Re liberalism (at least as it is known in the US)
I do find it amusing that those advocating for a laissez faire approach to capitalism (anything but a left wing position most of the time these days) are being accused of such things.
Almost as though it is a snarl world designed to forestall thought.
Moreover if telling someone how to spend their money is wrong (not sure that it is but we will roll with it) then is agreeing with the premise of the thread, that being only a "fucking idiot" would pay scalper prices not being prescriptive as far as someone spending their own money?
I think that on a moral level scalping video game merchandise is generally wrong. It's a minor wrong because they're a luxury product as you say. The situation also needs to be taken into account:
Scalping launch PS5's is wrong. It's a minor wrong given that they will be produced for at least several years and it's wise to not buy a launch unit anyway. I will give Sony the benefit of the doubt because they probably want to but can't manufacture enough units to meet the demand at launch.
Scalping limited edition products produced in a limited quantity is a slightly bigger wrong. Take the Super Mario Bros. Game and Watch for instance. Whenever a store has pre-orders open, they sell out in minutes or hours. Scalpers obstruct legitimate buyers from getting the product at the RRP. Nintendo definitely shares the blame for not producing enough units.
Scalping from stores which provide a certain timeframe where buyers can pre-order unlimited copies before the product is manufactured is ok. If a scalper wants to buy stock from Limited Run Games or Kickstarter projects then they can go right on ahead.
Consumers shouldn't have to act immediately or have a Raspberry Pi constantly running a web scraping script to buy a product at the RRP.
Either your internet fucked up at the wrong time or a bot beat you too it as was already suggested.
This is a theory of mine with no evidence to support it. Nintendo purposely produced the Super Mario Bros. Game and Watch and Fire Emblem 30th Anniversary Edition in excessively limited quantities. They would face backlash for setting the RRP to a scalper price but they face less backlash for manufacturing too few units. Their goal is to make their products appear more valuable by only having them available at unreasonably high prices.
There are plenty of products that fiddle with prices in the second hand market
While they probably won't reach such heights with games there is a dimension of that. See zero people in such topics whining about second hand sales of perfume and watches stealing food from the mouths of perfume and watch devs.
Anyway so you say it is a moral failing but I am not still not sure why. Nor, not that laws=morality, what laws might be being broken or might be the basis for expanding them.
Why should I treat RRP as any kind of sacred cow or thing to be respected? Why are scalpers not legitimate buyers?
As far as capacity. If they wanted to they could. Might have been expensive to scale further or might have had to divert resources from things with a better yield within the same factory. Still not sure why scalpers
Scalpers create artificial supply & demand. Which is not real supply and demand.
If the supply is still the same as it was (maybe even more by dint of people buying them to play or stick under a tree for their crotch fruit will necessarily lower it) and they are asking for and getting prices is it not real? At best they drive up a bit of hype and get someone to want something that might not otherwise have (see video above for why companies might actually want that).
Taking advantage of supply chain inefficiencies and those with a time preference is pretty much one of the definitions of sensible capitalism.
Anyway if people want to check my gumtree and craigslist (ebay are a bunch of cunts) ads they will find I have some PS5s for sale.
