienating customers, surely i should--"

nope. there is no fact that includes a generalized 'should'.

facts tell you how the world is, not how you should engage with it. 'should' only comes up with "if you want X to happen, you should do Y."

the market cannot tell you that you should raise your prices, or increase supply, or lower production, or anything like that. the market is just a system of exchange, and economic facts are just sociological observations + good math/probability work. facts about the market are something you can access to help determine what you should do dependent on what you want to have happen.

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failure to understand this is a large part of what drives the disagreements on the trading forums about ethics and whether or not someone "should" exploit someone else. the market can tell you that you *can* exploit someone, not that you should.

 

this

 

I didn't say "too cheap" I said for far less than its actual value. The value of the beer is the economic reality of what most people would be willing to pay for it. Clearly most rare/limited beer is valued at more than what it costs to purchase it. This is evident in the existence of a healthy aftermarket and a stampede of individuals willing to plunk down the cost for those bottles.

The fundamental issue is that disparity. Brewers could (although perhaps not SHOULD, it might not make economic sense) increase the amount of these beers that they produce, as well.

But as long as price is low and quantity is limited you are guaranteed the problems that go along with limited releases, including a gray market.

I wrote about this in greater length earlier in the thread.

I agree with this, but I think you contradict yourself just a touch.

" facts about the market are something you can access to help determine what you should do dependent on what you want to have happen."

Is a clever bit of phrasing to avoid saying that markets do indeed tell you what you "should" do. They do so, however, without the added benefit of any additional factors that might be important to you. (to be clear, we're really saying the same thing, it's purely a semantic argument)

Economics is not ethics, and there are two wholly disparate issues at hand:

Is it ethical to resell beer?

Does it make economic sense to resell beer?

The answer to the latter is clearly yes, and I'm not sure the "no, it's not ethical to resell beer" crowd is going to be able to overcome the equally large or larger crowd that has no (or fewer) qualms about reselling beer and are strongly encouraged to by the economic factors at play.

That said, as long as eBay is being vigilant and there is no clear replacement market those who oppose the reselling of beer should have the chance to judge whether it improves the situation at limited releases in the near future.

 

ok my bad.....i stop caring 10 posts ago.

 

i'm just pointing it out because i think it behooves

1) people like me (don't like ebay sales) and

2) people not like me (arguing against (1) out of concerns about the market; particularly the idea that ebay sales are inevitable due to market inefficiencies caused by brewer/distributor/retailer choices)

to make very very very clear that economics is not ethics. lots of people want to be (2), but don't want to know that economics is not ethics. edit: forgot to leave in the POINT of my post! the reason (1) and (2) need to be clear about this, is to clean the waters of people who want to be (2) because of their misunderstanding of economics (their belief that it's a prescriptive system, or that the things economics scholars have shown in their work prove "humans must act to increase profit" as soundly as they prove "if you sell X for Y, but so and so sells it for Z, then [blablabla]."). those people make the argument not just worse, but impossible to have. it can no longer be an argument about economics (b/c they think economics is ethics), but it also can't be about ethics (because they think ethics is economics).

so, (1) and (2) find their best interest in being clear that economics != ethics.

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note, in order to truly hold the example position in (2), (underline the word 'inevitable') you have to believe a set of things about human behavior, free will, and ethics/morality along with the basic economic beliefs that are shared by (1) and (2). if you go further and think those beliefs are covered under "economic fact," you find yourself to be simply in error. i've seen this error a lot on the BA forums.

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edit2: if this is tl;dr: azorie quoted the pre-edit bloat version for your reading pleasure below!

 

I was going to argue common sense versus some theory of economics but you said it better.
plus I stopped caring....

 

the real tl;dr version:

people often assume that economics = ethics, so then this happens:

1) person A: "ebay is unethical."
2) person B: "economics render ebay inevitable, therefore ebay is ethical."
3) person A: "but ebay is unethical because of X, Y, Z."
4) person B: "that is all irrelevant. P, Q, and R prove the principle of economics that you don't seem to understand. therefore ebay is inevitable. therefore, ebay is ethical."

then...

(5)~(infinity) go: person A: "but economics aren't ethics, and ebay is unethical," person B: "why don't you understand economics? you need to take an economics course!" (repeat)

what's going on is that person B either believes a hidden premise that economics exhaustively describes human behavior [contentious belief], or holds a mistaken belief that economists describing how markets do act are proving how markets should [in an ethical sense; not in the sense that a car should start when you turn the key] act.

if the former, making that belief explicit moves the argument forward. if the latter, making that belief explicit generally ends the discussion.

