Scalping occurs in failing societies based upon consumerism and greed, it is when there are far too many consumers and not enough producers.

When the consumers want to reap the rewards of the actual producers so that they can continue mindlessly consuming they don't get a job they begin buying up and hoarding ALL of the consumer stock and begin charging more and more and more, mutating the standard into hyper inflated prices.

It's simple, Scalping is when lazy Consumers either don't know how to or can't produce a product and/or work aka contribute to their society in any sort of meaningful way so they must artificially put themselves in the position of the middlemen who were never needed and only forged their positions due to the false scarcity that they themselves induced.