I mean, dick move, but that has nothing to do with sniping. You could do that at any point during the auction and it would have the same effect.

Sniping means that bidders may have decided to put in a higher ceiling in order to avoid losing at the last second.

If there was never a worry about this, they could bring out (and decide) that ceiling only after being outbid.

Question: what kind of fun you are referring to here?

Since, from the outside, it surely sounds like you get pleasure by inflicting some form of suffering on others. But that hopefully isn’t considered fun, is it?

The price, when between the seller's minimum and the buyer's maximum, is a zero sum game. So while this is definitely screwing with people, the seller gets paid more and the amount of suffering in the world shouldn't really change.

You are falling for the zero-sum fallacy and mixing categories on top of it.

Globally, wealth gets created, which leads to a positive-sum game, not a zero sum game.

On the other hand, if one quadrillionaire in a city owns all the money available in that said system except 100 currency units, the remaining 100 humans are in possession of exactly 1 currency unit. The suffering for the 100 humans is significantly higher for the 100 than for the one, even though it fulfils your premise of a balanced global suffering index.

Before the trade, the value for the seller and the buyer was zero. Whatever the trade involved, the moment the minimum of the seller gets hit, it becomes a positive-sum game.

If this would not be the case long-term rise of stocks would be impossible. That would mean a stock rise is a redistribution and you take it away from someone else . So, if the stock market were truly zero-sum, every currency unit earned would require someone else to have lost one.

I am not having zero sun fallacy. Please read what I said again. I said the exact price is zero sum within the bounds of the deal happening. The wealth creation is caused by the deal happening at all.

> if one quadrillionaire in a city owns all the money

That's a valid risk factor but on a random eBay purchase I think it's fair to say we have no idea if the purchaser or the seller gets more utility out of each dollar.

Then we actually agree on parts? Well, excuse me if I interpreted you wrong.

>we have no idea if the purchaser or the seller gets more utility out of each dollar.

Assumption: the seller opened the auction with his actual hard lower limit, he should be happy with what he gets as soon as that limit gets hit.

The original poster said that he essentially altered the bid in favour of the seller. However, the exchange of subjective equal values is based on the balance between the two parties and now gets distorted in favour of the seller and in detriment of the buyer. This should result in win/lose if I am not mistaken.

So, maybe I get you wrong, I am not sure right now.

I agree with everything you said there.

My argument is that this distortion in favor of the seller isn't really good or bad in a meaningful way. It's just rude.

The seller is happy as long as their limit is hit, the buyer is happy as long as their limit isn't hit. How should the surplus happiness get split? I dunno. So the earlier poster sticking their finger in and shifting the surplus around isn't a particularly moral issue.

I don't think this is inflicting net suffering, really. The money doesn't just disappear, the seller gets it. Auctions are zero-sum.

They're not zero-sum on ebay because ebay takes a percentage cut

You are not fun.

Do you usually pay for the higher price you are offering?