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unless we are propagandists, we all want to avoid the infinite loop.

 

I'm not sure I agree that either are straw men.

It is true that those high prices were readily accessible on eBay, but if eBay had enforced their existing policies like they are now all along it does not necessarily follow that there would have been no substitute. The presence of any market where such commerce could exist did create clarity on value, but it is not and was not the presence of the market that created that value, it was the product itself.

And their value is no less for being less well known. It is simply harder to determine.

And I didn't describe the desire for beer as easily and cheaply as possible as being a strange idealism. That view is perfectly consistent with a world in which people sell beers freely on eBay. That is, unless what you describe to be "my beer" is all beer that exists or is produced, including rare or limited release beer. I don't know one way or the other whether or not you fall into that category of person, but unquestionably a large number of people exist who do feel that the rare beer of whatever brewery is theirs and they are entitled to it, and for as many reasons as there are stars in the sky.

The "strange idealism" is directed at those who hold the (to my mind) logically inconsistent view that I described. Examples of such logical inconsistencies abound in this thread and many others of its type.

And I recognize your point, and perhaps you are correct, but I disagree with it. The existence of eBay did not creat the idea of beers having a particular value, it simply provided a market where that value was clarified as people bought and sold beers for roughly what they were actually worth (what they would sell for). You (the generic you) could also distinguish yourself from that group rather easily and say you belonged to the group who valued beers thusly (whatever thusly means to you).

Now, short another venue to buy and sell beer at clear prices, one is left to depend even more on the endless trade value and whale ranking threads to determine value. The value is now even more closely tied to other beers (as it has always been... trades of equivalent rarity and balanced initial cost).

And for people just looking to hook each other up or trade relatively commonly available beers the eBay market never effected them in the first place.

Last, what drives prices is a person's ability to find someone else willing to pay a higher price. The reality is that for many special beers there is a broad audience who are absolutely willing to pay a higher price, thus, a higher price is inevitable. Prices are down because many brewers wish to keep them so (instead of pursuing the largest possible margin, a stance which is worthy of praise for its intentions) and because it takes a while for consumers to adjust to each new price point. This expansion of the price for beers (towards new, as-yet-unreached heights) was not and never has been driven by eBay.

Cheers

 

logically your right, but buying on ebay is like gambling addiction you want to stop at $15 but your hooked on it,,,,ticker's what their beer and therefore overspend. the seller loves the profit. while its ok to do all this, its not good for beer. IMHO so its an argument of the heart...

 

Yes, this is a pointless line of argument.

Much better is:

Why or why not is reselling beers unethical?

Regardless of your position, if eBay an aftermarket for beers is made inevitable by market forces, what should you do one way or the other?

Even better (but much harder) is:

If the aftermarket is inevitable what does that say about human nature and how we weigh decision-making?

 

i agree that it's bad for beer, and that the argument needs to move past economics in order to be resolved.

notably, the resolution is normally "well, we disagree then. my ideological commitments are different than yours." you would hope that minds could change when people realize that many anti-ebayers are motivated by "i'm trying to keep the community strong and get more and better beer to me and you," but the fact is that the people usually disagree about how effective consumer action is, and how we should relate to markets and business owners. the 'should' embedded in there gets very sticky, because (like it or not) some hidden ideological commitments often come out.

i'm being kind of vague i guess. i've posted too much in this thread.

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1st question (why unethical?) has been covered, or if it hasn't been sufficiently, i apologize to say i don't have the energy to adequately answer it._.

2nd question: it says something clear and bad about human nature. it says that regardless of principles and ethics, we are so driven by desires and profit-motive forces that free will is an illusion and exploitation is inevitable. maybe some fight against it (and ironically, they benefit from it, e.g. hill farmstead people living it up on the farm getting drunk off world class saisons... so does this not challenge the premise of the 2nd question?), but the larger truth would be a fatalistic scenario where the market is free while people are not.

note the last part; i counsel any libertarian reading this to seriously ask yourself: do you want to live in a world where the market is free but the people are not? do you believe that's the world we live in? is your answer to either question acceptable to you, and if not, what are you going to do about it? [edit: p.s. a natural libertarian response would be that people can only be free if the market is free. i am saying: consider the possibility (and the reasons why) that a free market could entail a world devoid of personal human freedom, and replace it with a deterministic pinball game / billiard table. maybe you end up disagreeing, but really go through it if this is the intellectual path you want to take.]

re: note, i apologize that i'm not going to chime in further on the subject. this is a beer board, not a politics board, and this really does outstrip just "i want small businesses to thrive so i get better beer," and go into full-blooded ethics/politics talk.