I'm not moving goalposts. For this entire time I've been trying to explain why a situation can arise like this one where Adafruit, a US company, ends up selling something for more money than some no-name Chinese sellers, and that it's not price gouging just because they're selling it for more money.
The only explanation I can think of for your strong opposition to what I'm explaining is that I think you might be working with a different definition of "price gouging" than is commonly accepted. Price gouging is when a seller raises prices unnecessarily due to an increase in demand or a decrease in supply (like when some places raised the price of toilet paper early during the covid pandemic). I've repeatedly tried explaining why that is not what's happening in Adafruit's case -- Adafruit's prices are a result of the fact that they're a very different business than no-name Chinese sellers on Aliexpress and the costs that they're getting goods for can be higher due to their needs (this is why I was talking about the wholesalers that Adafruit deals with). It's perfectly rational and not "mental gymnastics" -- this is common business. This is also why most stores that are not national chains have higher prices than national chains (and Amazon, for that matter, though that's messier since they also have third party sellers). Again, this isn't price gouging -- they just can't get the goods they sell for as cheap prices as national chains.
>and that it's not price gouging just because they're selling it for more money.
We're not talking a few cents or dollars more. We're talking about more than 5x more the price of what they actually should cost.
You can call it whatever you want, but Adafruit prices are ridiculous. I gave one example of many. Go ahead and throw your money away if you really want to, I don't care.
You absolutely are doing mental gymnastics to try to justify 5x price difference, when they get the LEDs from China. It's the same stuff.
Nothing you can do can explain this, so just give up. I'm done with this, you're wasting my time with your tl;dr;s
The only explanation I can think of for your strong opposition to what I'm explaining is that I think you might be working with a different definition of "price gouging" than is commonly accepted. Price gouging is when a seller raises prices unnecessarily due to an increase in demand or a decrease in supply (like when some places raised the price of toilet paper early during the covid pandemic). I've repeatedly tried explaining why that is not what's happening in Adafruit's case -- Adafruit's prices are a result of the fact that they're a very different business than no-name Chinese sellers on Aliexpress and the costs that they're getting goods for can be higher due to their needs (this is why I was talking about the wholesalers that Adafruit deals with). It's perfectly rational and not "mental gymnastics" -- this is common business. This is also why most stores that are not national chains have higher prices than national chains (and Amazon, for that matter, though that's messier since they also have third party sellers). Again, this isn't price gouging -- they just can't get the goods they sell for as cheap prices as national chains.