Saiwania wrote:Heloin wrote:Don’t cause a mask shortage for people who actually need masks.
It is probably better to cause a shortage, for those who want to try to get rich quick.
Step 1: Spread a ton of fake news/fear that the virus is airborne and that you have what they need.
Step 2: Get these people to your place of sales. Have the inventory.
Step 3: Separate them from their money however you can. It doesn't matter if the mask is useless to them later on, provided you made the sale.
Step 4: Profits! If you collect enough money, you can take it and split town, living in the lap of luxury. So long as you're long gone, there will be no refunds.
Try to cause as much shortage as possible so that $1 item can be sold for $80 or more each. That'd really rake in the money, but only if there are enough bamboozled into buying. If it worked well, it could make Donald Trump proud.
This is called hoarding.
Hoarding is generally illegal in a lot of countries.
The difference between "stockpiling" and "hoarding", as far as I understand, is that the former takes place when supplies are plentiful and you aren't necessarily profiting from a shortage. The latter is, well, what you described in detail. Otherwise, me making tomato paste in the summer and filling about a dozen jars for the winter would also fall under hoarding, but it doesn't. Oh, by the way, if the masks are useless, I think that's also going to be fraud as well. Fraud is also a criminal activity.
A fellow did that in Turkey, became rather (in)famous, and fled to Paraguay or Uruguay or something, after defrauding thousands of people on what was essentially a massive Ponzi scheme. He now has an Interpol red notice on him: https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work ... 2018-22754
Legal folk chip in here, I'm not sure about any of the stuff I wrote, though.