| I don't think this strategy is unethical; it is really risky... probably so risky that it's naive for the long term. It's not unethical because the buyer in this case can't really buy up all of the supply and therefore is just looking for arbitrage opportunities or opportunities to exploit weaknesses in a competitors business model. The opportunities, over time, are very limited though: 1) You can't actually buy up all of the supply. If you were able to buy all of the listed supply and then reset the price you'd soon attract other sellers who had previously unlisted supply. 2) If there was real demand for an extremely high priced book I'd guess the author or publisher would be releasing a new version to meet the demand. 3) Although some printing of books are considered to be collectible, that market is limited. Generally the value of the book is the information it provides, which means that as the price rises the (perhaps less informative) substitutes become more appealing to buyers. 4) If you exploit a competitor's pricing algorithm enough to make them notice, they'll just change their algorithm. In this case, perhaps they don't sell you the books or they don't respond to your prices. You might be able to make a few bucks on this strategy, maybe a few people could even eke out a living, but it would be risky... they'd earn it. |