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Resolving YES for the method proposed of having the proxy be clear that they're a proxy for someone else. It does still involve deception, but I don't think it's possible to succeed in modern society without indirect deceptions like that. I'm still a little conflicted about it, but there are many actions for which I feel similarly and I wouldn't call them downright "unethical".

It depends why they are overcharging you.

If they are overcharging you due to disliking even the thought of interacting with you, but not out of a particular want for you to not have the item easily, then proxies are fine.

If it is other cases, it could have bad effects universalizing proxies (ala deontology) - if transactions where people would benefit from proxies exists.

Ex: the seller originally was able to do pretty decent overcharging you for what they sold you. Think of a country who is willing to sell weapons to organizations they don't like, but they charge extra. If proxies become common, then to properly price in the cost of potentially selling to you they have to raise the prices in general.

So you're making others eat the costs.

You could view this as bad, you're inflicting costs on other traders. You could also view this as good because you're still getting it for cheaper than the fully raised price.

In a more idealized market, your proxies would sign some contract that they wouldn't sell it to you without some scheme of raising the price.

It depends why they're raising the price for whether the original seller demands the extra cost.

Ex: some country is willing to sell weapons to foreign gangs, but knows there are externalities to that, and so charges higher than they would selling to definite allies or citizens. They are trying to recoup the extra cost for supplying them, and so the contract would demand that if you sell it to the gangs then you have to pay the original country some amount (which thus raises the prices you're selling by proxy to the gangs.).

The country could also be doing it as disincentive, rather than caring too much about the exact profit. 'Oh, sure, you can buy these drugs but we've upped the price three times'. They don't care too much about the money, but more discouraging people from using it. The proxy might be a shady pharmacy that can buy it at the cheap price, so then the contract would just require the proxy to raise the price if reselling and keep the profit.

(This isn't really an answer. More gesturing at that it is complicated and has implications if it becomes common. I would say it obviously can be right and can be wrong.)

This seems very situational to me in a way that makes me think that any deception is a small part of the moral calculation here. Two examples on opposite sides:

1) if sales of computers were controlled by racists who didn't want your racial group to have computers, I would view it as fine for people to buy on your behalf without telling

2) suppose you murdered John, came back from prison, but then wanted to buy John's bracelet from his son, but his son really doesn't want you to have it. I would view it as bad for you to get someone else to buy on your behalf here

I think the more important thing that matters for me is whether I agree with the preference involved

@samb We have some traits that are protected classes in our society, like race or gender or religion, which we’ve all agreed we should not discriminate things like trade based on. And if someone has one of these preferences, we say it is moral to subvert their preference, even when usually what you did is considered amoral. You can lie, cheat, or steal in order to get the same rights as others, and as long as the main person harmed are the discriminators and the discrimination is happening on the basis of one of those classes, we say its fine.

If you lie, cheat, or steal normally, then its clearly unethical.

Other than those protected classes, I find it hard to think of trade preferences for which it would be moral to dupe. Maybe other things society has decided to punish? Like if they only ever want to trade with Russia? But this seems really uncommon.

@GarrettBaker My point is that the main thing that matters is not the preference, because the supermajority of preferences you will agree with (as long as they’re not about a protected class).

People can have lots of preferences about what you do besides buy things from them. I suspect that in general we wouldn't agree that you're ethically bound by default to respect strange or nonsensical preferences about where you can walk, what you can say, etc. Transacting seems equivalent to me.

@samb I agree. But I think there's a difference between not respecting someone's preferences vs. deceiving them about whether their preferences have been respected.

I think a better analogy is something like: Alice doesn't want Bob coming onto her property, so Bob chooses hide behind Carol so Alice doesn't see him.

Hmm, but if I change it from "legal property" to "sidewalk in front of her house", that looks a lot more reasonable, including the deception. Bob thinking "Alice is being ridiculous, I don't want her to get mad at me, so I'm just going to hide" doesn't feel unethical, but it is deceptive. Hmm.

@IsaacKing Everyone has a sidewalk, and everyone allows anyone to use their sidewalk. Probably if you blocked your sidewalk, and regularly chased people off, people would get mad at you and force you to stop.

In contrast, if you did the same with your house or any other piece of your property, people would think it weird, but also that its your right, and think it the person who was on your lawn’s fault.

If someone really wanted to be on your property, so dressed up like a construction worker to do so, pretending to be someone else, we’d say they were being unethical.

If you buy a unique item through a proxy then the seller has achieved their goal of inconveniencing you and you have achieved your goal of buying the item, and everyone can go home happy.

If the proxy lies then that is bad because lying, not because proxy. It's not inherently deceptive. Proxy purchases happen all the time, the norm in free market societies is a free market.

In some cultures we might expect a rich buyer to pay over the odds to demonstrate status and redistribute wealth, but it doesn't sound like that is in play here.

If you buy a unique item through a proxy then the seller has achieved their goal of inconveniencing you

Yes, but not as much as if I were unable to make the purchase at all.

@IsaacKing Sure. But also not as much as if they punched you in the face. People are not entitled to maximally inconvenience people they dislike. In this case, if the seller wishes to ensure that you do not own the unique item, then they should not sell it.

@MartinRandall I feel like they are allowed to maximally inconvenience people when it pertains to their property?

If Alice doesn't want Bob walking on her lawn, would be ok for Bob to only walk on it a little, since it's still inconveniencing him compared to being able to take an even shorter path?

