Post
Hot take: It should be illegal and impossible in practice for any oligopoly to just buy the entire supply of specific products in advance and starve everyone else depending on it.
Especially in cases where not even the manufacturers do trust these potential "buyers" enough to scale up their production to compensate for that sudden increase in demand.
I don't think there is a need for new governmental regulation (yet), however I do think every company has a responsibility to their customers to NOT let a few customers starve all others.
And before anyone says it, yea, I know capitalism and all, however there should be limits. Otherwise take their payment in advance and actually scale up your production capabilities
instead of just "yea nah, not going to produce more. We'll just let them fight over the limited supply and see who survives and who goes insolvent.".
After all, to me NOT looking out for your smaller customers is also not just "a morally wrong thing", but also a kinda short sighted and kinda bad risk management decision. If all many of your other customers leave the market and this oligopoly fails/pops, whom are you going to sell to then? Do you risk going insolvent yourself?
Come on, these few have such a high demand that it literally doesn't make a difference towards their bottom line if you ensure all of your other customers get sufficient supply first. And then you can at least be sure that there will always be buyers even if they vanish without paying...
