Sold Out by Design: What a Pokémon Convention Taught Me About Hustle Culture

At a recent Pokémon convention, my family found almost every booth staffed by resellers instead of collectors — and the closest thing to craft on the floor was a table of bath bombs. This piece argues that scalpers aren’t the villains of the trading card economy; hustle culture is, and it’s been training all of us to mistake extraction for entrepreneurship.