@IsaacKing Sure, but as soon as they sell it, it isn't their property.

Also they have to actually do the work to be inconvenient. If they sell to a proxy then they aren't doing that work.

If I don't want Bob walking on my lawn, I minimally have to ask Bob not to walk on my lawn. In your hypothetical they haven't done that, they just smoulder with generic rage.

Deontological-ish (?) argument:

Is it unethical for a proxy seller to sell goods on behalf of an anonymous craftsperson? Is it unethical to ghostwrite, or commission a ghostwriter? What if NeoHitler really wants someone to buy their mediocre still lifes, but the “NeoHitler” brand just ain’t working? Careful with your answer here; disillusioning NeoHitler from their art career may have dire consequences.

Let’s think through the benefits and harms of the outcomes here. In the comments so far I see a lot of people tangling together “how much money the seller gets” and “who the seller sells to.” Can we unpack those?

Say P is shopping for a gift for their best friend, B. S sells to P, who then gives the item to B. Later, B wants to gift P, and gives them an amount of money comparable to the price of the gift. Is this a proxy sale?

I’d argue no. But: S sells the item for P’s price, B gets the item for P’s price (more or less), and P breaks even (and feels appreciated). The outcomes are largely the same as a proxy sale. So what creates the ethical dilemma here? It must be either a) negotiation of the price, or b) the uniqueness of an item causing an exception.

S and P might negotiate the price, but chances are high S is not going to condition the sale, or their behavior in any negotiation, on what P intends to do with the item. It’s probably not even likely to come up. S might later find out they could have gotten more money from P, but such is the nature of markets, no? This can’t be the source of the ethical dilemma here either.

Ok, so the item itself. Sellers/donors do sometimes attach contingencies to rare items, such as artworks - like the receiver must put it up for public display. In Isaac’s case I’m imagining the item is a super rare trading card, and so maybe the seller wants to say “for collecting only, not for competition” or something like that? If so, then I would accept that it’s not the proxy nature of a sale that’s deceitful, it’s cloaking the true buyer’s intent, and/or breeching the contract the seller is trying to attach to the sale.

So - imo a proxy sale only is unethical in the limited case where the sale itself already would be a breech of contract in the first place. If the seller isn’t prohibiting resale of the item, or proscribing uses, then it’s no different than the when the buyer simply turns around and resells the item.

Edit to add: IANAL, this is not legal or financial advice, your mileage may vary, see store for details.

@MattCWilson I think that omits the main difference; intent. Violating someone's preferences accidentally is different from violating them intentionally, surely?

Imagine that P and S are also friends. If P buys S's item, gives it to B, and later P and S are talking and P finds out that S dislikes B, S will probably not be upset, since P didn't intend to do something S didn't want. But if P did it intentionally, S may want to stop being friends with them.

@IsaacKing In that case, I’d suggest you re-title the market? Because then we’re not talking about the abstract concept of proxy sales being unethical, we’re talking about the idea of intentionally deceiving someone, and “proxy sale” is just a conceit for deceit.

@MattCWilson Isn't that what I describe in the description?

Sorta, but the “sometimes” makes it unclear whether it’s “I buy things; in the past sometimes people have shown they don’t like me, therefore going forward I blindly practice proxy purchase” (seems more ethical) vs. “I buy things; sometimes I have to deal with a seller I know hates me, and when I want something of theirs anyway then I find a proxy to do it.”(seems less so)

Plus, then you start asking about “where’s the boundary of proxy sales, anyway…” extra questions, which led me to think you’re in case 1 not 2 and this is more about the generic practice than specific deceit.

@MattCWilson Ah, no, I meant case 2.

Seems that using an intermediary falls into the "not a lie, but deceptive" camp. So then the question is, is that always unethical? Seems to me that current human society pretty much requires some amount of deception from anyone who wants to succeed at anything serious. (e.g. In every job interview the interviewee is trying to trick the interviewer into thinking they're better than they are. People don't actually think in terms of "synergy".)

@IsaacKing Just because an action benefits you doesn’t make it moral. If it were impossible to succeed in human society without owning slaves (a situation which was the case not that long ago), it is not therefore moral to own slaves.

Deception is nit as bad as slavery, but this illustrates the point.

If they're selling it on the open market the possibility of the the goods ending up with someone they dislike is an occupational hazard, since they have no control over resales, so it's something they have, in principle, consented to. That said, you are using a light form of deceit to improve your expected value. If it were me, I think it'd depend on whether I thought their desire to wring me specifically for extra cash was fair (because I am me, I probably won't). I think using an otherwise-harmless deception to avoid being punished for other people's irrationality is fair game. Otherwise I'm more uncertain.

@AngolaMaldives It may be irrational from a profit-maximizing business perspective, but if one of their core values is hating me, that's not rational or irrational; all values are arbitrary and that one is as good as any other.

@IsaacKing Values may ultimately be arbitrary, but surely what you consider reasonable/acceptable behaviour in others matters when determining ethical behaviour towards them? If they decided they hate you because, say, they're racist against your race, decieving them to get around that is probably more ethical than if they hate you because you kicked their puppy off the golden gate bridge.

@AngolaMaldives Well sure, but if people only engage in bad behavior against those they disagree with, that's not all that different from engaging in bad behavior whenever you want. You can't actually maintain a society that way.

(For example, if two parties in a court case both thought it acceptable to lie about what the other party did because they thought the other side was immoral, it would be a lot harder to maintain order than if neither did.)