O People of the Land, we face the greatest crisis this nation has ever faced since the end of the Second World War. Covid-19 has ruptured our global supply chain and from the subsequent collapse came the Evils of Online Retail Scalping unto our world. Online Retail Scalping has caused devastating destruction to our economy and our way of life and now threatens the very existence of trade itself. As our economy's infrastructure came to ruin, the Scalping Devils came from behind the shadows to lay a new economic foundation that sought to form a New World and a New Economy - A New Norm - a reality where products are no longer to be purchased from the manufacturers and companies, but rather from the Scalpers exclusively. They sell not for the greater good of the people or our economy. They have no shame when they list nor do they show mercy when they price. They are master market manipulators and will stop at nothing until they have total market control of product availability in every aspect of the market in every corner of the internet.

And so, let there be a group of people who will rise up from the ashes of this pandemic, who will Crusade against these Devils that threaten the sanctity of Free Trade. A Unified Anti-Scalping Petition, the Petition to end all Petitions, The Petition That Will Deliver Us All. Together, we're going to create a New World that will end Online Retail Scalping. Join me in this Crusade and we shall usher forth a new reality where all can purchase the products they so desire, without fear or despair.

We demand that the government, manufacturers, and e-commerce companies put an end to this wretched practice once and for all.

Definition of Online Retail Scalping - A form of market manipulation in which an individual or group of individuals rampantly buy out high-demand products for the sole purpose of reselling at egregiously oppressive inflated prices for the sake of profit.

Many times, this act is carried out by bots programmed to buy out an item as soon as the website re-lists it, making it impossible for humans to get a hold of a restocked product even if the company offers an email waitlist that people can subscribe to as soon as there is a replenishment. Even if a company limits the amount of sales to individual buyers, these scalpers have set up multiple bots to circumvent that limit rendering it ineffective.

Trade is trade, buying something wholesale and selling for retail is capitalism. Scalping on the other hand, is market manipulation and that is the thesis for my entire argument. It is unethical and outright economically disastrous to buy out products in mass quantities knowing you deprive everyone else of purchasing specific products in order to sell for 500% profit. Trade is trade, scalping is scalping. It is the companies/manufacturers and consumers that dictate the price of goods, scalpers cannot be allowed to dictate their oppressive prices exclusively for over 300 million people in this country. The practice of scalping has destroyed the launch of so many products across so many industries and the reality is that this causes serious economic loss to every single company for each and every item they release that is consumed by this practice.

Several states have some kind of restrictive legislation on scalping but only in certain areas and items and is not enforced well and thus practically worthless. It is time to have a standard, strong-arm Federal stance against scalping. I call on our leaders and individuals with the proper authority to crush this disgusting and selfish practice and all those that engage in it by criminalizing it and imposing severe legal consequences upon all the scalpers in the land!

There are many ways to combat and penalize this practice, but firstly we need to formally label this practice for what it is morally and ethically because that's the reality, and that is that online retail scalping is a racket and that those who engage in scalping, engage in racketeering. Amend Online Retail Scalping to be included into the list of crimes defined under the RICO Act as "racketeering activity" so that we may punish these people under the harshest criminal laws made that target criminal trade.

https://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Controller-Switch-Online-N64-Official/dp/B09KT1B7N3

Look at the above listing I have posted (which is the picture of this petition). A game controller MSRP'd for $50 that is being sold on Amazon and ebay for 5 times the price. Look at all the reviews on this amazon seller, this seller is getting review-bombed almost daily for scalping a $50 controller. At the time of this petition writing, it is being listed for $399. Please shut down these listings, pass anti-scalping legislation, and penalize these individuals.

There is no limit to what products can be scalped, but the issue is most visible in the tech field. Graphics cards, consoles, controllers, etc. Not a single item in the technological field has been spared from scalping.

Congress and the FTC needs to shut down this practice and there are so many ways to tackle it. Ultimately, private sellers should not be even able to list and sell certain new/unused products on e-commerce websites like Amazon and eBay to be sold for more than 100% of MSRP, all attempts should be automatically blocked. There needs to be checks and systems made in order to implement this as we are living in times of extraordinary crisis.

And so, if individuals are blocked from posting hot-demand clearly-scalped items for outrageous prices throughout the internet then this will kill the industry as it will block even desperate would-be victims from falling into the scam of scalping to keep it alive and the industry will spiral down into the toilet, forcing scalpers to either sell their inventory at normal price or eat the loss of a product pileup and let it collect dust.

And if e-commerce companies continue to allow scalping on their website then they are to be sued by the FTC along with the individuals that post these listings. Citizens should also be able to report blatantly obvious listings in order to put e-commerce companies under hot water for allowing listings to be posted. 

Already Congress is working through with "Stopping Grinch Bots Act of 2021" but it only targets automated scalping and selling items that were obtained by automated scalping. This bill, if passed, will only "level the playing field" to manually scalp for items. We need to end retail scalping, not just curb it.

To summarize, online retail scalping is market manipulation. Scalping robs manufacturers of their profits, robs people of their savings, robs the consumers of product, and with mass quantities of specific product stockpiled in the hands of scalpers it artificially stresses the manufacturers to pump more product. For the Tech industry, this exacerbates the entire chip shortage ordeal. We need strong-arm Federal legislation to end scalping once and for all and to criminalize anyone who partakes in this practice, manually or with bots. It's time to ban this wretched practice from every angle possible and formally include it into the list of crimes prohibited under the RICO Act. 

This is the ultimate anti-scalping petition.